Peromyscus: Californian's vacation: Stairs and sights in Paris

Vacation continued:

One of the highlights of London is how easy it is to get out if and go to Paris instead. You hop on a train at St. Pancras Station, and it deposits you at the Gare du Nord in Paris.

Well, I say “hop” but due to Brexit, you do have to go through a partially-assed passport control and customs check which is a little like being a sheep herded through a sheep dip, but once that’s over you sit on the train and munch half-French British Rail-style sandwiches and try not to think about the weight of water above you in the tunnel under the English Channel (or as the French call it, La Manche).

We stayed in an out-of-the-way hotel – a suite of rooms for around $100 a night – and utilized the French equivalent of an Oyster Card, a Navigo pass. Same deal as the Oyster Card, you fill it up at a machine and rub it against ticket turnstiles when you want to travel. With a London Oyster Card, you sign in and sign out at your destination. With the Navigo, you just sign in. There’s no check of where you get off the Metro.

I found it a bit more difficult to use, in that the first time I tried, I must have waited too long to push forward, or otherwise annoyed the Transport Gods, and the green “go through” light went out. And you can’t use the card at the same gate a second time! I assume that’s their way of preventing a traveler throwing the card to an accomplice outside the gate for a second journey, but I can’t think of a reason why they need to do that.

Anyway, one of the locals, seeing me gesticulating wildly in English, let me through the gate while his own light was green. After that, things went better.

I’d never been to Paris. I’ve been across the Channel on a ferry, notably during the Royal Wedding in 1981 when I could no longer face the overload of Union Jack bunting in London. But we only went as far as Calais, on the coast, the spiritual home of Duty-Free fags and liquor.

I think everyone has a bucket list of what they want to see in Paris, and so did we, but since we booked the trip only a few days before we traveled, we couldn’t get tickets to 95% of them. (Places like the Louvre are famously booked up months ahead, and even then are seriously overcrowded.)

Our first trip was to the Eiffel Tower. The summit was closed, but the lower two stages were accessible by steps (or an elevator if you booked early enough, which we hadn’t). Being a Northerner, I couldn’t help measuring it up against the Blackpool Tower, but I have to say that apart from the lack of world-class ballrooms, it is impressive. We climbed the stairs to the first stage and spent an hour looking over Paris. We set out for the stairs again and I’d climbed about nine steps before declaring the second stage could look after itself and I wasn’t going a step farther.

Eiffel Tower against a sky with visible twigs in the sky area. At the bottom, the fence that surrounds the tower with queueing tourists' heads visible.

Lining up for the Eiffel Tower

It is a very long way up and it was cold and windy but incredibly impressive in the way all Victorian cast-iron construction is. It was built in a couple of years for a World’s Fair, with only a 20-year permit to stay up. (Obviously, that permit was extended.) The construction speed and determination of the people of that time was something else.

A square shape with structures at the four corners. It's a view of the Eiffel Tower from the ground, directly under the center

Eiffel Tower from ground level beneath it

The next item on the agenda was Montmartre. As the name suggests, it’s on a mount, so that entailed another tranche of steps. The websites explain that climbing the steps is like participating in some Film Noir or WWII drama, but cities are so crowded these days that it was more like participating in one of those religious pilgrimages where seven thousand people get trampled to death because someone stopped suddenly to tie their shoelaces. There is a funicular (an elevator/train cross) that will take you up there, but my navigator (Hi!) led us up many flights of stairs while continually telling me the funicular was just a little further on. And so it was – the top of the funicular. Google Maps had led us to the top entrance instead of the bottom.

View of Montmartre Basilica

Since we were already at the top, there was no use crying over it, so we explored. It’s a touristy area, of course, but the Basilica was beautiful and the restaurants around retained some of their Impressionist-era charm.

We took the funicular down.

Montmartre from the bottom of the steps

Although we had the Metro travel-card, we walked a huge distance in Paris, six or so miles a day. Things are quite far apart (compared with London, which has its major landmarks in a tiny central area) but despite the cold they were pleasant walks. The city is well-laid out, with wide streets, reasonable traffic and dotted with architecture that extols the mightiness of the French state and the citizens’ need for proportion and beauty. The non-national buildings are in the characteristic Hausmann Style. We saw the Ramses Obelisk, in much better nick than Cleopatra’s Needle in London, the Arc de Triomphe and beautiful fountains. Oh, and the Moulin Rouge. One surprise was the Seine, which flows rapidly. The Thames seems to mosy along slowly, and sometimes when the tide’s coming in it seems to not flow at all, but the Seine runs like a small river coming down from a mountain. (Except much wider.) It was the sort of flow you wouldn’t want to fall into unless you’re an unusually strong swimmer.

Notre Dame had just reopened after a devastating fire gutted the interior and collapsed the roof. There are still cranes and builders’ huts around it but it’s back to its glory. It was raining when we visited, and the Griffons were spouting water on the passers-by like something from Gotham City.