Stepping off the eurostar alongside passengers who are much better dressed than I am, and stepping out of the station to see two police officers with their truncheons and both smoking cigarettes, I didn’t need the ‘Gare du Nord’ sign to tell me where I was, this was definitely Paris.
I broke the main port on my snazzy travel plug adapter. I really do need to learn to look after my belongings better. I woke up at 4:20 am and thought about Louis’ stupid joke of “there’s more than one 4 o’clock in the day?”. I had about 2 hours sleep, I was actually nervous that night and struggled to sleep. My trusted citymapper let me down, I arrived at Finsbury Park tube station to see the gates firmly shut, luckily there was a bus instead. Eurostar was very easy. And so here we are, country number 1: France. It was 10am with my hostel check-in at 3pm, but I decided against finding somewhere to leave my bag. First stop was a cafe (KP Roasters), I was starving and very much in need of a coffee. As I slowly ate a cheese and onion scone with chive cream cheese (it was interesting, I’ll leave it at that) and drank my flat white, the man next to me asked me where I was from. Clearly the french boy haircut (as dubbed by Tarsha) wasn’t fooling anyone. We had a lovely chat, he had done a similar trip when he was 24 and whilst on it set up a not-for profit organisation that now employs 200 people (makesense)! He gave me some tips for Paris and travelling in general. It energised me more than the coffee and scone did to be honest. Also whilst sitting at this cafe I noticed a cool looking building in the near distance, and this is where I aimed for next. It was the Sacre Coer of Montremarte, and it was up a lot of stairs. But my packing was proven light enough and I had a lovely time exploring the area, lots of people painting portraits and pretty small streets.
After I had my fill I made my way to the hostel. I didn’t fancy the trek to Gentilly so I used the metro. This is where I had my first two less glamorous travelling moments. Firstly, the doors on the metro don’t automatically open when you arrive at a station, and the button, in my opinion, is not well labelled. I’m sure you can work out the issue I had there. The second issue arose when I tried to exit the metro station, but couldn’t find a slot for my paper ticket. After waiting awkwardly for a while I caved and stopped a man to ask for help. He gestured to a different gate which did have a ticket slot but was out of order. Turns out the gates on that one were open the whole time. The following evening I was returning back quite late from a bar and this time the out of order sign had been removed. This had clearly been done in haste however, as the gate still didn’t actually work. Two other girls with paper tickets joined me in slight panic - stuck in a metro station at 1am is not where any of us wanted to be. A french man saw the situation and managed to gesture to us all to squeeze in the space between the barrier and the place you scan your ticket. He scanned his card and we all rushed through, with the man being only minorly crushed. I haven’t been impressed with the metro.
I thought it might be fun to try a french yoga class, and after walking with my rucksack all day my body would definitely benefit from one. I found a studio and booked in for an Iyengar yoga class. I’ve never tried (or even heard of) this form of yoga before, but thought it made sense to try something new. This was most definitely a mistake. I know very little french and without any familiarity of the poses or sequences it was a struggle. It was a very prop heavy class, that involved a lot of deep floor stretches. This would usually be a calming style of yoga, but this class was not calming. The instructor was very intense and almost aggressive, we were certainly not meeting her expectations. But as I didn’t actually know what she was saying I couldn’t do much to help. It was quite funny, and at least I wasn’t the british girl next to me who was picked on repeatedly by the instructor.
My time in Paris continued in a similarly slow and pleasant fashion (ignoring the metro issues). I met up with a friend who gave me an off the beaten path tour (thanks Laura), enjoyed the sun walking along the Seine and went to the catacombs. I had never liked Paris when I visited it previously, but I like it this time. I think it’s the sunny weather. Even Parisians can’t be grumpy when it’s sunny.
Some extras
Food/cafe highlights
- Cafe Med - 3 delicious courses for 14.50 euros
- The trusted baguette, jar of mustard mayonaise and emmental
- Lots of crepes
- The Musee de la vie Romantique cafe - sheltered under blossom trees and rose bushes, really beautiful
- Le Pavillon des Canaux - the most amazing cafe decorated like someone’s house, with tables in a kitchen and bathroom (and the actual bathtub)
Catacombs
Cost - 15 euros if bought on the day. Took about an hour. I wouldn’t recommend to be honest, the ones in Rome are more impressive. The bones are just sort of stacked here.
The catacombs were originally mining tunnels. They became catacombs when the department put in charge of dealing with the overfilled and unsanitary cemeteries decided the solution was to move the bones to the tunnels to create a tourist site. The whole thing was a bit tainted after learning that. Also by the australian guy behind me the whole way round who kept pointing out good eye holes he’d like to put his penis in. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find it slightly funny though.
The inevitable
At the Louvre I had my first unwanted encounter with a man. How does a man think they’re making someone feel by coming up to them and saying “I like you” immediately followed by “are you alone?”, if not hugely uncomfortable? I’m almost certain this man had only good intentions, he was smiling pleasantly and wasn’t at all threatening, yet I still felt threatened. Luckily my large group of friends was just behind me…
But, for balance, the male receptionist at the hostel didn’t charge me the 4 euros to leave my bag in storage on my last day. I’m not sure he would’ve done that if I was a man, but who knows!