Paris - I won't be going back

[Blinky]

Sitting in a little cafe opposite the Sorbonne. Breakfast of outstanding croissants and tea for two 20 euros. Perfect!
Only in Paris.
Now a walk along the left bank to the effiel tower.
C'est le vie

Yup, no place like it. And if it's raining, you have those sublime museums and galleries. I'd go back in a heartbeat.

 

[Skyring]

I took my wife up the Eiffel Tower - so I could kiss her on top - and was amused at the French version of security. In the queue for the lifts, everyone had to go through a checkpoint to be scanned by a chap with a handheld metal detector. "Beep-beep-beep!" it went for just about everyone. And everyone was gailly and Gallicly waved through regardless.

 

[jetlagger]

I took my wife up the Eiffel Tower - so I could kiss her on top - and was amused at the French version of security. In the queue for the lifts, everyone had to go through a checkpoint to be scanned by a chap with a handheld metal detector. "Beep-beep-beep!" it went for just about everyone. And everyone was gailly and Gallicly waved through regardless.

A requited French love for you & everyone's donation at the entrance..

 

[Pushka]

Aren't croissants in France the best?

 

[Blinky]

I took my wife up the Eiffel Tower - so I could kiss her on top - and was amused at the French version of security. In the queue for the lifts, everyone had to go through a checkpoint to be scanned by a chap with a handheld metal detector. "Beep-beep-beep!" it went for just about everyone. And everyone was gailly and Gallicly waved through regardless.

My wife always wanted to go to the top of La Tour. In early April we had lunch at the Michelin-starred Le Jules Verne, half way up. The experience was beyond belief, but when I said "okay, let's catch the lift to the top" she declined. Why? Well, the menu matched sublime food with equally sublime wine. My dear wife is not much of a wine drinker at all, and was a bit tipsy, so didn't want to embarrass herself by staggering around at the top.

A fantastic experience anyway.

 

[Pushka]

The view from the very top is just amazing.

 

[ComeFlyWithMe]

C'est Bon! I'm going back in September, and really having the French experience, flying AF! Wish me luck! I did get a good deal at $5.5k in J, QF SYD-HKG, AF HKG-CDG-FCO and vis-a-vis.

 

[Pollywaffle]

The view from the very top is just amazing. View attachment 15785

Fantastic!

The Ciel de Paris restaurant in the Montparnasse Tower is another great place to eat with a view.

 

[JohnK]

Ring scam: someone "finds" a gold ring and approaches you to say you lost your ring. As a reward for "finding" the ring for you, they want you to give them money. Frankly, if people weren't greedy there would be no scam.

OK. Still do not get the scam. I do not wear a ring. So they try to tell me they "found" my ring and want me to reward them? Is the ring a fake or is it stolen?

Survey scam: Sign a petition for some obscure cause. You are then pressed to give a donation &/or someone tries to pick your pocket as there is usually a group of people trying to surround you.

Gypsies?

In both cases if you ignore them and just walk on, no one will bother you. It's when people engage with them that issues may arise.

Good advice to ignore them and move on....

 

[Skyring]

OK. Still do not get the scam. I do not wear a ring. So they try to tell me they "found" my ring and want me to reward them? Is the ring a fake or is it stolen?

It looks like a gold ring but it isn't. There must be some factory in China producing tonnes of the things - they all look the same.

I imagine that there are variations played, depending on the reaction of the mark, but for me the young lady, obviously poverty-stricken, suddenly bent down, "found" a gold ring, looked around, saw me and asked if it were mine.

Obviously not, but if I were to keep it, then I might be tempted to respond to her subsequent request for money to buy some cheese for the babies. Why not? I've just scored a valuable gold ring and this poor woman looks hungry. Chuck her a few Euro. Besides, if I don't pay up, she might start yelling for a gendarme. Who knows? i'm a stranger here. I don't want trouble.

The internet is full of gold ring stories, some of them quite funny.

 

[Skyring]

I love Paris. It's a central city without skyscrapers, with long vistas full of impressive buildings. It's the glorious avenues of apartments, not too high, each a facade of balconies, ornamentation, window gardens, cats and old ladies. Shops at street level, quirky and independent.

The maze of lanes in the Latin Quarter, the bookshops, the pastrycooks, the piano shops; all fascinating, all delicious to various senses.

