Paris with a Teenager

This might be one of many posts about our recent holiday but also, I’m quite tired as a result of our recent holiday so forgive me if they don’t materialise. In fact, this might be just a series of one which says “baguettezzzzzzzzzzzz” as I fall asleep on the keyboard

We started our Paris trip in the unglamourous surrounds of the Premier Inn, Euston Road. My logic had been that we needed to catch the Eurostar earlyish in the morning and, once again, the Chingford line was not functioning. With a choice between a Premier Inn stay or the rail replacement bus in a hurry, I chose the former but I may not have chosen well. The windows were open because the aircon didn’t work and the noise from the Rocket pub opposite didn’t make for a peaceful night’s sleep. I think Nathan and I went there on his Monopoly stag crawl in 2002 but I don’t remember any of us loudly singing football chants at midnight. Ah well.

So it was a groggy and grouchy family traipsing through St Pancras in search of adventure. We’d had the Premier Inn breakfast but Eva had got into trouble with the staff for dropping her hash browns so that hadn’t helped with the general atmosphere. Then we got shouted at by a passport official for following the exact instructions his colleague had just given us and all of this while I was clutching Eva’s half-drunk mango bubble frappe because there was nowhere in the security queue to dispose of it. So it went through the X-ray machine in a special cup holder and then I threw it away just before the boarding lounge. Eurostar travel is *less* stressful than going through an airport but I sometimes think they’re trying to emulate that Stansted pre-holiday feeling.

Once we were actually aboard the Eurostar, all seemed calm. We had table seats so could Nathan and Roo could play “Tinny Dungeons” and Eva could draw or read or eat snacks. All very civilised. The two hours zipped by and we started seeing the outskirts of Paris. I’d decided not to go to Pret at St Pancras because I had my hands full already and Roo had suggested there might be a Pret in Paris, given it was a French word. I mocked him for this because I didn’t think the French would really get behind a brand often referred to as just “Ready”. But what was the very first thing we saw as we disembarked?

I stand corrected. I am pret to admit my teenager knows more than I do.

What none of us knew about was the ticketing system for the Paris metro. This was to be a theme throughout our travels but the machines at Gare du Nord were particularly crowded and we were just four of the hundreds of hapless tourists trying to figure this out. A bit of retroactive research suggests that some of the normal options for travel were unavailable or were inflated in price because of the Olympics, even though we were visiting in the gap between the Olympics and the Paralympics. Either way, I ended up buying a small stash of single-trip tickets at 4 Euros each before later crumbling and buying the day passes at 16 Euros each, which adds up to a pricey 64 Euros for our family. And no clarity on whether that’s a day ticket like a calendar date or a 24-hour period. Either way it cost a lot but luckily I still had enough single use tickets for the Sunday morning anyway so everything got used, even if we paid above the odds for it. Everyone at the station seemed similarly confused about the options and the queue when a Eurostar had just come in was a bit scary.

Once we had the tickets, it was a relatively straightforward question of negotiating the ticket gates and the trains with our luggage and finding our way to our hostel in Montmatre. We were a bit early for check in but could leave our suitcases in the luggage room and that made a massive difference. At this point, it was raining lightly but Nathan didn’t think about taking his coat out of his suitcase and onwards with him. Remember that. Reuben hadn’t packed a coat at all. I’d grabbed a thin waterproof when we were leaving home and had Eva’s raincoat with us but had forgotten my cardigan and had panic bought a replacement at Fat Face in St Pancras. We were not the best prepared for any weather events, having left London in glorious sunshine.

You know what’s coming. You can probably tell from the umbrella in the picture above. Yup, weather event. But more on that later.

The boys had tickets for the Eiffel Tower at 17:30 and it was about 13:30 when we left the hostel, suitcase-free. We had some time to kill but surely that wouldn’t be hard, right? We’d already located the bibliotheque, scourge of many a GCSE student’s spoken exam, but there were a few more exciting things to find. So we headed back to the Metro, bought those day passes, and caught the train towards Notre Dame.

First though, a quick fuelling stop at this petite eaterie I believe they call “Cinq Hommes”:

It took us a while to find it in the increasingly soggy streets while my Google Maps struggled with a wet screen and uncertain phone coverage. But this branch was right next to Fontaine des Innocents and also near but not inside the Westfield mall. No, not the one in Stratford. The Cinq Hommes experience is reassuringly familiar, for tweens who need that reassurance, but there are no refillable drinks in France so you have to juggle QR codes as well as drinks fountains. Also, the fries come in a silver tray. It was a good use of having learnt those complicated French numbers though, so I could listen out to “Deux cent soixante cinq” when it was called.

After we left, it became increasingly apparent that the rain was no longer light, even in the City of Light. Eva claimed to not want her raincoat, so Reuben borrowed it and we ducked into a tourist shop to buy umbrellas and this rather fetching poncho:

Fed and re-enforced against the weather, we were ready to do some standing around looking at the cathedral. Obviously, Notre Dame is not currently open to the public but it’s still very impressive from the outside. There are steps opposite the front so you can climb up and see what’s behind the hoardings. Just watch your step as it can be slippery in the rain.

