The ATM was on Rue de Saint-Ouen, just across from the Guy Môquet metro station. Further down Saint-Ouen was what amounted to a traditional market, with everything from vegetables to Middle Eastern carpets for sale on the sidewalk. I wandered through it, but didn't buy anything there. I did, however, wander into a small shopping mall that was just beyond the market. The anchor store of the mall was a place called Champion. Champion calls itself a "supermarché", but it's really sort of a combination of a supermarket and a small discount store like Pamida. It intrigued me, given that restaurant prices were noticeably higher than they were back home, that grocery prices in France were basically about the same as in America. My main purchase was actually in dry goods, where I picked up a velour shirt. It intrigued me that the shirt didn't have any tags given its fiber content or country of origin. I guess they must have different regulations on that sort of thing in the EU than we do in the USA.
Dinner was included each night on this tour. In Paris we ate our dinners at a restaurant just the other side of Rue de Clichy, a short walk from the hotel. The restaurant was strange, and I can't say I cared for it a lot. The walls were plastered with posters of American rock stars, and the place wasn't particularly well lit. They had long dark wood tables with white table cloths and napkins.
We entered the restaurant and were seated as a group, even though we were the only people in the place. There were baskets of bread and carafes of water set on each table, and at each place they had a plate with a tiny bit of salad and a selection of unidentifiable and truly disgusting looking cold cuts. I had visions of the our breakfasts in Russia where we attempted to choke down purple sausage and runny eggs. As an adult supervising students, though, I had to at least make an attempt to eat politely. Unfortunately the cold cuts tasted every bit as unappetizing as they looked. My method for dealing with them was to wash down large bites without chewing using copious amounts of water. Then I would remove the bad taste from my mouth with bread; I'm not sure I've ever eaten so much bread at a single meal before.
All this time I was eyeing Cristina's plate and becoming jealous. Cristina had asked us earlier if anyone in the group was a vegetarian, and her dinner appeared to be a vegetarian selection. She had a lovely salad with assorted greens and tomatoes topped off with a couple of boiled eggs and some grated cheese. I would have far preferred that to congealed mystery meat.
I ate as much of those horrible cold cuts as I could possibly keep down and played with the remainder a bit. What I didn't know as I choked the stuff down was that this was just the appetizer. (It doesn't help that in French the word for appetizer is "entrée"-which means the "opening" or "entrance" to the meal.) They cleared the cold cuts (and I noticed many of the other adults had eaten less than me) and brought out what we in America would call the entrée, which turned out to be roasted chicken with a huge portion of very tasty pasta on the side. That was followed up by a dish of canned fruit cocktail for dessert.
We walked back to the hotel, and I almost literally collapsed. At this point I had been up well over twenty-four hours, and it was definitely time to get some sleep. Unfortunately, though, we had to put up with other tour groups at the hotel. One group arrived to check in just as we were dozing off, and they all talked loudly as they got off the bus. Another came back from an evening of exploring singing loudly as they came up the steps. Finally, though, things quieted down and we could get some much-needed rest.
I was up around 7am. I attempted to shower in the strange hotel tub, meeting with most limited success. Then I headed down to the basement of the hotel (floor "-1" on the elevator buttons) for breakfast. We had the classic continental breakfast: croissants and bread with unsalted butter and jam. I washed that down with bad orange juice and surprisingly weak coffee. Not exactly a great breakfast, but at least it was something in the stomach.
Once everyone was up and had breakfasted we walked en masse back to the Guy Môquet metro station. We made another double transfer and ended up at "Palais Royale-Musée de Louvre", just outside the entrance of the world´s most famous art museum. Even with the transfers, Cristina had majorly overestimated the time it would take to get to the Louvre by metro, and we had nearly forty-five minutes to kill before it was time for our tour. The kids went around exploring the area, while most of us adults just relaxed in the courtyard.
The metro station's name tells you the history of the Louvre. It was originally a fortress-like medieval castle and was then transformed into a royal palace in the 1500s. After the French Revolution toppled the monarchy, the Louvre became a public museum in 1793. It has been periodically enlarged and modernized since then. The most recent addition is an enormous glass pyramid that fills much of the courtyard and basically serves as the main entry lobby. There was a lot of controversy when the pyramid was erected, and I can see why. The stark modern I.M. Pei design is really quite beautiful, but it is completely out of place next to the Renaissance palace. There's a lot of that awkward mix of old and new in Paris, which adds to what I was saying earlier about its not really being a very attractive city. Either the old or the new would look okay on its own, but side by side they fight horribly.
We spent most of our wait fighting off more Middle Eastern trinket vendors, but eventually it was time to go in. We had a very good guided tour where we saw all the "must sees"-paintings like the Mona Lisa and sculptures like the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Nike. We also went down to the basement where we had a fascinating view of the original medieval foundation of the Louvre Castle.
