Paris: quick summary

[ailbhe]

First impressions: Oooh, nice weather. Ewwww, what a smell! Mmm, good food.

Everyone in Paris smokes. It's probably to kill off the smell of stale urine. I ca't decide whether it smells better or worse than Barcelona - less rubbish in the street, but more cars.

Also, I now understand people who are reminded of Paris by Dublin.

And we had a fantastic time; we didn't go into much, but we saw the outsides of the Arc de T, the Louvre, the Sacre Coeur, the Ch. of St V de P, a stolen Egyptian obelisk, Pompidou scaffolding, Notre Dame c., Bastille monument, and the Champs Elysees. And one or two people.

Parisians adore children and Linnea is greatly disappointed with the adulation she receives home in England - it's not nearly as enthusiastic. We could hardly move in Paris for people talking to her (incomprehensibly) or to us (slowly and carefully, simple things like "tres jolie"). Here she gets little smiles and winks and reserved "aren't you pretty?"s. Small beer.

We're planning when we can go back, but next time, we will bring some sort of gas masks or lung-scrubbers. We're all coughing.

When we got home, we washed Champs Elysees gravel off Linnea's knee-grazes and put her to bed.

Comments

[murkee.livejournal.com]

The Paris Sewers are THE place to be (http://www.flickr.com/photos/murky/5040459/in/set-127107/)! A must visit site.

I think Paris is a great place, there is smoking, but I never really felt it was problemmatic - I could have just been lucky.

I like the open-ness of the place, it's a *thought through* city.

[sierra-le-oli.livejournal.com]

Glad you enjoyed yourselves. You sound like you covered a lot of ground!

The Dublin/Paris comparison never occured to me but I think I see what people mean. Both places have a cool, relaxed vibe about them.

Dublin / Paris

[ailbhe]

Compare O'Connell St, the Champs Elysees, and Oxford Street - Dubs and Paris have big wide main shopping streets, and London has a twisty narrow one. They're just more spacious, more relaxed, as you say.

Paris is better, except for the smoking ban, though.

Re: Dublin / Paris

[sierra-le-oli.livejournal.com]

I remember you saying this and I could kind of see what you meant but didn't quite get it. But now I've had a chance to reflect on it, I see you're absolutely right. I hadn't realised just how important those wide boulevards were. It's especially crucial when the weather tends to be grey.

[pauamma]

I'm trying to remember at what time we popped in and out of Notre Dame. I'm thinking around 9pm local time?

Notre Dame

[ailbhe]

Yeah, we figured out later it must have been *just* before the Pope died. It was shortly after, rather than shortly before, 9 pm local time, because Linnea's bedtime is 8pm UK time and it was *after* that but not much after.