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Paris, France

Ooh la la, PARIS:
Paris is one of the most visited cities on the planet. Why is it that most people have a fascination with Paris? Why is it nicknamed the ‘City if Love’? Is it because of the history, the art, the culture, the music, the monuments, the language or is it the perceived romance of it all? What fascinates me about this so called ‘city of love’, is people’s preconceived ideas about the place, whether it’s overrated or whether tourists come here purely to take those expected ‘seen it done it’ photos. This came to mind when we, like the 29,000 other tourists, visited the world’s most visited museum, the Louvre and spent the average 9 seconds taking a picture of the Mona Lisa before exiting. The majority of people just visit the world’s most well known painting, but the Louvre has so many pieces of art that if you were to spend 9 seconds at each it would take 3 months continuously to see it all. Why is it that one painting or a monument is so popular amongst click-happy tourists? I for one had no idea why I’d gone to see it, apart from a tourist’s obligation to do so. Mum said I was the same when I went to see it when I was 12.

As we wandered the streets of Paris and continued adding to a photo album of photos that aren’t unique and don’t mean anything to us apart from ‘seen it, done it’, we realised there has to be more depth to this city. Unfortunately the free walking tour of the city was pretty hopeless so we really had to uncover what is behind these these lifeless shots for ourselves.
We rented a beautiful French apartment in the city for the week in the hope that we could get amongst it all for a true Parisian experience. With live jazz streaming through our 4th floor windows, it certainly set the right tone. Little handbag sized dogs in pouch handbags, join their well dressed owners outside the many brasseries, on trains or in patisseries. 250,000 French yap yaps live in the city. To my amusement, 6,500 people are sent to hospital each year from slipping on dog poo.
Along the Seine River a whiff of India pollutes the air. A strong smell of urine lingers under these 1,000 year old bridges. It’s hard to believe that it is legal for males to “go” anywhere. But that doesn’t stop the couples kissing under these bridges or walking arm in arm along the Love Lock bridge. For 5 romantic Euro, love-struck sweethearts can purchase locks to padlock onto the chain link fence put through the bridge railing before tossing the keys into the river – a sign of their eternal devotion. It’s such an ‘expected thing’ to do that each April they replace the sides of the bridge as it’s at capacity. Although I sound like a romantic cynic, it’s actually a beautiful sight with thousands of gold locks shimmering in the afternoon sun over the river Seine.

The city is made up of 18th century Parisian houses (all designed by one architect) looking like an artistic masterpiece. However, they always say it’s what’s underneath that counts. Under the city’s buildings lay the underground metro and under that is the sewer system and under that is the Paris Catacombs. Back in the day, 6 million bodies from the city’s graveyards were extracted and reburied to stop the spread of disease. Many,many years ago the tours that ran down there were the city’s most popular. As people got lost and went missing that idea was scrapped, and it has become a museum for those who are bored with the Louvre. For those wanting a little more, (if you know which tunnels to climb through) you can find Paris’s mysterious underworld, supposedly with the world’s biggest absinthe bar and a 13 room cinema, completely illegal of course.
It’s not glitz and glam everywhere in Paris. On an afternoon outing to the outer suburbs, we stumbled across an extremely dodgy neighbourhood. Within 30 minutes our bags were unknowingly opened twice. A local approached us in the subway where druggies were playing chicken on the railway tracks, and said “why are you here? It’s not a place you want to be.” Needless to say we didn’t stay for long.
Of all the 20 odd countries we have visited over the last few months, the French have been, by far, the hardest to communicate with – that includes a conversation with the Click Click tribes in Namibia. It’s only those in the tourist industry who we can have a reasonably easy conversation with. The French really despise the English language. So much so they have an official website with the official banned English words. I’ve made a sentence of banned Franglish words: Last ‘weekend’ I was flying on a ‘low cost airline’ when I saw a ‘supermodel’ eating ‘chewing gum’. I wanted to ‘blog’ about it on ’email’ or ‘Facebook’ but I decided to ‘hashtag’ her on ‘Twitter’.

“All in good humour fact #57: At the Arc de Triomphe there’s an eternal flame representing fallen French soldiers. It’s been burning since 1948…. oh, apart from that time in 2003 when 3 Aussies cooked their frozen hot dog wieners on the internal flame and put it out.”

We didn’t visit the most visited monument in Paris. Can you believe it, we didn’t visit Euro Disney? With 7.2 million visitors a year less, the Eiffel Tower was the best option for us to visit. It has a stature about it that makes it so grand for photos. You only need to stand and watch for 30 minutes to see people dramatically posing for the perfect photo. It’s amusing to watch those in props or special clothing. I wonder why they like it so much. The Parisians certainly didn’t like it, nicknaming it ‘à la Iron Asparagus’. After it was built in 1919 by the same guy who designed the inside of the Statue of Liberty, they had approval to knock it down 26 years later. The only reason it stands today is that in the war it was used as a communication tower. Then of course came the bureau of tourism or common sense. Personally I think the Parisienne’s should be pleased, other monument designs submitted for the World Exhibition were a stone Cyclops or a giant guillotine to symbolise those who had their heads cut off.