On the way to all the things we were "officially" supposed to see we saw a number of other works of art. One room of sculpture particularly caught my eye. It featured larger-than-life male figures who I suppose were holding clubs, but who looked as if they were gigantic baseball players. I've had baseball on my mind a lot lately, since one of the nicest students I ever taught was drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers last year. The student (Brad Nelson) is playing A-ball in Beloit, Wisconsin this summer, and I've gone over there to watch him play as often as I could. Just before we left for Europe he was selected to play in the Midwest League All-Star Game. These enormous statues reminded me of Brad and made me wonder how he was doing of late.
You could literally spend days at the Louvre. We spent about two and a half hours, and it seemed like ten minutes. The place is truly vast, and we saw only a tiny fraction of what is on display. Sometime I'd like to go back and spend time just wandering around and seeing what else is there.
After seeing the Louvre we took the Metro back to Trocadero and walked back down past the Chaillot Palace to the plaza by the Eiffel Tower. Next on our agenda was a boat ride on the Siene. I can't say this was something I was really looking forward to, but since it was free, I wasn't going to complain. The tour was in a glass-topped boat (which focused the dreadful heat on us, but didn't allow us to get a suntan as we fried). As we sedately cruised along, we could listen on headphones to an audio program in either French, English, Spanish, German, and some Asian language. They combined bad music with superficial commentary about the buildings we passed by. Probably the best part of the boat ride was their €5 souvenir book, which had in one place good pictures of all the monuments in Paris.
We had reservations at the Hard Rock Café for lunch, and by the time the boat ride was over we were already late for our reservations. So what did we do? - Well, basically we just stood around the dock and wasted and incredible amount of time. Cristina asked everyone when they wanted wake-up calls the following morning (why she couldn't have done that at dinner, I don't know). Next there was an endless discussion as to what different people would be doing after lunch. Then, one at a time, several of the girls changed money at an American Express kiosk that was set up next to the dock. When we were already late, it would seem to me they could have borrowed money and paid it back later, but that's not what happened. Cristina kept telling everyone to hurry, yet a lot of the delay was her fault. She also explained that normally she would use her cell phone to call and change the reservation, but her cell phone was from Spain and it was extremely expensive to use in France. (Why she couldn't just go to a phone booth and use a couple coins to make a call, I never could figure out.) At any rate, we were nearly an hour and a half late when we finally got to the Hard Rock Café.
Fortunately the Hard Rock had relatively few customers, so it was not really a problem that we were late. Lunch was definitely an experience, though not really what I'd expect at a Hard Rock Café. It was here that we got our first taste of just how important World Cup soccer is in Europe. Ireland was playing Spain in a World Cup play-off game this afternoon, and they had basically turned the Hard Rock into a sports bar for the occasion. They were playing the game on the big screen TVs where they normally show music videos, and the customers were really getting into every kick of the ball. There was one woman from Ireland who bellowed "IRE - LAAAAAAAAND!!!!!!!!!!!" each time the team from her country made a good move. Probably for no reason other than to spite her, virtually everyone else in the place cheered loudly for Spain. (France had already been eliminated at this point.) While I'm no soccer fan (a fact which put me on the bad side of a couple of the boys from Oskaloosa, who apparently play that sport), I gather from the raucous reactions that this was a good game. It ended in a kick-off (I always thought soccer was one of the few sports where you could tie, but I guess you can't in the World Cup), and Spain's eventual win elicited thunderous approval from everyone but the Irish lady. It was interesting that we were served no food whatsoever while the game was in progress, but once it had ended all the food came quickly. We guessed there must have been a TV on in the kitchen, too.
Here in the capital of France, the center of haute cuisine, I chose to have Tex-Mex for lunch. The fajitas I had were delicious, and the price (€15) was just only slightly more than it would have been at a Hard Rock in America.
The price of the fajitas reminds me of another thing. Both travel books and people who had been to France had warned me ahead of time that France was a very expensive country. That really was not how I found things. Since a euro was virtually the same as a dollar, prices were easy to compare, and in stores most things were about the same as they would be at home. Some sit-down restaurant food was overpriced, as were hotel rooms (the rack rate on the Ambassadeur started at €89) and absolutely anything from a vending machine. It's certainly possible to travel cheaply, though. What's more, all those prices include the God-awful 19.6% value added tax that is assessed on all goods and services sold in France. The tax is already included in the price, rather than added on at the end like we do. When you remove that tax, those fajitas I bought were only about €12.50, which is actually be less than they'd probably go for at home. (Then again, we'd put no more than about 7% tax on them at home, too.) In theory tourists can get the tax refunded, but it's a complex process that you can only do at an airport in France. For the amount of money I spent, it definitely wasn't worth it.
