Christmas in Paris

(The following is a letter from Joe to our families detailing our trip to Paris.)

Greeting from the old world!  We are back from our Christmas in Paris.  Based on input from our German friends and our own desire to eventually see Paris, we decided that Christmas is a good time to see Paris.

We arrived on 22 December by TGV train, on the very same tracks that set the world speed record for wheeled trains.  The train hit a top speed of 200mph –I was tracking it with my GPS.

Cathedral Sacre-Coeur

From the train station we walked to our hotel, for about 2.5km.  Navigation was a little difficult, because Paris is a big city, and from street level most of it looks the same –5 or 6 story tall buildings built in the 1800s, the streets are straight, but don’t intersect at 90 degree angles.

After checking into our hotel, we spent the rest of the evening walking around.  We were in the neighborhood of the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur (Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris).  We came across a Christmas Market there.  And because the Sacré-Cœur is on a hill in relatively flat Paris, we got our first view of the Eiffel Tower.  We walked through the streets and eventually made our way to the river Seine.  It was quite dirty and fast flowing; and completely surrounded by stone walls.  On an island in the Seine sits the Notre Dame cathedral.  We marveled at the front for a while at sunset.  Then we used the Metro (subway) to get back home for dinner at a Parisian Café.

 On Friday we visited some other famous sites, including the 300m tall Eiffel Tower.  We purchased a baguette with cold cuts and cheese, and we had lunch in a park viewing the tower.  It was hard to comprehend the size until we were under it.  We went all the way to the top and got a view of the city, and we could just see the land beyond the sprawl of Paris.  We also walked under the Arc de Triomphe which is also impressively big.  We wandered around the National Residence of the Invalides, which is also the national military history museum and the burial site for Napoleon. Finally, we went into some more churches.

La St. Chapelle

On Christmas Eve the skies were blue.  We walked around town –in total we walked about 40miles in our 2day +2half day stay!  We visited the Louvre, and saw the most famous painting in the world –the Mona Lisa.  I was reprimanded for taking a picture of the crowd of people taking a picture of the picture.  I am still a bit upset that they didn’t reprimand all the people who were using their camera flashes, despite all the signs that say “No Flash”.  On average there was a camera flash at the Mona Lisa every two seconds.  That evening we enjoyed a fantastic meal at a corner café with some good wine, and then listened to an organ concert at the Sacré-Cœur.  After the concert we watched the Eiffel Tower, which was lit up with hundreds or maybe even thousands of strobe lights.

On Christmas day we walked around town and took our picture by Notre Dame.  We had a three-course lunch at a nice café.  And we departed Paris around 3:30 for Tübingen.

At home we unwrapped our presents, and talked to Betsy’s family by Skype.

Love,

Joe & Betsy

I (Betsy) have a few things to add to Joe's narrative. First, in the above picture I am not pregnant or fatter than normal, I am just wearing the tourist waistbelt with both of our passports, money, credit cards, etc., and I didn't want to take it off for the picture.

There are some other observations I made about Paris in addition to Joe's. I spend about two weeks in Paris and surroundings when I was 14, and saw it quite exhaustively, but that was more than half a lifetime ago now and these three things really stood out to me:

1. Paris is really dirty. I know, it's beautiful, but I sort of feel like I should throw my shoes away now. We saw so much poop, gum, cigarette butts, barf and litter on the streets. Each morning water flowed out from the sewers and maintenance people swept what they could away, but really, doesn't it just end up in the Seine then? Gross, Paris. I thought we'd moved past the Middle Ages.

2. Paris has a lot of rocks. Wow. It is a big city and just about everything is made of stone. Where did it all come from? Napolean must have employed an army to move it all in. Oh wait, I think he might have actually done just that.

3. Paris is really expensive. I was prepared to see a good amount of upscale boutiques, etc, but that was about all that was there, aside from a few immigrant neighborhoods and tourist districts. I don't know how people actually live there. It was nice to return home to "spar"-conscious Germany. 

Last of all, Joe forgot to mention our most magical Paris experience. On Christmas morning we saw a motorcade heading down a broad avenue. I thought, "It must be French president Nicolas Sarkozy". Actually, it was Pere Noel (Santa Claus). He waved to us and went on his way. I couldn't figure out though what he was doing parading around Paris when it was still night time in the western hemisphere. Shouldn't he still be out delivering toys?