London to Paris

The next morning after breakfast we pulled ourselves together and headed down the street to King’s Cross/St Pancreas International to board the Chunnel to France. The train was fully packed but all went according to the usual organized chaos of train travel. We brought sandwiches with us but spent most of the travel time snoozing. The landscapes as we rode through northern France from Calais were lovely. Our terminus in Paris was the Gare de Nord, as in London, just a few blocks away from our hotel in Montmartre. After settling in we took a couple of subway rides to reach the area of the Eiffel Tower. It was mid-afternoon by then and the line for tickets was very long. One of the elevators was down so progress toward the tower was considerably slower than usual. We decided to return early the next morning and instead to make for Notre Dame and the left bank. Unfortunately, though we took the right bus, we took it in the wrong direction, ending at a suburban stop called La Defense. After another very long ride we did make it to Notre Dame. Tents erected in the square proclaimed a festival of bread, certainly one of France’s finest productions. There were hundreds of people milling about the exhibits and standing in line to enter the cathedral. We took in the general scene but decided to cross the river and browse about in the laneways of the left bank by Boulevard St Michel. With gelato in hand we walked along the boulevard to the gorgeous Jardin de Luxembourg. Emily loved the garden, especially the large inner pond with statues and with small sail-boats milling about. After some supper we returned to the hotel for an early evening and an attempt to contact people in Toronto via Skype. The next morning, Friday, after a rather slower beginning than we had planned, we made our way to the Eiffel for our second attempt. This time the line was considerably longer than it had been the afternoon before. We noted, however, that the closing of the tower was just after midnight and determined that we would come after our supper for, hopefully, easier access. We took a bus from the area to the Place de la Concorde where the hundreds of guillotined victims of the French Revolution met their ends. From there we walked through the gardens of the Tuileries to the Louvre. Emily was full of beans by this point in the day, skipping along, taking pictures and getting me to take ones of her “leaning against” or “holding up” various statues and arches, perspectives achieved usually by my getting down on my knees on the cobblestones. Her other favorite pursuit was taking very close-up pictures of me in various candid poses, all of which were inordinately unflattering. She found my chagrin very funny. We entered a line of about a half a kilometer for entrance to the Louvre. It moved along steadily and we were inside within an hour, by then hungry and thirsty. We sat by one of the indoor cafes and had a rather expensive but good lunch of sandwiches. Emily was excited about seeing the Mona Lisa and we followed, with hundreds of others, the sign leading to her salon. The route took us through large parts of the building, giving us a chance to view statuary and paintings from several centuries of French and Italian artists. Emily photographed many of these. It was her first visit to an art gallery and she clearly found it interesting. In the room containing the Mona Lisa and a number of other paintings, the crush was intense but Emily, after a couple of abortive attempts, pushed her way close enough to the front to get a series of quite good photos of the legendary lady. She was thrilled to have done so and mentioned it to her parents and Theoren when we spoke with them later that night. Everything else was anti-climax as we made of our way out of the museum to the large courtyard surrounding the crystal pyramid. Walking north a few blocks we boarded a subway train heading for Montmartre to visit Sacra Coeur church, a site where Emily’s mom, Catherine had met a few young Europeans during her visit to Paris several years ago. She spent the next couple of days with them, travelling about the city and enjoying its sites and their company in equal measure. Emily was keen to take photos of the spot to show her mom. She loved it up there. The hills and the stairs were rather daunting but we made it without incident, returning afterward to our hotel just five or six blocks away for a nap and a simple meal. About 9PM we headed out for our third and this time successful assault on the Eiffel. The crowd was diminished but by no means short. It took over an hour and a half to reach the ticket booth. We were among the last group to enter the elevator ascending to the second stage. The view was beautiful with all of the lights of Paris displayed below. That day Emily had teased me about a (mythical) group that she belongs to and, in fact, is the president thereof. There are secret handshakes, words, and sound effects that only the insiders are allowed to know and to partake in. I countered with my own secret club that she could not be party to without the permission that I would forever withhold. It was all very hilarious and fun and she showed a lot of her little monkey and creative sides to me that I think usually show mainly with Theoren and some of her buddies. That evening on our way to the Eiffel she developed a personality for the name I had given her of Emily Dickinson, girl poet. On her cell phone she taped a couple of rap poems made up on the spot about herself as that new person. I was called upon to introduce her on the recording to our imagined audience. It was hilarious. As we approached the base of the Eiffel screaming with laughter, a couple of gendarmes standing nearby suddenly became alert, as though they might have to rescue the young girl with the strange lady. Because we were abroad so late on Friday night we slept in and lollygagged about our room until the last moment allowed before check-out. Around noon we set out with luggage in tow for the Gare de Lyon where we were to catch our over-night sleeper about 6PM. Storing the luggage in a locker at the station, we returned to Notre Dame, this time for a walk-about. We sat quietly in one of the pews for a time, taking in the dark interior of the church and its glorious stained glass windows. Emily was not greatly interested in the church itself though did respond to and photograph the windows. We had little time left after this visit so we stocked up on food and water and returned to the Gare de Lyon and the great overnight train adventure.