It was nearly 5pm by the time we had finished lunch. Various groups left to do different things for the afternoon. I ended up going with a boy named Jacob, the lone boy in the Cresco group. Having spent most of the day in the historic city center, I decided to go out to the new part of the city, an area called La Defense that is just outside the "peripherique" (the inner beltway), west of the city limits.
The metro station for La Defense is called "Grande Arche". That's because the major point of interest there is La Grande Arche de La Defense, an enormous modern counterpart to the classical arches downtown. It's an enormous marble and stainless steel arch with sleek square sides that stands directly in line with a series of arches that march along the famous Champs Elysées Boulevard. I found it quite a striking work of architecture and engineering. The Grande Arche was built in 1989 to commemorate the bicentennial of the French Revolution. Rather than just a monument, it's actually an office building that houses part of the French bureaucracy.
Actually, pretty much all of La Defense houses the French bureaucracy. While the French president's residence and the parliament buildings are downtown, you for all practical purposes La Defense is where the government of France actually operates (not unlike having a lot of our government in Arlington, Virginia). The whole place is modern office buildings in assorted shapes and sizes. Many of them are quite striking, and in a completely modern setting they look much nicer than the bits of modern architecture that are scattered through the historic city center. It is really weird, though, to have the tallest buildings in the city out on the edge of town.
La Defense is an entirely pedestrian district. You can get there by car, but you have to park in an enormous underground garage. You can also get there by either of the competing metro systems, by commuter train, by city bus, or by long-distance bus. Everything converges at a cavernous underground transportation center beneath the arch. From that plaza you can look in any direction, and you won't see a car anywhere.
We got another taste of World Cup fever here, since one entire skyscraper was completely covered with a picture of a soccer player. Another strange sight was an enormous bronze sculpture that was shaped like a finger. (I joked with Jacob someone was giving us "the finger", though you can't really tell from the sculpture which finger it is.) We also saw a huge glass geodesic dome and an elegant restaurant with a most improbable name: Hippopotamus. My purpose in going to La Defense was to see the Grande Arche, but the whole neighborhood was fascinating to explore.
After a brief walk around La Defense, Jacob and I went back to the metro. Some announcement was made in French as we boarded the train, but I didn't really think anything of it. The train itself, however, was intriguing. While most subway trains are made up of separate cars with two or three doors on a side, each train on this line was just one long car. I really couldn't begin to estimate how long the car was, but it would be the equivalent of at least five or six regular subway cars. I could count a dozen doors on the side, and I know there were more than that. I couldn't see all the way from one end of the car to the other. At various places along the length of the car they had little turntables (like they have on those extra-long buses you see in big cities) that allowed the car to bend in the middle to go around curves.
We made it two stops back toward downtown, and then the train stopped at length in the station with the doors open. They repeated the announcement, and a few people got off the train. Then they repeated it again. While my French is far from perfect (even with cramming on the plane), I managed to catch that there would be a 10 - 15 minute delay due to construction in the tunnel. I passed this information on to Jacob, and we decided we might as well walk-at least until we got tired.
We went upstairs and started walking down the Avenue de la Grande Armée (you really don't have to speak French to figure out what that means). This is basically just the western extension of the Champs Elysées, and it's a pleasant tree-shaded boulevard. Before very long (probably quicker than if we had waited in the stuffy subway), we reached our destination: the Arc de Triomphe.
"Arc de Triomphe" simply means "Arch of Triumph" or "Triumphal Arch". I have a sarcastic guide book (Let's Blow Through Europe) that says Napoleon commissioned the arch to commemorate the French army's victories "back in the days before they needed America to save their sorry butts in every war". While I'm not sure I'd editorialize quite so much, it certainly is noteworthy that the battles all are pre-20th Century.
The Arc de Triomphe looks exactly like a monument in a European city should look. It's grand and-well-monumental. While I liked the Eiffel Tower, I really think the Arc de Triomphe is a more impressive monument. It would certainly be on my "must see" list for Paris, and I'm glad to have taken the time to see it up close.
We had the time, so we decided to climb the steps to the top. It's an endless spiral staircase, and it goes up and up and up. I was just about ready to stop and rest when I realized we were just a few steps from the top. Up at the top you have basically the same view you would have from the Eiffel Tower, the main difference being that you can see the Eiffel Tower from the Arc de Triomphe and vice versa. We looked out over the rooftops of a very geometric, low-rise stone city. Off in the distance we saw La Defense towering over everything else except the Eiffel Tower, which really does tower over everything. It's not an ugly view, but it's definitely not so impressive as say the view of Chicago from the John Hancock Center. Again Paris reminded me of Mexico City; the view was quite similar to what we saw from the top of the Latin American Tower there.
