Saturday in Paris

Saturday 10th July:

Paris in a summer heatwave is an experience for any tourist especially as the air sits hot and oppressive on the streets, in the restaurants and the hostel rooms waiting for that never coming breeze.

We had our first night of a Paris summer evening last night, spending it, drenched in sweat, in our hostel room to the sounds of excited German school children on a holiday trip chattering the evening away along the corridor where the only semblance of a breeze existed.

We eventually drifted off to wake to another heat wave warning, blue skied day.

Today was market day. Joy had read about Paris’ largest flea market - Marche aux Puces de St. Ouen at Porte de Clignancourt - with 2500 stalls selling everything you didn’t know you wanted from shesha pipes, not so discreetly sold in Bob Marley coloured wrapping paper with none of the arabic flavoured tobacco we smelt and saw in Doha, to ethnic clothing from all parts of the old French empire, to leather gear for any purpose and cell phones that have their carrier locks broken along with antiques to furnish your apartment in any period you could wish from Louis XVI through to 1920’s art noveaux and 1940-50s kitsch.

We headed off there and spent the morning roaming the streets and alley-ways that make up the market where I ended up buying a solid leather satchel and a pair of shoes for 75 euros. Like I said I didn’t know I wanted them until I saw them.

Sufficiently shopped out we headed towards Mont Matre and the tourist art trap that is the old village above Pigalle and Blanche, the music-hall area made famous by Toulouse LaTrouec in the late 19th century.

We wove our way through the crowds, evading scissor wielding portrait cutters, waiters huckstering for trade and rapid portraitists, admiring the commercial audacity of the place along with the history that the area is known for then headed back down the hill to Abbesses and the bustle of the seedy shopping centre that runs along the foot of the hill. Finding little of interest, we Metro stop jumped across the city back to the Hostel and the pleasure of a bottle of St Germain Merlot, a roundel of brie, salami and a selection of fruit.

This brings me to a question: “Why is it that at home, in N.Z., the fruit we buy is hard, small in size, lacking in juices and aroma?” For every nectarine, apricot or peach Joy and I have eaten here is large, edibly soft, seemingly dripping with juices and aromatically inviting. I can only presume that N.Z. picks its fruit early to allow it to ripen while being shipped thus leaving the N.Z. consumer little choice but to buy the small, juiceless, aromatically lacking, hard export rejects.

However, it is hard to beat the sheer luxury of eating and drinking while watching the passing parade and enjoying the scenery of Paris.

Paris Return

Friday 9th July - Paris

Back to Paris for three more days before the long haul trip to winter.
We booked into the Youth Hostel Leo Lagrange in Clichy for the remainder of our time in France so trained from Rouen to Paris in the morning and arrived to a 32c Paris afternoon and a two hour wait till we could dump our bags in our room, shower and prepare ourselves to spend the evening wandering the streets of the city.

In our travels we’ve used Youth Hostels in many parts of the world, usually with a great deal of satisfaction and pleasure. Our worst experience being Brisbane which had the feeling of being run down even while it was being renovated while our most pleasant have been in England and Austria. The French hostels we’ve used this time around have been variable. From the well run, well maintained and managed Rouen F.U.A.J.I. to the well worn, rough around the edges but well managed d’Artagnan FUAJI to the Brisbane equivalent in the Leo Lagrange FUAJI. Here the lift wasn’t working which meant hauling our bags up seven flights of stairs, the showers offered luke-warm water and the rooms had a distinct institutional air about them. (perhaps the Brisbane management had swapped hostels?). Anyway it is only for three nights.

There are lots of possibilities for us to contemplate doing this evening - sit and sip wine in a sidewalk cafe, walk through the neon lit streets of Mont Matre, amble down the Champs Elysees, wander through the Tuileries or do we take in a cemetery to gaze at famous dead people? Ah.. such are the choices we have as tourists.

Joy has decided that we discover a flea-market in de Clignancourt on Saturday morning which will probably bring us back via Mont Matre depending on the state of the feet and the heat of the day. As Paris doesn’t do air conditioning to the degree that Doha does this means that rooms are only as cool as the breeze may dictate. The hostel lounge area is probably a mild 28c compared to the outside temperature of 32c. Back in Doha the air con would have been set at 19c or, as one of the staff at ABHSS favoured - 16c! I can only conclude we’ve been spoilt and are now suffering for that.

