Europe 2004 Day 5

This morning I was up quite a bit earlier, somewhat to Trevor's dismay. We enjoyed a leisurely complementary continental breakfast provided by the hotel. This was my first true continental breakfast, I suppose, since it was actually on "the continent." Anyway it involved a croissant with jam, I think I used tomato jam. I'm not sure. It wasn't bad though. I also had hot chocolate and orange juice, and some pain au chocolat while reading the international edition of The Guardian.

We checked out and had the hotel store our bags while we went out for our last day about Paris. We hopped on the Metro and went down to the Ile de Cite, where we first went to Sainte-Chapelle, which is in the middle of an old palace which is now the Palais du Justice, which is probably like the French Supreme Court or something. Anyway, Sainte-Chapelle is on 2 levels, a small, close first floor chapel and the tall, light upper chapel with over 6,000 square feet of stained glass, most of it original to the 13th century! The king built it to house relics of Christ. That room was certainly up to the task.

Next we headed across the street to a larger religious structure, namely Notre Dame. When we had visited the night before, we had decided not to go in, but today we headed in. It was certainly expansive. With the main hall and side wings, it seemed much larger inside than out, if that was possible. It was very big, but not as detailed or constructed with as fine materials as say, Sainte-Chappelle or the fancy rooms in the Louvre. There were two humongous rose windows on each end of the transept, but they were so far up that any details could not be made out. Still, the scale itself was enough to inspire awe.

After some quiet contemplation, we hopped back on the Metro and went to Montparnasse station briefly. They have a long hallway there that uses this fancy travelator that I read about a while back, so of course I had to give it a try. It was interesting, they certainly give you enough warnings before hopping on the thing. We saw more than one person wobble a bit at the transitions, and we wobbled a bit ourselves. But it was wicked fast... 9 kph vs a lowly 3 kph on your standard slidewalk.

After that, we hopped back on the Metro (we actually didn't even have to leave the station to use the travelator) back up north to the Montmartre part of town. We made our way up the hill via funicular to Montmartre hill topped by Sacre Cour. We then wandered around the neighborhoods back down the hill. One fun place was a square filled with artists at their easels painting and selling their art. Back near the bottom, we found a small shop where we each had baguette sandwiches (I had Jambon et Fromage), then went up to a small patisserie where Trevor had a tasty éclair (I had the hiccups at that point unfortunately). Then it was back onto the Metro to the Pere-Lachaise Cemetery, which was cool to walk around in general, and we saw the graves of two famous musicians in particular- Frederic Chopin and Jim Morrison.

We wandered a bit more and found another entrance to the cemetery and headed down that street, and realized it was the very street our hotel was on, what luck! We were still a ways off, so we headed on, stopping at a small grocery for snacks for the train back, and to get some bottles of French wine. The prices in the store were almost ridiculously cheap when compared to what we had been paying at restaurants. Soon we were back at our hotel, where we rested in the lobby for a long moment before retrieving our bags.

We caught the Metro one last time. Seriously, it was so easy to use and really was the fastest way to get around the city. This particular trip was the only one we took which was close to rush hour, and the trains we took were filed, and the trains were arriving less than 2 minutes apart in each direction! It was very impressive. Anyway, we had arrived at Gare du Nord a bit early for our train back, so we found a small internet-place, where we caught up on things a little bit before having to leave to catch the Eurostar back to London. The trip wasn't quite as interesting because it was dark the entire trip back.

Back at Waterloo, we caught the tube to Brent's flat, where I gathered my things and we were soon in Trevor's car on our way to Bury St. Edmunds. It really was odd sitting as the passenger in the front left seat. The whole driving on the wrong side of the road hasn't bugged me as much yet, mostly I think because it was dark while we were driving. I imagine had I been the one doing the driving my perspective would have been quite different. We arrived in Bury late, and went to bed straight away as Trevor had to work the next day.

January 19, 2004 11:59 PM