We took the metro back to our hotel (actually getting off at the LaFourche stop, which was slightly closer to the hotel than Guy Môquet). Dinner tonight was at the same restaurant, and it started with the same disgusting cold cut platter. Knowing that something better surely was coming, I ate virtually none of the first offering tonight. Indeed something better did come. We had delicious beef tips on penne pasta, followed by a cheesecake for dessert.
After supper I walked Margaret to the same ATM I had used earlier. She then went back to the hotel, while I went out exploring. I walked up Avenue de Saint-Ouen, past the market and the Champion store I had been to earlier, and then I just kept on walking. Saint-Ouen is a business street, though virtually nothing was open on Sunday. It was interesting to just do a bit of window shopping and people watching, though.
Before long I made it to the Peripherique. I wasn't tired, and I had noticed that the metro ran under this street (since I had periodically passed stations), so I just crossed underneath and kept on walking. Just beyond the beltway I saw signs for "Ibis", "Mercure" and "Formule 1" hotels. I recognized these from having stayed at their American cousin, Motel 6. All of these and several other chains of lodging establishments are owned by the French company Accor. I stay at Motel 6 fairly often. Their directory advertises Formule 1, and I thought it would be interesting to see what the place was like.
The Accor lodging establishments are all built around the same tiny parking lot, about three blocks (and two turns) off the beltway. They were all built in with cheap cement-block construction, each about five stories tall. None of them looked like a really "nice" place to stay. All the windows at the Mercure were closed, but open windows gave away the fact that the Ibis and Formule 1 hotels appeared to had no air conditioning. There was a flyer littered near the parking lot that described the differences in the hotels. Mercure is basically pretty close to an American hotel. (We'd be staying at one later in the trip, so more on that later.) Ibis and Formule 1 each have a similar room design. Accor describes the rooms as sleek and modern; I'd describe them as cramped. It would be like staying in a motorhome. The room features one bed on the floor, with another bed that pulls down from the wall. There is also a sink in the room, but not a stick of furniture other than the bed. The difference between Ibis and Formule 1 is that Ibis also has a microscopic bathroom (again, it would be like a motorhome), while at Formule 1 you have to go down the hall to use the toilet or shower. The Formule 1 in Paris charged €45, Ibis was €70, and Mercure was €95.
I made my way from the hotels back to Avenue Saint-Ouen and then continued northward. Here the neighborhood changed quite noticeably. It was much newer, and everything was very cheaply constructed. It reminded me of public housing projects in America or the communist-built apartments towers we saw all over Russia. The business on the first floors was mostly chain stores-and largely low-end chains at that. For instance, in two different locations I saw "UNIPRIX", which means "one price" and I assume is analogous to the dollar stores we have all over America. There was also an enormous "Carrefour", which looked like a run-down Wal-Mart (without the parking lot). The people here were also different than elsewhere in Paris. The neighborhood was almost exclusively made up of recent immigrants-mostly African, Asian, and Caribbean people, with some non-French-speaking Europeans (I'd guess Greeks, but I'm not sure).
Eventually I got to a fork in the road (Place Garabaldi), and I decided it was time to end my excursion. Not only was it getting late, but I wasn't sure which street the metro would follow at the fork. I stopped briefly at a McDonalds to get something to drink and then took the metro back to the hotel.
Paul and I watched French TV for a while in our hotel room. We hadn't realized it, but today was election day in France. On the news they were giving the election returns and talking with people about their reactions. Apparently the country as a whole voted moderately conservative, while Paris voted for liberal candidates.
The heat and humidity were absolutely oppressive tonight, and it was very difficult to get to sleep. We tossed and turned for much of the night, but eventually we did catch a few winks or rest.
I was up again at 7:00. I gave up on trying to make the microscopic tub work and instead "bathed" with wet wipes-a less than satisfying experience. I had noticed yesterday that the McDonalds at Garabaldi was open for breakfast, and I thought it might be interesting to see what a fast food breakfast was like in the place that invented the continental breakfast. So I went to the metro station and jammed in with the rush hour commuters heading out to the factories on the Peripherique.
The McDonalds at Place Garabaldi opens at 7:30am, and as it happened I was exactly their second customer of the morning. I chose to have the "menu sale", which literally means the "salty meal". For €2.60, I got an Egg McMuffin(r) (more on that in a moment), two potato wedges that would best be described as "home fries", a demitasse of espresso, and what a small cup of freshly squeezed orange juice (they had a juicer behind the counter). Overall that was better value than the breakfast value meals at home. They also had a "menu sucré" ("sweet meal") which basically was continental breakfast (danish, croissant, coffee, and juice) and a "menu Americain" which was the "big breakfast" they serve at McDonalds here (bacon, eggs, and pancakes, plus drinks).