As the end of our week draws to an end, we feel Paris has been uncovered. We’ve discovered the reasons that make this city sparkle and made it our own. Many imagine what Paris to be like; artists, narrow cobbled roads with French singers on corners, buskers, the sound of piano coming from inside creperies or brassieres. We found a place which actually represents all that and much more. On top of the only hill in Pairs is the beautiful ‘truly French’ suburb of Montmartre, proudly perched next to the beautiful Basilica church. Alleyways are filled with artists in berets and neckties creating masterpieces with the smell of fresh pastries and endless music in the air.
Other memorable moments were spent wandering aimlessly through the different suburbs, tasting all the pastries possible and spending hours searching for that perfect restaurant not far from the Latin Quarter to have our one and only French meal. French wine accompanied frogs legs, snails, beef bourguignon, duck leg, creme caramel and creme brulee. Into Saint Germain we headed, to see whether an afternoon snack at the Ralph Lauren restaurant would be up to standard ($54 for a Ralph burger) or Emporio Armani Cafee with their $25 tiramisu. By the looks the lady on the door gave us, it was ‘us’ who weren’t up to their standard. But of course no visit to Paris would be complete without viewing Paris from the 200,000-watt lighting system of the Eiffel Tower at dusk. As the sun set over a truly beautiful city, full of elegance, life and atmosphere, I can understand why this IS the City of Love.

Bottoms up in CHAMPAGNE:
Pour tous or, ‘To all’ in French – a toast to taking a free train to the region of Champagne instead of a $400 tour from Paris. The region of Champagne produces more bottles of champagne than any other wine producing region in the southern hemisphere combined. With 4 glasses of free champagne under our belt from Eperny Tourist Information Centre we were ready for our first cellar, Moët, pronounced moi et. I thought it was quite interesting that the founder M
r Moët passed down the family business to his son (surname Moët) and his daughter who when married became a Chandon, which created the brand Moët Chandon. For the first 100 years, the champagne was only consumed by the the family and prestigious people the likes of Napoleon. Three generations later, the Moët Chandon range produces 1 bottle every second of every day and night and holds 10% of the champagne market. To cater for such a demand their vineyards are over 1,150ha and their cellars are 3 levels, with over 28 km of tunnelled cellars. There are more bottles in these cellars than there are people in France! That is a flipping huge underground of tunnels, considering the facade of this rather ugly brick building (once the house of the Moët family) is rather dull. Walking through their cellars was like walking through cold winding tunnels of a Harry Potter movie.
I’ve always thought Moët is over priced, but with a better understanding of the production, the price is somewhat justified. 3,000 people hand pick the grapes each year. Ageing is anywhere between 3-12 years and all champagne except the Imperial label, the cheap $60 stuff, is rotated by hand. 50,000 bottles a day, every day for 6 weeks by a man with a sore wrist. His title is a riddler, not a ******!
After all that, I gave most of my free glass to Dave…. No orange juice you see.

From backpackers to wine connoisseurs in BORDEAUX:
We didn’t really know what to expect from Bordeaux. We really only came here to taste a few of the wines. Unbeknown to us, it’s actually the world’s major wine industry capital. The town, nicknamed Sleeping Beauty, certainly does feel like a sleepy little town. All of the buildings are in the same white sandstone and perfectly restored, with expensive restaurants and wine bars lining the cobbled streets.
Like any other Air bnb accommodation we checked into a room in our host’s house, however our host in Bordeaux, Mouna, greeted us with a French kiss. This professional French Moroccan young woman offered to take us around the city for a local’s tour, which is completely unheard of by a host. Having a local spend the whole afternoon with us, we thought we were the luckiest people out. That was of course until she said she had invite only tickets to an event at the Grand Theatre and thought we might be interested in attending with her. A successful local wine shop was celebrating 20 years by hosting a prestigious wine event. The top Bordeaux, French and some European vineyards were invited to showcase, not sell, their wines at this event by offering free wine tasting. And that we did. For 5 hours. In the terrace off the Grand Theatre. We sampled the regions most expensive wines, chatted with the owner, his friends and his customers over an endless supply of fancy hors d’oeuvres, from oysters to sashimi. Totally out of place in thongs and hiking boots, we were welcomed all the same to this fancy event, complete with a live jazz band. The French language filled the air but we appreciated that each description of the wine was translated in to English for us. To be able to sample so many wines in one of the world’s best wine regions really made our stay there. How fortunate we are to have been invited here by our host. Quite unbelievable in fact.

If the photos from Bordeaux show only us drinking wine, well that’s because that is all we did. On one of the laziest days we have had on the whole trip, we ventured out to buy wine to accompany our dinner with Mouna. To farewell our stay here in vin (wine) country, we went to the most exquisite wine bars with Mouna, who really knows her wine! The wine bar’s internal walls were sandstone brick, so old that the sandstone was flaking off. They had trees inside with fairy lights, candelabras and chandeliers. The extensive wine menu was presented on old 1930s newspapers. Specific nibbles were offered to complement the type of wine ordered. Very, very cool place.
These past two days of the trip have been one of our standouts. You couldn’t pay for an experience like this. Sometimes it just takes one individual to spare some time and a part of their life with you to make all the difference in your stay, a town or even a country.

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