Wait, it’s raining? I hadn’t noticed.

I do love this photo of Roo and I looking at Notre Dame while Eva channels a grumpy Parisian who doesn’t know us:

We had been outside for a while so it was a relief to dive back into the Metro for some temporary warmth and dryness. We were heading towards the Eiffel Tower but it didn’t take very long and we still had around an hour to kill before the boys went up. Eva and I would then need to hang out for another 90 minutes or so until they came back down. When I imagined all of this, we were lounging in the sunshine in the gardens around the Tower. The reality was a little different. Not only was there no sunshine but there was also a shortage of garden, given that part of it was fenced off for the Olympics and the bit underneath the Tower was behind security gates. I later found out that it was free to get into this bit and so we could have gone through but we found that out a bit too late. Still, enjoy this photo of Reuben doing his classic “I fell” gag:

So as the rain intensified, we ran into the nearest cafe where we paid eyebrow-raising tourist prices for a coffee but dagnam, that was the best tasting coffee I’ve ever had. I think it was just because we were somewhere cosy while las pluie battante battered on outside. The staff were friendly and spoke English to us even though we attempted a bit of French. The decor was pretty and Reuben had a very sticky crepe that gave him the strength he’d need for the climb ahead.

Then we said au revoir to the boys and went to find something to occupy ourselves. We were quite tired by this point, having not slept much and schlepped all over Paris. So somewhere with a lot of space to sit down would be ideal. Which is how Eva and I found ourselves in Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, watching videos of tribal rituals in the soothing semi-darkness.

It was mildly unsettling, as experiences go. So late on in the day, the museum was empty and some of the artefacts were a bit terrifying. It was what Eva would describe as a liminal space and, sure enough, there was a mention of liminality on one of the videos:

But it was warm, and no one bothered us if we just sat on one of the many seating shelves and rested. Most of the exhibits were around the cultures of traditional societies of Africa, Asia, Oceania & the Americas but then there was a small exhibition about black superheroes that had an X-Men ’97 Storm action figure. It was a little incongruous but nicely familiar in a space that was a bit otherworldly:

Now I think about it, maybe that little action figure was the one controlling the weather. In which case, she and I need to have words.

If you’re wondering how Nathan and Roo got on at the tower, here’s a couple of photos:

I’d booked them a guided tour without really meaning to but apparently it was very entertaining. I’d also booked them stair climbing tickets instead of the lifts but they managed it OK and I think they’ve forgiven me. If you’re wondering why Eva and I didn’t go, then see any post where Eva has to deal with either heights or steps or both. That’s how come we ended up hanging out with this guy instead:

We were due to meet up again at 19:00 and that’s the same time as the museum closed. We stayed as late as we could, taking advantage of the facilities and browsing the bookshop, but I’m mildly phobic about being locked in a museum overnight so we left with a bit of time before it closed. A quick visit to a shop for chocolat and a baguette brought us up to the meeting time, with only a small delay to get the most Parisian of photos. Eva already owned the beret but once we added the baguette, it seemed essential to pose in front of the Tower with both.

This next bit is mildly painful, as the tour de la tour overran and the boys were still up on the 2nd floor while Eva and I were waiting for them at the bottom. My phone coverage was still patchy due to my network being conflicted as to whether I allowed roaming or not (spoiler: I did). So we couldn’t really stray far from the meeting point because I didn’t know if I could contact Nathan or not. And even if the network behaved, my battery was running low and I didn’t have my powerbank with me. We could have gone back to the hostel but that would have meant leaving the boys to tackle the Paris metro on their own and that didn’t seem fair. So we picked a spot by the exit of the Tower and we waited. Eva found a dryish patch of ground under a tree and sat there to eat her baguette. It was, of course, still raining.

All this was fine – not ideal but manageable. The chocolate helped. Eventually I sat down next to Eva, on the damp-but-not-soaking ground and it wasn’t long after that that we got apprehended by the armed gendarmes. They politely asked in English if everything was OK and I replied in English as this didn’t seem like a great time to stretch my French. They requested that we move from our tree-sheltered and sit on a bench as this would be “a better seat”. I didn’t want to argue too much with a man with a gun but the bench was really very wet, and there was a giant muddy puddle where our feet would go…..so I didn’t sit there. But neither we continue sitting under the tree. Instead, we stood awkwardly by the exit until the boys emerged. I’d managed to get hold of Nathan after a few failed calls and so they left the tour early and headed for the lifts. It was 19:45 by the time they got down, so the tour really was overrunning quite badly and Eva and I were keen to move on after our brush with the law. Once we were reunited and on our way back to the metro station, I reminded Nathan that I knew a song about gendarmes but it didn’t seem like a great time to sing it. He agreed.