The Egg McMuffin(r) was similar to, but not completely the same as its American counterpart. On a grilled English muffin they had three strips of crisp bacon (instead of the Canadian bacon you get at home) and folded-over scrambled eggs (instead of the circular eggs fried in a form American McDonalds serve). It was really quite good, though, and a number of French people (and immigrants to France) were enjoying the same breakfast as me.
I should mention that McDonalds, like every restaurant in France, offered a choice of hot beverages. In lieu of espresso (café noir), I could have had café au lait, café Americain (weaker coffee, with milk), chocolat, or the anglaise (English tea). One problem the French have is that they automatically sugar almost every hot beverage; you have to learn to say "sans sucre" (without sugar) if you just want black coffee-period. There are hot beverage vending machines all over France, but I soon learned these were not a wise choice, because they automatically sweetened everything with no option for sugar-free.
I stopped at a news kiosk outside McDonalds and picked up one of the Paris papers with information about the election. Newspapers are another thing that is definitely overpriced in France. I paid €1.70 for a small tabloid (similar to the Chicago Sun-Times, which sells for 35¢). I had avoided buying papers over the weekend, because the Sunday editions sold for €4 each.
Paul was getting tired of paying vending machine prices for pop, and he had asked me to pick up some "Coke Light" ("Light" is equivalent to "Diet" in America) at Champion. I stopped by there a little after 8:00. While it didn't seem terribly busy, the doors to the mall were open and the security gate at the front of the Champion store was up. I walked in and started browsing around the store. I had picked up a couple of items when an employee came up to me and explained that the store was "ne pas ouvert"-and that they wouldn't be open until 10am. Why they had things set up so you could just walk in there if they weren't open, I surely don't know.
It was still well before our departure time when I got back to the hotel, so I had a second breakfast in the hotel basement. Then I escorted Jacob down the street to the "fruterie", where he bought some fruit he was planning to eat for lunch. While Jacob would certainly have been perfectly capable of going to the green grocer by himself, the kids were not supposed to go anywhere on their own-a rule which it's probably best to not even stretch a small bit.
We were supposed to leave the hotel around 9:30. The whole group was in the lobby with our luggage by that time, but Cristina was nowhere to be seen. Apparently she was not used to groups actually being on time for departure, so she had told us to be in the lobby well before we actually had to be. We ended up leaving around 10am.
First, though, our bus had to show up to meet us, and watching it arrive was an experience in itself. With parking on both sides, the traffic area on Rue Legendre is quite narrow; in fact the bus from the airport had left us off down the street, rather than attempting to stop right in front of the hotel. There is a stopping area in front of the hotel, but it's sized more for a taxi or two than for a tour bus. Somehow, though, our driver managed to turn into the impossibly small space and parallel park-with the right wheels of the bus on the sidewalk. We got things loaded up quickly and were on our way.
Parking by the hotel was one of many incredible maneuvers that José the driver managed to perform. I honestly can't imagine driving in Paris. My seat was at the front of the bus, and as I looked out the front window it reminded me of one of those driving simulators where every couple of seconds another hazard pops out at you. José described the traffic using the Spanish word "formidable"--which means essentially the same thing in English-and I would certainly second his assessment.
The single thing that makes driving in Paris worst is parking-or perhaps I should say the lack thereof. I'd guess that virtually everyone in Paris today owns a car, though many of them are probably used only for trips out of town. The big problem is that there's nowhere to put all those cars. Everybody in the city lives in apartments. That means they don't have garages, so everyone has to park on the street. There are no lots or ramps near most of the businesses or tourist attractions, either, so again people have to park in the street. There are also no alleys for delivery trucks to use, so they end up double (and even triple) parking while they drop things off. If someone had asked me, I'd suggest they build a bunch of parking ramps all over the city (which I'd find out later is basically what Spain did-and it's what we do in the downtown areas of big American cities). Then I'd ban virtually all on-street parking. That would provide room on the streets so traffic could actually move.
It surprised me a bit that the traffic in Paris was not made up mostly of small cars. The average car size is probably a bit smaller than it is at home, but you see a fare share of SUVs and minivans hogging the road. Not only would I imagine those would be a headache to drive here, but they'd also cost a fortune. Gas prices were pretty uniform all across France, with the cheapest grade running about €1.09 per liter. Most stations had many grades, with the priciest going for €1.49. That works out to anywhere from $4.10 to $5.60 a gallon-which would certainly add up quickly in an SUV.
There are also a fair number of electric cars in France, but they wouldn't be cheap to run either. I passed a service station while walking on Saint-Ouen that recharged electric cars in addition to selling gas. The prices varied (presumably depending on the size of the batteries involved), but they ranged from €30 to €60-which would be pretty comparable with a tank of gas at French prices.
