Summer in Paris

We'd been to Paris in the winter of 2006 and we decided that it was time to have another look - in summer this time. The 1st of June was a public holiday here in Germany so I took a couple of days leave and we went for an extended long weekend.

First thing was first - we needed a decent coffee and a croissant followed by some culture.

We tried the Picasso Museum but found it a bit disappointing compared to the one we saw in Barcelona - it did have a huge trippy outdoor mirror thing though.

The weather was gorgeous and we spent most of our time in Paris lounging around in the many parks and gardens they have.

We also took a nice long boat cruise down one of the canals, under the Bastille and along the Seine, the tour guide also let fly on his clarinet while we were down there - quite a lot better than the average river cruise.

We did feel that we needed to get a bit more cultured while we were there so we went to the Musée d'Orsay which is in an old train station. They had a very nice collection of stuff but very little in the way of descriptions about the paintings and most annoyingly everything was in French. Now don't get me wrong - I support people using their own language in their own country, but if the audio guide that you can hire still doesn't have very much information and does not mention 90% of the works at all then that's a bit dissapointing. What I found most rude is that this was the even the case with art they had borrowed from around the world - at least there they could have had it in the owning countries language too.

Having not done it last time we were Paris, mainly due to the weather, we decided that we aught to go up that truely Parisian spike. We went the stairs option which only gets you up to the second level but the view from there was already pretty good. On the stairs and around the levels they also have lots of interesting posters and photos from the construction and about its maintainence.

We dropped in to see the Statue of Liberty that the Americans had given the French - it's a little bit shorter than the one that went the other way I must say - which could explain at least partly why the French don't like the Americans - nah there's plenty of reasons for that ;)

And finally we did spend a lot of time drinking wine on the footpath cafes - Polina managed to get her much desired Crème brûlée too which was rather tasty! And after many trials, tribulations and frustrations at odd opening hours I got my crêpes too mmmm yummy!

On the whole it was a fun trip - we both like Paris but we think it would be nicer without the (French) attitude. There's no real support for any foreign tourists - we saw lots of asian tourists looking very lost, stressed and upset - things like the train staff at the airport only speaking french is rediculous as none of the french need to talk to them. But they do make good wine, coffee, cheese and food in general and their nightlife was fun although that was mainly in the immigrants quater so possibly not typically french.