Where are all the rude Parisians?

Everybody seems to have a story about the time a French waiter, taxi driver or government official in Paris treated them abominably; ignoring them, burying them in red tape or refusing to speak English etc. We were all prepared to give as good as we got and give those Frenchies some hell! And what have we found? Niceness everywhere! And not just niceness, but downright accommodating, helpful, English-speaking niceness. Ripped off! It's like visiting the doctor and finding out you don't actually have Ebola. You're happy, but slightly resentful that you paid for nothing. Despite this disappointment, Paris was sensational. Perhaps our favourite city so far and worth the 13 days we spent here (it was also good to chill out in one spot as well). Our first day here was interrupted by that most French of activities: the general strike. What were they striking over, you ask? Global warming? The war in Iraq? Non! The government had the temerity to lift the retirement age from 60 to 62. Take to the streets! We actually joined one of the marches along the Seine, past the National Assembly and up to the Musee de Invalides in anticipation of some good, old fashioned rioting but again, that damned unforeseen niceness left it all a little flat (I am sure it had nothing to do with the presence of hundreds of riot police with body armour and automatic weapons. Shouldn't have stopped them though - where's the revolutionary spirit!?) We kept on running into our mates throughout the week, full of vigour they would yell out loudly in French whilst waving banners with French stuff on it and we would raise our arms and mumble loudly the only French we remembered from school ‘quel est le temps que vous une petite femme’.

The strike did have the effect of disrupting our visit to the Louvre on our second day in Paris, however. We stood in the freezing cold for a couple of hours only to have some flag-waving members of the United Socialist Anarchist Proletarian Workers Combat Party (we made that up but you get the point) shut the place down for the day. No drama for us, we just came back a few days later but people there for a shorter time would have been seriously put out. What we did end up seeing in Paris is only a tiny amount of everything that is there and we will definitely come back again. When we did get back to the Louvre we spent an entire day there and could have spent 3 or 4. The Mona Lisa was odd in that, at first glance, it seemed quite ordinary in relation to the magnificence of the other pieces, but then you look at it from a distance and you could see the almost perfect symmetry, right down to the odd little smile (suspicious too, we think she let one go). We spent a lot of time copying the Parisians and strolling as slowly as possible down some of their lovely avenues. We have a newly purchased Canon 450D and took advantage of some spectacular photo opportunities. Our favourite though was not a monument or a gallery, but a cat that lived in the apartment directly across from our hotel window. It sat all day on the balcony railing looking beautiful, bored, and incredibly self-important. It pretty much summed up the Parisian attitude for us!


That's not to say they don't have a lot to feel important about. Take the Palace of Versailles for example (which they charmingly call the 'chateau'). The palace and it's rooms are, of course, impressively opulent. Then you go outside to the garden... there are 800 hundred hectares of it! There are 50 fountains, 23 hectares of canals and 200,000 trees. The bloody thing disappears over the horizon - and all of it just for the French royal family and no-one else. Can't imagine what the average French peasant thought when they finally got to see what their taxes were spent on. Oh, actually we can. Off with their heads!!
Naturally, we went up the Eiffel Tower (which was only three blocks from our hotel) and the view reminds you just how vast, impressive and old French culture is, and how long Paris has been the centre of that culture. Paris is utterly sprawling, yet at the same time seems so well planned with it's massive, incredibly long avenues all leading to some monument or building of tremendous national importance. The overwhelming feeling you get is pride, pride in every aspect of their amazing culture and they have every right to be.


Our biggest hint of the true age of Paris came though with our trip through the catacombs. In the eighteenth century the stench from the graveyards became so bad that the local government had them all dug up and the bones transferred to a gigantic ossuary under the streets of Paris. You literally walk down miles of narrow tunnels with the bones and skulls of 6 million people stacked floor to ceiling a foot either side of you with water dripping down on you here and there to truly gross you out. For sheer creepiness we've never experienced it's equal. Not even the crypt under the pyramid at Giza was spookier than this. Awesome! We actually considered putting up the umbrella - bad luck much.
It wasn't all palaces and catacombs though. There was also the shopping!! We visited over 20 of the haute couture houses Christine did her best for the French economy whilst Bradley dutifully (and quietly) shadowed her. Only one great fashion house eluded us, the House of Jean Louis Scherrer, unfortunately Christine's favourite! It had closed its stores in Paris (gasp!) so, somewhat perturbed, our heroine tracked down what in hindsight was probably the personal address for Jean Louis - an upmarket apartment building just off the Champs Elysees. Lucky for Jean Louis we failed to breach security and we went home without any of his very expensive handbags or an explanation as to why he'd closed his stores. We consoled ourselves by buying a sculpture from one of our favourite artists, Bruno Catalano, who we first came across in New York. We both fell in love with his work, and after buying a piece (appropriately from his series called 'the traveller') will be coming home another month or two earlier than planned!
We couldn't sightsee every day. And we made damn sure there was time for kicking back and watching the world go buy.

Our hotel was perfectly situated with about a thousand cafes, bars and restaurants within an easy distance. There was also a great roof terrace at the hotel where we could both chill and eat baguettes with cheese, ham and pate and practice our French. Christine has got to the point where she can generally make herself understood when buying food whilst Brad has decided to focus on his Czech so if he ever meets that guy from the train near Prague again he can tell him what poor directions he gave...
An uneventful train trip to Bordeaux and we are now resting up whilst Christine tries to recover from ebola, again!