A gallery in the Louvre, the ceiling eighty feet above the floor, the awe as you look up.

The young woman buzzing along on a Vespa, hair escaping her pink helmet, but not a molecule out of place. She is elegance, joy and love.

The cars "touch-parked" along a rue. The flower sellers, the book barrows, the four monks in blue robes whose voices filled the whole interior of Notre Dame with Gregorian chanting.

The jaw-dropping hurley-burley of the traffic around the Arc de Triomphe. The soaring excitement of le tour Eiffel, the sublime feeling of afternoon coffee under dappled shade in the Tuileries, the most expensive brownie in the world at midnight on Sunday on the Boulevard St-Germain.

A man strolling back to his apartment, a baguette with the end bitten off poking out of a long paper bag. A swarm of schoolchildren, each cuter than the last. A pair of lovers entwined on a bench.

The grand buildings, the people who live beside them, the utter movie magic of the whole experience with a hundred icons ready to leap out of an alley and burst into song. We may never have been to Paris, may not speak a word of French, but we know the place from books and movies and songs.


My Mona Lisa by skyring, on Flickr

 

[Pushka]

Yes JohnK that's how it works. In both situations. The ring is really shiny too. The more it happened the more we laughed. The petition thing is usually done by girls at the front of Eiffel Tower where there is great confusion due to crowds of tourists. They will only ask "English looking" people to participate. Just have a laugh and move on. We never felt physically at risk and always moved a little separate from the crowds (except at Louvre and Tower where that's impossible). We used the excellent subway to get us around.

 

[Pushka]

My Mona moment.

Could not get closer than five rows from the front.

 

[OATEK]

My Mona moment.

Could not get closer than five rows from the front.

That's why the Musee d'Orsay is such a great place to visit!

 

[albatross710]

Aren't croissants in France the best?

I'm going to have to agree. In Australia many of the bakery items here are created 'fresh' from a frozen preparation.

In France I think they would all be produced fresh each day.

 

[JohnK]

Yes JohnK that's how it works. In both situations. The ring is really shiny too. The more it happened the more we laughed. The petition thing is usually done by girls at the front of Eiffel Tower where there is great confusion due to crowds of tourists.

I am lucky in that I do not get scammed by strangers.

I only get scammed after I have known someone for at least a day and then end up losing heaps from the scam.

 

[turtlemichael]

I'm going to have to agree. In Australia many of the bakery items here are created 'fresh' from a frozen preparation.

In France I think they would all be produced fresh each day.

In the city most boulangeries will be baking bread crosissants cakes etc near continuously from very early morning to afternoon. The smell...... . Roll on our 6 weeks in 75011 starting in 81 days, not that I
am counting

 

[Pollywaffle]

In the city most boulangeries will be baking bread crosissants cakes etc near continuously from very early morning to afternoon. The smell...... . Roll on our 6 weeks in 75011 starting in 81 days, not that I
am counting

Of course not.

 

[Pollywaffle]

OK. Still do not get the scam. I do not wear a ring. So they try to tell me they "found" my ring and want me to reward them? Is the ring a fake or is it stolen?

Usually cheap gold plated tin things. The scam appeals to people's greed: "Oh, look this foolish person really thinks it's our ring. Let's give her some money and cash in by selling it later" or they feel sorry/threatened by the person and give them money to help or to get them to go away.

Gypsies?

For the most part, yes.


Good advice to ignore them and move on....

The one good thing about travelling solo and having a European background is I am more likely to fit in with the crowd and normally walk on by without being bothered.

 

[infinity]

New day in Paris. Walked the left bank and +1 and I write our love note on a padlock and looked it on the bridge across the Seine (along with a million other padlocks and there love devotions) just near the Louvre. Walked to the Eiffel Tower walked to level two then lift to the top. Amazing!!
Snuck in a kiss with +1 then Metro to Montmatre.
Lost in a four hour lunch in some tiny back alley.
Made it home by eleven well and truly " vin rouged!"

New day and croissant near Jardin de Luxemburg and a quick walk to dust off the brain
A two hour viewing at Le Louvre. The Mona is still there
Long lunch now with steak and gritted near Le Opera. A walk up the Champs de Élysées
And yes. Who through that Bordeaux on my lunch table!
Yep. Paris really does suck

Will get out of here tomorrow and head to Champagne via Versailles