Qui est la derniere?

The last time I was in Paris was around 4 years ago and was in the summer months at the end of an epic 5 week backpacking trip around europe with a fantastic group of friends. I left after five days telling anyone who would listen about how amazing Paris was and how I couldn't wait to go back and explore more of it.

This time I came prepared. I arrived armed with armed with some newly acquired french language skills, research on Paris, and grandiose plans of all the things we would pack in this week. But of course life always likes to prove you wrong and Paris quickly put me in my place and made for a thoroughly unplanned but memorable week.

As I took the train up from Montpellier I looked out the window and saw this... snow and frost! A rude awakening that I am no longer in the Mediterranean anymore. This was just the first of many adjustments I would have to make this week.

 Christmas in Paris is INSANE. absolutely INSANE. It is physically impossible to go to any of the landmarks without an INSANE amount of people clogging the metros, forming INSANELY large line ups and just generally being INSANE everywhere. Are you getting the picture? Aside from the INSANE amount of tourists who pack into Paris for the holidays the regular pace of Paris is just a little bit more frantic than I was accustomed to.  Everything seemed to happen at a rushed pace. People walk fast. Talk fast. Eat fast. No more meals spread out over 8 hours, we were in and out of restaurants in less than half an hour sometimes. I found myself missing the laid back lifestyle of southern France.

INSANE Parisian traffic

The stairs up to Sacre Coeur - yes, there are stairs under all those people

It was also a bit of an adjustment to go from Montpellier's 4 tram line system to Paris's complicated Metro system. They say that in Paris you are never more than 500 meters away from a metro station. Which seems like it should make it easy to get around however every time you want to get on a metro, connect between metros etc. you are doing on average 4-6 flights of stairs. Add in one or two extra connections a day for when you take the wrong train or go the wrong direction and it begins to add up.

Paris blocks are a far cry from the narrow windy streets in Montpellier, in fact they are more like  Vegas blocks... LONG. I looked up many a location on my phone on google maps and thought oh it doesn't look very far. Its only 3,4,5 blocks. Just a quick little walk. Or not. With big buildings comes big blocks and lots of walking to get in between.

To sum up,  I basically tried to kill my grandmother on our first couple days in Paris with a whole lot of stairs and a whole lot of walking. But we got it figured out eventually even if it meant taking a taxi or two on occasion.

With overwhelming amounts of tourists comes overwhelming amounts of tourist stupidity. When did it become obligatory to take photos where you attempt to line up your finger as if you are  touching a large landmark. Everywhere we went we found people standing on ledges, boxes etc with their arm outstretched trying to line up the perfect picture. And thus a new form of amusement was born... pointing to the pointers. Fair warning this is a dangerous activity to partake in as the pointers have little to no self awareness and will hit you in the face with their outstretched arm if you happen to be inside their bubble. Undertake at your own risk.

The Eiffel Tour glittering at night is one
of the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

In all my travels thus far I have avoided Big bus, hop on hop off buses, double decker buses, etc.  But on this trip we became those tourists as we toured around the city to see the nighttime illuminations. It was admittedly nice to be able to relax and enjoy the sights from the comfort of a nice warm bus. There was also some interesting information given out on the little head phones. Like if you ever wondered why there was a giant Egyptian Obelisk in the middle of the Place de Concorde apparently it was gifted to the Parisians by an Egyptian Pharoah. Indecisive about where to put it they eventually decided to try and bring some joy/distraction to the place where they beheaded a few dozen (hundred) people during the French Revolution (including Marie Antoinette).

Hotel Invalides

The Seine River 

Starbucks in hand, feeling the joy of the Obelisk

And while most people come to Paris to take advantage of its 170+ museums, fancy art, high fashion, gastronmy etc. we were amused by slightly less cultured things. A good part of one day was spent retracing a few of the steps of Jason Bourne. Since Mom has watched the Bourne trilogy waaayyyyy too many times we had to take a few obligatory pictures in some of the filming locations.

We did take advantage of some of the fashion in Paris. It was just the fashion in our price range. I introduced Mom to Primark. We headed there on Dec 26, but sadly boxing day doesn't really mean a whole lot in terms of sales here in Europe. However Primark is always cheap and always busy. It was craziness inside but being a seasoned Primarker now after my stint in Berlin I was able to do my best work and apply myself to some serious shopping. Mom was a little bit in culture shock and might need to return to Primark again in the future now that she is mentally prepared to deal with the  crowds and chaos inside. Despite the ridiculous amounts of people inside Primark really is a well oiled machine. They had at least 40 employees running cash machines and another 40 or so running the change rooms and organizing the floor. All the lines, whether to pay or to try things on, move very fast and they have employees stationed throughout with signs telling you the line is 10 minutes from this point, 5 minutes from this point etc.

On sunday we headed up to Normandy for 2 days for some time away from the hustle and bustle of Paris. The small sleepy town of Bayeux was certainly a complete contrast to the chaos that is Paris at Christmas. However it was almost a little too quiet in the winter off season as we had trouble finding places to eat as many restaurants were closed, not cooking food or only open in brief two hour windows. Creperies seemed to be the only thing consistently open when we needed food. Sadly we had to eat a lot of delicious nutella, salted caramel, chocolate banana, sugar and butter etc. Tough life.

The real reason of going up to Bayeux was to go on the tour of the landing beaches.  I had already done the tour of Juno beach a couple of years ago but it was  cool to experience it again with my Grandmother who lived through the war and had brothers and other relatives who fought for our country. Unfortunately it was also literally very cool since we were going during the winter this time. 