Margaret's co-worker Michelle kept raving about a type of vehicle called the "smart car". Made by Mercedes, these are hybrid gas/electric cars, sort of like the Hondas you hear about that get 75 mpg. While Michelle found them cute, I thought the boxy things were ugly as sin. They essentially seat two (there's a back seat, but it would make my Metro look spacious), and there's virtually no storage space. The big feature they have is that the wheels can turn to full right angles, which makes parking in impossibly small spaces more possible. If I lived here, it probably is the car I'd drive, but honestly I'm glad I don't live here.
As we started off on our city tour it fascinated me that many things were still not open at 10am. I guess a lot of Parisians just aren't morning people. ... And that 24/7 concept has definitely not caught on here.
We started our city tour by driving through Montmartre, stopping briefly by a historic train station that apparently is featured in a famous Monet painting. (I must confess, I don't know that particular work of art.) We saw the Paris Opera (as in Phantom of the ...) and the Vendome quarter with its famous church. As we passed, I couldn't help but think of a simple song we learned in high school French class years ago:
Orleans, Beaugency
Notre Dame de Paris
Vendome, Vendome!
The words are simply names of famous churches in France. The song is a round, and when sung together it's supposed to approximate the sound of church bells ringing-really quite pretty.
We made our way downtown where we again saw the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, and the "great perspective" of the arches along the Champs Elysées. Here the local guide told us that the boulevard is the location of almost every parade in Paris. Apparently just yesterday Paris' large Senagalese community had staged a parade celebrating their country's World Cup victory.
We crossed to the Rive Gauche, the artsy left bank of the Siene. There we saw the house where Voltaire died. That intrigued me, because I always mention Voltaire in my Math V class. In Candide he parodies one of the creators of calculus, Gottfried von Leibniz, through the incurable optimist Dr. Pangloss and his "best of all possible worlds".
Anne Marie, our local guide, spoke French and English, while our driver spoke mostly Spanish. The guide would give directions to Cristina in French, who would then translate to Spanish for José. The time it took to make the translation led to some rather abrupt turns, but we always seemed to get where we were supposed to.
We went past the National Assembly, where we learned that there are 577 deputies that were elected yesterday. We passed Les Invalides, which is so named because it was originally a military hospital and the gold dome of Napoleon's chapel. We then stopped at the Ecole Militare de la Republique (National Military Academy), which almost sixty years later is still pocked with bullet holes left by the Nazis.
In a plaza across the street from the military academy is the Millennium Peace Monument, which features the word "peace" etched in glass in virtually every language known to man. It was probably a lovely monument when it was erected, but just a year and a half after the millennium large panels are sitting shattered on the ground-perhaps a not so subtle comment on the state of peace in our world.
We went right past the tunnel where Lady Diana died-perhaps not the sort of place that should be a tourist attraction, but I gawked along with everyone else. We then drove right down the Champs Elysées and on to Place de La Concorde, which features an ancient gold-tipped obelisk that was given to France by the Republic of Egypt for their help in saving antiquities when the Aswan dam was constructed. Just beyond the plaza is Pont de la Concorde, a bridge that was built with the ruins that were left after the storming of the Bastille. We also saw the formal Tuillerie Gardens and the Pont Neuf ("New Bridge", which was built by the Romans and is actually the oldest bridge in Paris)
The guide explained to us that the original inhabitants of Paris were Celtic people. They were known as the Parisee, which supposedly means "people living with their feet in the water" because they built their homes right along the banks of the Siene. The Roman name for the city was Latecia, but it gradually came to be known by the name of those early inhabitants. On a side note, the guide explained something I had never known, but that makes perfect sense: Hungary was so-named because the Huns came from that direction.
We stopped in the middle of St. Louis Island and got out to see our principal destination of the day, the Cathedral of Notre Dame. There are, of course, many cathedrals of "notre dame" (which just means "our lady" in French), but the one in Paris is the Notre Dame. ("Dame", by the way, rhymes with "mom"-not "name".) For me the most beautiful feature of Notre Dame was its windows. The sun shone through the stained glass while we were there, and the effect was truly gorgeous. Beyond that, it's hard to really do justice to the cathedral in words, so hopefully it will suffice to say it was both interesting and beautiful.
It was about 1pm when we left Notre Dame. We left via the Latin Quarter, where the famous Sorbonne University is located. Here we passed a historic church named Saint-Jacques, and it intrigued me that this was the same saint who in Spanish is known as Santiago-Saint James, whose shrine in northwest Spain was the site of pilgrimages in the Middle Ages.
Our local guide got off at a gas station right next to the Perepherique. She said she would be taking the metro home, but I didn't see a metro station anywhere near there. Presumably she knew where one was. Then we set out southward on the "autoroute" (interstate). For about half an hour we passed one industrial park (aire industriale) after another. Then we finally left Paris behind, traffic thinned out, and we drove through farmland for most of the day.