One of our colleagues asked what the reaction was in France when their team got knocked out of the FIFAWC and the reaction to the final between Spain and Holland. As far as I can tell from the papers and TV is that on the news front it appeared that an octopus was more intelligent than the sports pundits, the money speculators and other gamblers when it came to picking the outcome of the soccer world cup. The humour of this has had some mention of French TV before the cameras switch to the more important sports news - the Tour d’France and then to the usual list of bombings and tensions in Pakistan and Afghanistan before switching to domestic politics and issues.

There seems to be a more balanced perspective between issues and sport compared to the hysteria generated by the media in the UK and, from my reading of the online N.Z. Herald where sport appears to have taken precedence over substance... all I can see consuming NZ news appears to be “where will the P.M. and the Minister for Rugby hold a massive “piss up” while the RWC is on in Auckland.” Hardly the sort of news coverage one wants to return home to.

Paris - France 2-12th July 2010

FRANCE - July 2-12th 2010.

With the end of the Qatar contract the staff spread themselves across the world - from Japan to Malaysia to Europe to Africa to Turkey and returns to Australia and New Zealand our friends have packed up a left Qatar.

For some the lack of commitment from Qatar to a further year of the contract has meant a decision to go back to N.Z. For others, like us, it has meant sending out CVs to different employers seeking work on their contracts in other parts of the Middle East. I’ve got an application and the possibility of a job in Oman as a Teacher Trainer and applications out for positions in Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia as well as the fall back position of work in the U.K. All of which will resolve itself mid August as the companies assess their needs and our CVs in the quest to create efficient teams.

In the meantime we are making the most of living in the Middle East to go travelling, something we’d nearly all have to do several years of heavy saving to do so that we could be away from home for an extended period to make the journey worthwhile.

This year Joy and I have headed to France before returning to New Zealand to celebrate, belatedly, Joy’s birthday with family and friends.

On Friday we flew out of Doha with Lynne and Brian Thomas who were on their way to Italy and on to Paris in what seemed to be an endless trip across North Africa and across Italy and Germany. Seven and a bit hours and yet it felt longer than our more regular 23 hour jaunts to and from N.Z.!!

We were last in France in 1997-98 when we did our first OE. Our trip, this time, is meant to take us to explore Northern France after seeing some of the sights of Paris we didn’t get to in our first visit.

We arrived, tired and jaded, early evening but had to wait for some time until our pre-hired shuttle arrived to take us to the D’Artagnan Youth Hostel and our first night in Paris. Once booked in we flaked out in what felt to be a hotter night than any we’d experienced in Doha.

Saturday 3rd July:
The next day Joy and I headed off to take in the sights of Paris. This proved to be optimistic as when we emerged from the Metro Paris was under water as the clouds burst to welcome us desert dwellers to the more temperate climate of Europe. This put a dampener on our plans to tour Paris by open topped bus and led us to Joy’s favourite fall back position - visit a shopping mall. Thus we ended up in the La Fayette Department Store by the Opera House.

After poking around the different floors of this huge souq for three hours or more we ventured out into the rain soaked streets with the semi-formed idea of going towards the Seine and the Louvre area on a window shopping punctuated stroll only to put that idea on the instant back burner when we met up with two of our Cognition colleagues, Noeline and Dhuran, who were ambling through the bargain hunting crowds outside the store looking for an electronics store to solve their iphone roaming access problems.

As Dhuran exclaimed the odds on us meeting up in Paris without any pre-arranged decision must be incredibly long as we’re staying in different parts of the city and had no indication of each other’s plans on the day.

We ended up having coffee in a sidewalk cafe and, because I was having the same i phone issue, heading off together to seek a solution to our problems which a visit to the Apple store by the Opera very soon resolved for us.

We parted ways with the understanding that we’d meet up on Sunday near the Louvre and plan a night out at the Moulin Rouge or Folle Berges before we all moved on to tour different parts of France.

While Joy darted in and out of shops all decorated with huge SALE signs I sat on the steps of the Opera House or leaned against walls taking photographs of tourists doing touristy things like photographing each other against monuments or hunting for bargains.

We still have to plan how we fit in visits to Versailles and Fountainbleu before heading to Northern France and back to Paris by the 11th.