We lucked out and had a beautiful sunny day but the temperature was hovering around 0 degrees and out on the coast there was a whole lot of wind. However it is hard to complain about being cold when you are standing on the landing beaches where courageous men fought and died. Or when you are walking through cemeteries where thousands of young Canadians are buried. When you visit Juno beach in the summer it is colorful, warm and full of beach goers and tourists alike. Visiting in the winter offers a sea of contrast with isolated beaches and dimmer horizons. I am not really sure which is more appropriate the bleak winter scene for remembering the loss of life and sacrifice or the vibrant summer vibe which celebrates the freedom that the soldiers died to achieve.

August 2011	December 2014
Lots of flowers	One lone flower
Tranquil water…	Big waves!

One of the things that made the biggest impression on me throughout the tour of Juno beach and the surrounding area was this wall of remembrance. 

13.5 hours... and as you can see the names aren't exactly scrolling slowly

70th anniversary of the D-Day landings this year

We also checked out the Bayeux tapestry. The audio guide featured a very entertaining commentary that illustrated the story that is portrayed on the 70 meter ancient tapestry. Let me sum it up. Harold from England sails over to Normandy. He promises allegiance to the Normand King William but then reneges on his word. Wilhelm is pissed and attacks. Harold gets an arrow in the eye and lots of people die. Wilhelm wins. Oscar worthy no? I might have glossed over a few of the finer details. Halley's comet makes an appearance in there somewhere, horses do headstands at one point, and the narration  priests carry maces instead of swords because they are only allowed to "knock people senseless". 

the bishop with his mace

headless people everywhere and rivers of blood
  the tapestry was not exactly  for the faint hearted

You would think they make a commission with
all the stuff they insist you need. 

Rather than exploring the Louvre or other cultural exhibits we got an unexpected, up close tour of the french medical system on our week in Paris. Now I am not allowed to say who needed to go to the doctor, as she who must not be named has serious paranoia issues with social media. The person in question might decide to wear a tin foil hat soon despite my reassurances that people on the internet couldn't really care less about her.  Anyways, After doing the pharmacy tour in Paris, and then in Bayeux and then in Paris again where pharmacists are happy to ply you with everything from hard core drugs to homeopathic remedies, we decided that real antibiotics were necessary.


 Of course that necessitated finding a doctor in the middle of the week where the doctors just happened to be on strike.  Luckily we were in a part of town that the doctors were working on that specific day but that didn't make it any less of a challenge. Doctors offices in France don't exactly run like Doctors officers in Vancouver. They often don't have receptionist there to organize things and answer questions that you might have. The first doctor's office we were sent to had a white board instead of a receptionist where you added your name to the list of patients waiting to be seen. While an effective system of keeping order, it easily enabled the doctor to see that we were not one of her normal patients and we were promptly kicked out.  Apparently she was not taking new, non french patients today.  After our walk of shame out of the office we were directed to another office where we arrived at 2:30 only to be informed by other waiting patients that the doctor would not arrive until 4:00 (which in french time actually ended up being around 4:45). This office lacked the efficiency of a whiteboard system and  was instead governed by the unwritten norms that each new arrival demanded "qui est la derniere?'(who is the last person) and made a mental note to follow that person. While this may seems like an iron clad system of efficiency, it was further complicated by having two different doctors in which to line up for, place saving with briefcases, quite a bit of ethnic diversity, oh and the fact that we didn't speak the same language as everyone. During the 2 hour wait for the doctor to arrive we witnessed several full on shouting matches between people disputing the order as the office slowly became fuller and fuller until there was standing room only and a whole lot of coughing and sneezing.  While we were near the front of the line we were not so confident in our ability to argue our place and things looked bleak. Thankfully a 6 foot 7, guardian angel took pity on the foreigners and came to our rescue, arguing our place in line, boxing out some pushy line cutters and getting us in second to see the doctor when he finally arrived. 10 minutes later we were on our way with 4 different prescriptions,  some very entertaining memories and a whole hell of a lot of germs to remember the experience by.

Standing by the door to hold our place in line

Our guardian angel, the organizer of the waiting room. 

At the end of 10 days in Paris with my Mom and Grandma, we didn't really hit as many museums, landmarks, etc. as I was planning. We didnt go out for as many fancy meals or explore as many areas in paris as I had forseen. We did however spend a ton of quality time together and explored some rather off the beaten path things. I mean how many tourists get to say they have seen the inside of several different pharmacies and doctors offices in the in the Bagnolet area of Paris. Who is to say what is more authentically Parisian, sitting at a tourist Cafe eating macaroons or sitting in an office with Parisians and complaining about how late the doctor is?

The winnings for our card games

We also ate some good home cooked food, drank a lot of wine, played a lot of cards and spent many a night laughing until our sides hurt. Case and point we introduced Grandma to the game of heads up for the first time. Naturally hilarity ensued, but sadly for you all I have been forbidden from sharing the footage. I will howver accept bribes in person to for viewings the next time I see you.  Trust me it is worth it.

I am confident that the remaining museums and landmarks will still be there when I finally get around to seeing them but I couldn't have asked for a better week in Paris with my family. For my mom and Grandma it is back to Vancouver tomorrow while I will be picking up Cory and Dad for what I have titled our Epic Roadtrip. Aka we will be renting a car and attempting to drive ourselves around northern france, belgium, netherlands, germany, poland and Czech republic for 2 weeks with very few set  plans. On to the next adventure.

Somebody doesn't want to leave Paris