While the landscape was almost totally rural, we were certainly never far from gas or food on the autoroute. About every 25 km (every 15 miles or so), we'd pass an "aire". "Aire" literally means "surface" in French, though here it would basically translate "area". Some of these were similar to the rest areas you'd find on interstates here, others were like the service areas you see on toll roads, and others were even more complex-with gas, shopping, restaurants, and even a motel all in one pull-off. Instead of the exit business you see along expressways here, they tend to put businesses into these "aires".
"Aire" by the way is pronounced like the thing you breathe-air. That isn't how either José or Cristina said the word, though. They pronounced it like the Spanish word for air-EYED-ray. After hearing them, every time the signs for an "air" would come up, the picture of a huge oxygen tent would come to my mind.
We had lunch at Aire d'Orelans (air-door-lay-own), the "air" just outside the city of old Orleans. The restaurant concession at every aire in France appears to be owned by a company called L'Arche (which made me think of McDonalds, but apparently has nothing to do with it). This particular L'Arche had a formal sit-down restaurant, a counter-service place where you could get sandwiches and salads, and a cafeteria. Cafeterias seem to be very popular in Europe. I think the last time I ate in one in America was at Bishops in Cedar Falls-and I think that whole chain has gone out of business. They've really been replaced by the "all-you-can-eat buffet". Old-fashioned cafeterias were certainly everywhere in Europe, though. All the service areas had them, and I also saw them in several cities. I'm not really sure I see what the attraction is, but they really seem to go for it here.
The L'Arche cafeteria was not cheap. Most things were priced a la carte, and the prices added up quickly. Any full meal purchased a la carte would total at least €15, and it would not be hard to exceed €20. They also had a "menu saveur", which we took to calling the "saver menu" though it really would be the "savory" or "flavorful" menu. For around €11 the menu saveur included a main course (basically ham or chicken), a vegetable (green beans, rice, or something unrecognizable), a bun, and a dessert. Drinks were extra, and they added a minimum of €2 (and easily as much as €4) to the bill. Salad was also extra, with prices from €3 to €5. We could have eaten somewhat more cheaply at the counter service place, but even that would have been around €10.
Part of the point of all those "aires" is that the French have very strict laws on how long truck or bus drivers can go without resting. While in America drivers are supposed to keep a log of their on and off time, it's very easy to fudge those and lots of truckers drive for hours on end without a rest. José's bus had an electronic device that was almost like an airplane's black box and made a line graph on a cardboard disk showing exactly when, how long, and how fast he drove. I never did figure out exactly what the French law did say, but given our stops it was certainly less than three hours-and my bet is two hours is the maximum they could go without resting. The typical length of rest appears to be 45 minutes, and stopping that long every couple of hours means you can't travel nearly as far in a day as truckers do in America.
Trucks are the largest part of the traffic on the autoroute. The overall percentage of trucks is definitely higher than you find even on a rural interstate at home. It's interesting, too, that virtually all European trucks are the kind with fabric sides, rather than having metal sides like most American trucks do. The majority of American semi trailers actually hold interchangeable cargo containers that can be shipped by rail, sea, or highway. Those don't seem to exist at all in Europe. Even with fabric sides, though, the trucks are big. It's pretty much all semis you see on the autoroute. When they get to their destination, they stop in an industrial park on the edge of town and transfer their load to small trucks and delivery vans for the remainder of the journey.
Trucks drive slower than cars in Europe, and with those electronic monitors, it's easy to enforce the speed regulations. Every commercial vehicle has a series of white circles slapped on the back, next to the license plate. In each circle is a number that tells how fast the vehicle is allowed to go on different kinds of highway. The car speed on the autoroute is 130 km/h (about 80 mph), but most trucks are only allowed to go 100 km/h (about 60 mph). On side roads, which are universally bad throughout Europe, the maximum allowed speed for trucks can be as low as 60 km/h (less than 40 mph). That variation in speed means cars are forever passing trucks, and it surprises me more accidents don't happen in the process.
The autoroutes are another thing that is similar to, but not quite the same as an American interstate. They are four-lane limited-access highways, but they are built on far less land than equivalent highways in the States. Where we would have a median wider than either half of the highway, the medians in Europe are a yard wide at most. There's always a metal divider in the median, and usually the area is also planted with flowers or flowering bushes.
European signs are also different than ours, and I must say I prefer the American system. I remember learning in driver's ed how shape and color communicate meaning on a sign. There's a lot less of that in Europe, where all the signs tend to be red and circular. I'd have expected fewer words on signs in a place where so many languages are used. There are a lot of pictures, but there was also an amazing amount of French words that you either had to know or figure out from context. There's also an odd signage convention in Europe that assumes that anything that begins must also end. Whenever a special zone (such as a reduced speed) ends, you will see a sign with a grey "ghost" image of the warning, with a slash through it. There are even signs at the end of city limits that will have "PARIS" with a slash through it, indicating that you are leaving the city. That really seems a bit excessive to me, and I kept wanting to make such signs mean "NO PARIS" or "DOWN WITH PARIS" in my mind.
