First week – Paris

Apologies for the delayed installment. We’ve had a few accommodation dramas (more below), and this week we’re at language school, as well as working (Ruth) and studying (Craig).

We had an uneventful trip, a 747 to Bangkok and A380 to Paris. We schlepped a couple of miles in Bangkok because we got the lounge location wrong. A very comfortable seat layout on the A380, so we got some sleep. A plug for alphaflightguru, who got us extremely well priced tickets.

We arrived early Monday morning, took the RER to our apartment, which we had booked through AirBnB. That’s when the fun began. The elevator was so small we resorted to sending up our luggage on its own. Then us, singly. The words ‘upright coffin’ spring to mind. The apartment was quite pokey, but we could live with that. AirBnB apartments are usually those in which the owner lives, so there was food in the fridge, which is fine. What was not so fine was extraordinary amount of clutter hat made it impossible to find a place to unpack – or work, for that matter. But the pièce de résistance had to be the owner’s underwear (you read that correctly) still in the washing machine. It’s difficult to imagine anything more off-putting.

But the last straw was the jackhammers, in what sounded like the adjacent apartment. The owner said that they had just started that day, and they would probably stop soon. They did in fact stop, come nightfall. And they started the next morning, soon after breakfast. And continued on and off all day.

Given that we had work and study to do, this was simply not going to work. So we looked for a reasonably priced hotel in the same area (close to Bastille) and decamped.

And so to the Hôtel Saint-Louis. The elevator was so small we resorted to sending up our luggage on its own. Then us, singly. Oh, hang on, we said that already.

We’ve both been to Paris before, but there’s no reason at all not to do some of the touristy stuff. It’s always fun.

Opposite our hotel were some markets that were set up in the morning and disappeared completely each evening. The range of products was, as always in Parisian markets, breathtaking. Hundreds of different cheeses, the freshest fruit, vegetables and varieties of meat and poultry. We weren’t yet in a position to cook for ourselves, so all we did was browse longingly.

On Wednesday Ruth joined a panel discussion at la faculté de pharmacie, l’Université Paris Descartes, near the Jardins du Luxembourg. After the presentations we had a tour of the faculty, including the historic Salle Des Actes.

Then to lunch at La Closerie des Lilas, favoured haunt of writers since the twenties – including Ernest Hemingway.

But first, Ruth had to check out our motor transport for the long drive to the south of France.

In the event, we decided to rent a slightly larger vehicle from Avis (more later).

Back to the hotel, to see if the manager had fixed the broken shower head. Mais non. But he had addressed it, at least by way of a (gallic) shrug. He hadn’t actually fixed anything but he’d given it a bit of a poke, but clearly anything further was out of the question. It wasn’t until later that a different manager, in response to our repeated requests, actually engaged un plombier to replace the shower head, thus giving us one day of workable showering. During those few days, we had tried to contact Best Western, as the hotel had their logo out front and on the stationery. No satisfaction was to be gained in that way, as Best Western assured us (after two follow-ups) that the hotel was not actually part of the chain …

We had a delightful dinner at Bofinger, the “most Alsation of the Parisian Brasseries”, founded in 1864. Food, wine and service as only the French can do it.

 

And so to the south. We went to Avis, who acted surprised that someone was there to rent a car. More shrugging, and much shuffling of paper. And writing things down on said paper, and shuffling some more. Finally a car was decided, then a young lad was sent to the parking garage to check if it was actually there. After more waiting, some keys were produced. And finally, at least an hour later, we set off through the busy Paris traffic. Craig drives as bullishly as the French in any case, so we were able to forge our way through the dynamically changing lanes and onto la peripherique. A delightful lunch with friends in Bougival, then south. We had not booked anything, so just drove until was dark and we were tired and hungry finally stopping in the very attractive town of Beaune for the night.

The next day, it was on to Lyon for lunch. This beautiful city on the confluence of the Saône and Rhone rivers provided some pleasing sights as we dined and drove around the town.

As well as some strange ones.

We then drove, as intended, to Givors, where Craig worked in 1972. And as expected, Craig recognised nothing, except the bridge driving into the town.

We went off the main road for a bit in the districts around Lyon, with plenty of old castles and outbuildings to see. Cafes were mostly shut, but we did get a coffee in a tiny establishment where we witnessed two of the local lads, possibly in their cups at 10 in the morning, have a heated discussion about the outrage of the village church being shut on a Sunday. We were invited to join the discussion but demurred. Craig was about to say something along the lines of ‘it’s probably because the priest has been arrested for pædophilia’ but fortunately his french language skills were inadequate to convey the necessary bathos.

And so to Montpellier, home of the ILA language school. More of that shortly, at the end of our first week …