Exploring the old city

Wednesday 18^th May

Our Hotel - Montmartre Clignancourt. I'm convinced the floor in our room has a slope to it. I need some jaffas to roll down the aisle.

After buttery, flaky croissants and baguette for breakfast we headed out for a day just wandering the streets of the old Paris. Back on the metro and it is all so easy with a clear map and enough lines that you can get pretty much everywhere without too much fuss. We bought a 3 day ticket which allows us to use the metro even if only going 1 stop.

Our first stop was Notre Dame where we had been before but we went inside for another look. The queues for the inside of the church were nonexistent at that hour of the morning but by lunchtime it was a different story. The queues to go up the tower were quite long though. After Notre Dame we walked further to Ile de St Louis which was the old Paris. There were some lovely shops in this area. Their shop windows here in France are so impressive – they must have real creative people on staff to do their windows. Walking along the streets here we see many buildings from the 1600s with beautiful facades.

After a long stroll through the area it was back across to Ile de la Cite where we visited the memorial to the mass deportations of the French during the war. I thought this was just going to be some sort of statue but it is a complex that tells the story of the deportations and the treatment of the French (and other prisoners) by the Nazis.

Window inside Notre Dame

A view you don't see very often - the back of Notre Dame

Standing on the bridge joining Ile de la Cite and Ile de St Louis

Buskers - they were pretty good

This shop had a lovely window display but couldn't get a photo without the reflection. How's this for a tower to store and display your coffee pods - though not sure how it would work when you want the one in the middle.

Do they have one in my colour?

Thank goodness France has adopted McDonalds – we were searching for toilets and found that they had closed the toilets near Notre Dame (probably security wise) and the only other toilet nearby was a self cleaning single cubicle which had a long queue. It seemed to take 3-5 minutes to go through 1 person and we figured we would have to wait a good half hour so we headed off in search of another toilet. Aha! McDonalds! One thing you can count on with McDonalds is that they will have toilets and they will be clean.

This time in Paris we don’t have the pressure to visit all the museums and landmarks so we have just been exploring. We wandered up into Les Halles district – another original part of Paris.  Rob is a collector of travel bits and pieces from the newspapers and had an article about a place to visit in Les Halles. We thought we’d found it and decided it was a dud, but when we headed back along the arcade and exited on to the street we noticed that the arcade continued on the other side. He redeemed himself – the arcade supposedly had arts and crafts type shops inside, and there they were – a wool shop and a patchwork shop! Only one small piece of fabric in the bag today. There were some beautiful jewellery shops here as well.

Wool - I resisted.

Exiting this arcade we found Stohrer patisserie which dates back to the 1780s and is said to be the oldest and best patisserie in Paris. We have a couple of samples to try later for dinner. We decided that this time in France we will have a large lunch and then have baguettes or similar for dinner. Today for lunch we found a restaurant where we had the Menu – which consists of entrée and main or main and dessert. This is the best value way to eat – or to eat the Plat du jour (plate of the day). The crème brulee dessert was very nice but I’ve now got some serious walking to do to use the calories. I think we did a good few k today – and lots of stairs as we went up and down the stairs in the metro. There are some stations with escalators or lifts but we didn’t see too many of them. Not sure how the handicapped get around - I guess they know the accessible stations.

Pastries to die for - we bought a couple to share. Not cheap - we paid for the history.

Today has been a much cooler day than yesterday with a cool breeze most of the day and overcast most of the day also. The wind kept blowing dust into our eyes – I’m glad I wear glasses or it could have been worse. We headed back to the hotel late afternoon and as we walked the last 200m it was trying to rain. (Thurs am - it has rained most of the night and the concierge says it will probably be like this most of the day.)

No real problems with direction today – once we worked out which way was up when we arrived at Ile de la Cite. Damn sun is in the wrong place in Paris and is making it hard to get our bearings. People have been very helpful though as they see us standing on a street corner with map in hand.