Last week I went to Paris from Thursday to Sunday. My mum decided to bring me and my little sister to Paris for a girly weekend, and we were off course delighted to go. It was just 2 hours flight from Oslo to Charles de Gaulle airport outside Paris.
Now, CdG is one of the most boring airports in Europe, both for arrivals and for departures. They do have this cool feature with rolling sidewalks everywhere, through this hub, but apart from that it's gray and dull. And the information is not excactly user friendly either. We used quite some time figuring out how to 1) get out of the airport and 2) how to get on the right shuttle bus to the Aerogare, which is the railway station at the airport. Once there, it was even harder to figure out what bus or train to take to what station close to our hotel. In the end I persuaded the other two to take a taxi, and that was probably the smartest thing we did that day.
We stayed the Hotel Aurora at Place de Clichy. It's in the northern part of Paris, and the location was great. Close to the Metro, and to Montmartre. Our metro station had 2 lines crossing, so it was very easy to get wherever we wanted to go.
FRIDAY
On Friday we had breakfast at a nice café, before deciding what to do that day. We decided to try to get tickets to a show, and went to Place Madeleine to check the ticket booth. It was closed when we got there, but on the way there, I found a poster for something much more exciting! The Science museum was doing an exhibition called
Le Monde de Franquin (The world of Franquin). Franquin is the creator of Gaston Lagaffe and the Marsupilami, and also drew Spirou and Fantasio for many years - and he reinvented my f
avourite squirrel Spip(p). We decided to go there the next day, as we were in for some serious shopping first.
When the ticket booth opened, it was a huge queue. We checked if they sold tickets to anything that was non verbal, as none of us are very good at French. They didn't sell tickets to anything else than drama and musicals, so we decided to go to the Opera to check for tickets there instead.
We went to Foucheron (?), a very up marked food store. Loads of great food there! And to Printemps and Lafayette. Great shopping houses, and I've never seen so many designer garments since I was in Kyoto, Japan. The designer stuff was a bit too expensive, though, but I did get some nice things at NafNaf.
In the end we wandered over to the Opera, which is a huge and magnificent building. We wanted to check if they had tickets for The Magic Flute, by W.A. Mozart, but it turned out that it was sold out - to some time in March… Still, we did get to see a truly fantastic place. Or rather, several fantastic places. Lafayette is the only department store I've seen with 6 floors of galleries and a glass painting roof.
SATURDAY
We went over to the Science Museum to see the Franquin Exhibition. It was a huge place, and I could probably have spent the whole weekend there. A great place for both kids and grown ups. The exhibition was cool. Quite a lot of original strips, lots of information and a few displays. They had created full scale models of the Marsupilami, mrs M. and the 3 little marsupilamis. They had also created models of Spirou's car, a few other vehicles and the Gaffophone! It was great to see, even if it didn't feature Spipp so much.
We met up with a friend of my little sister, and went to the Antique markets in the Northern part of Paris. We found some nice pieces, and a huge tourist market. Then we went back to the Champs Elysees. The Arc de Triomphe was great, and Champs Elysees as impressing as ever. The best display was the Louis Vuitton building. They're rebuilding the front, so instead of the boring green stuff they put in front of buildings being refurbished, they'd made 2 huge suit cases, both typical LV style.
In the evening, mum and I got on a sightseeing boat, to see Paris from the Seine. It was a bit cold, but for some of the tour, we sat outside in the back of the boat. Notre Dame looks a bit different from the river. It was a nice tour, as there was a commentary in English explaining what we saw along the way. It's probably better when it's not so dark and a bit warmer, but was definitely something I'd recommend doing.
SUNDAY
We decided to go up to Montmartre. We passed the cemetery on the way, but we didn't find out how to get in. Not sure if tourists are allowed in there anyway. We did see a lot of the graves from the road though, and some people have been buried in style…
We had breakfast at a nice café before starting the climb up to Sacre-Caeur. It seemed like a normal place at first, then suddenly something really weird rose up through the floor in the middle of the room. It turned out to be a lift for trash cans, but for a while we couldn't figure it out at all.
At the top of Montmatre, there's a lot of painters. Loads of different styles and colours, but I didn't find anything I liked. Well, some pieces were good, but I couldn't imagine how to get it home in my suitcase. On the other hand, some of the artists there are really pushy. When we went over to Sacre Caeur, a group of 8-10 artists, with sketch pads in hand, almost attacked us to get to draw our portraits. Quite surreal, and not very nice at all.
Sacre-Caeur was really beautiful and awe inspiring. On the inside, there was this guard who notified everyone that it was not allowed to take pictures, and all the men had to take their hats off. We sat down at an aisle for a while, just looking at all the fabulous things in there.
Outside, we were amazed by the view. You can see most of Paris from up there. But we couldn't see the end of the city at all. I had a feeling you could see 10-20 miles or something, and no end to the city.
So, in the evening we went home. We took a taxi back to Charles de Gaulle. We had plenty of time, in case there was any problems. No problems, just an awfully boring air port. The tax free shop was the size of my living room. The passport control was just outside the gate, so we backtracked to the shops in the basement for some entertainment. 2,5 hours have never been so long…
Generally, France was very nice. The weather wasn't too good, but it usually isn't in February anyway. People were nice, we saw a lot of interesting things and the Metro system is great.