What they could use more of is directional signs. In our country we drive mostly by highway number and direction. If someone wanted to get to downtown Algona from the east, I'd tell them to take highway 18 west until they reached the junction with highway 169. They'd then turn left and follow 169 south. While in theory highways have numbers in Europe, those numbers seem irrelevant. Signs at exits on the autoroute usually just have the name of the town that is nearest the exit. Where autoroutes interchange, it is destinations like "PARIS" or "BORDEAUX" (actually "BORDX" on signs) you see on the signs-not numbers or directions. If you want to go somewhere short of the destinations, you've got to know where you're going. Secondary roads often intersect at traffic circles, and there are tiny signs shaped like arrows in the middle of the traffic circle that tells you what town is in what direction. Again, though, the place you want to go might or might not be listed.
There are no billboards in rural France. In the cities they have rotating billboards, similar those rotating ads you see in big league stadiums. Out in the country, though, there is no advertising whatsoever. There is one strange kind of sign that looks like a billboard, though. When a point of historical interest is at the next exit, they have enormous brown signs painted with a silhouette of whatever the point of interest is. There are no words; you're just supposed to know from the outline what the castle or cathedral or whatever might be.
The autoroutes are toll roads, and the tolls are steep!!! We stopped at our first toll booth between Orleans and Tours-probably about 150 miles outside of Paris. I have no idea what the bus paid for toll, because José put it on a credit card. I do know that for cars the toll is €18.40. By comparison, you can cross the entire state of Indiana on for $4.35, and on I-88 in Illinois it costs $3.00 to get from Moline to Chicago. Both of those distances would be pretty equivalent to what we drove today.
Just a little ways north of Tours (pronounced "toor") the bucolic countryside was broken by the sight of a nuclear power plant. I pondered the fact that the flat, agricultural French landscape looked remarkably like Illinois and wondered if there was a connection in the fact that Illinois has more nuclear power plants than any other state and France uses more atomic energy than anywhere else in Europe.
We made it to Tours, but it would be quite some time before we got to our hotel. The problem was that both José and Cristina were from Spain, and neither of them had ever been to Tours before. They had directions on how to get to the hotel, but those directions were sketchy at best. Pair that with the poor signage found on French highways (we took an exit that said "Tours-Sud"-the southern part of Tours, but in fact there were four different exits that said exactly the same thing), and we got hopelessly lost very quickly. In some ways it was kind of nice to be driving aimlessly around Tours, though. It's really a lovely city. Most of the place (which is one of the largest university towns in France) is quite new, and it features broad boulevards planted with flowers all the way. There are tree-filled parks and sidewalk cafes; it really looks as if it would be a nice place to live.
We could have called for directions, but again Cristina didn't want to use her Spanish cell phone in France. We stopped twice at gas stations, but they didn't have any clue where the thing was. Eventually we got to a traffic circle that was shown on the map that came with Cristina's directions. There was even a little sign for the hotel in the middle of the traffic circle. Unfortunately the road that led to the hotel had a height restriction, complete with a big bar across the road keeping anything but a car from going through. We rounded the traffic circle a couple of times as Cristina and José discussed what they should do. Finally we crossed the expressway and pulled into the parking lot of a hotel on the other side. The hotel advertised that they had "self check-in" (AUTO ACCUEIL) from a vending machine instead of a staffed desk, and I held out little hope that we'd find anyone to help us there. Fortunately, though, there was a janitor on duty who was able to give José directions to the back entrance of the hotel we were going to. He backed the bus out of the long entrance to the one hotel, rounded another mess of traffic circles, went from one exit to the next on the expressway, and then was greeted by another big bar blocking access. This one, however, had a box beside it where you could push a button to raise the bar. José did this, and finally we arrived at our destination.
Our hotel was part of the Mercure chain I wrote about earlier, and it was really a lovely hotel. Except that it had single beds instead of doubles or queens and that it had a bidet, it was similar to any mid-range hotel in America. Perhaps best of all, it was air conditioned. After sweltering in Paris, I knew I'd get a good night's sleep here.
After freshening up a bit I did what I always do when I travel--I went out walking. The immediate area around the hotel didn't look too promising. From our room we had a lovely view of a Michelin tire factory on the other side of the expressway. There really didn't seem to be any other business, or anything at all for that matter, close to the hotel.
I walked first down the road that led to that traffic circle where they had the height limit. The road led through a pleasant wooded park, but there was no reason whatsoever for having a height restriction. The trees shaded the road, but they were well above the height of our bus.
The background music on this page is the French folk song "Au Claire de la Lune".