I was so glad to get back to the hostel and finally check in. We had booked a family room with four bunks in one space but were charmed to find something more like a suite, with a kids room around the corner from the adult room. The toilet and shower/sink were in two separate rooms, both off the adult room so there was a bit of shuffling around during the night but after sitting on the damp ground, it was luxurious. The toilet seat may have been cracked and have a step down that was bound to trip us up but like the Four Yorkshiremen, it were home to us.

The next morning, we had hostel breakfast which looked basic from the picture and the 7 Euro charge. When we picked up our trays of nothing but condiments, I feared for a second that it was really very microscopic but then our table was given a pot of four pastries and four hunks of bread. Again, I might just have been grateful for small luxuries but that bread was amazing. I didn’t even need the condiments, other than the butter. We got a coffee each from the machine, which was an extra 1.50 Euro each, to be paid at check-out after some confusion about whether it was included or not. Then we were ready to face the next step of our journey, which was a long train ride to Stuttgart. But more on that in another post.

Almost exactly a week later, we were back in Paris and this time the sun shone. Now, THIS was the Paris you see in the movies. What’s more, we already had Metro tickets in hand, having spent our spare Swiss Francs on them on board the train from Zurich. Yeah, there are a few posts missing in the middle here. We were only en Paris for a few hours before our Eurostar home so had booked left luggage at Mobile Store, near Gare du Nord. Every time I booked a random luggage storage place, my family had concerns but this guy could not have been friendlier and was from Bangladesh, so spoke English to us. It was very straightforward and we retrieved the bags just before heading home.

That left us once again suitcase- and fancy-free in Paris. And once again we went to Five Guys, this time the one in the station. The big draw here was being able to order at a kiosk, although it was a bit confusing when picking up drinks cups, and by now we kinda understood the QR code system. There were no toilets, so we had to use the ones downstairs in Gare du Nord at a Euro a pop. Let’s skim over the stressful aspects of that bit and go straight to our destination for the afternoon – Musée d’Orsay.

Eva had wanted to go to the Catacombs but see my previous comment re Eva’s dislike of steps – 120 steps to get out of the Catacombs seemed like it might be pushing the boundaries of what she could cope with and it would have been an expensive gamble. So when I spotted a discount on Musée d’Orsay tickets through Booking.com, I floated it to the kids. Roo knows about Van Gogh from both Art and Doctor Who so he was bought in and Eva will probably end up doing Art GCSE so it’s good for her to see these things too.

First off, the building is beautiful. It’s an old train station and I do love a bit of station architecture. Also, the collection is super-impressive and there are plenty of paintings that even someone as ignorant as I am can recognise. True, there was one Monet that I looked at for ages wondering where I knew it from before Eva reminded me that it was on a mug in our kitchen:

But there were also some very famous works in there, especially on the 5th floor where the Van Gogh room is:

I mean, I remember having to sketch this in Year 7 art class when we were looking at perspective so it’s pretty cool to see IRL:

The Monet room is equally awe-inspiring:

And on the 5th floor, there was also a roof terrace with some quite incredible views over Paris:

One of my favourites was this painting by Frédéric Bazille, called “Family Reunion”. I mean, there’s a tricky family dynamic right there, isn’t there?

And there were some incredible sculptures, like this “Gates to Hell”:

Meanwhile, Eva was busy spotting all the paintings of cats there were painted by people who seem to have never seen a cat before:

And both kids loved this polar bear sculpture:

In fact, Roo was the most enthusiastic and didn’t want to leave until he’d seen everything. I think we may have missed a few rooms but we were pretty exhausted and my plan to stop for a break in the cafe was thwarted by the queue going into the cafe. So instead, we pressed on to see a few more rooms and sadly never found the temporary exhibition about dogs. It’s been a year since Eva and I last went to see an exhibition about dogs so we’re overdue for a refresher.

After all that culture, we needed a sit down and the Jardin des Tuileries across the river looked ideal. As with the gardens at the Eiffel Tower, a lot of it was fenced off for the Olympics so seating was a bit scarce. Still, we found a bench and a kiosk selling ice cream so had a quick break and a pot of mango sorbet. I wanted to walk eastwards to the nearest Metro station and take in the outside of the Louvre on the way but the fences blocked our path so it was back across the bridge for us. Again, lovely views:

And from there not much else to tell. It’s difficult to buy a fresh baguette in the vicinity of Gare du Nord on a Sunday evening but the family made do with whatever I could buy in the Monop shop and then the Eurostar lounge once we’d gone through security.

I also had a heart-stopping moment when I witnessed someone dropping their suitcase in the gap when boarding the train. Nathan tells me that a fellow passenger just stuck his arm down to get it back. I don’t know why I gasped so…whether I was worried that it would delay us or just feeling extreme empathy for the person who dropped it but it’s fine, it all worked out well. The trip back was then perfectly smooth – we had a table again so feasted on my hastily assembled picnic.

London was cold and now we’re back home and facing the looming prospect of September. But before then, I need to fill in the gap (not with a suitcase) and tell you all about the bit between Paris and Paris. Hopefully it’ll make me sound like less of a British tourist monoglot than these bits. But maybe it won’t be today….