Underwhelmed in Paris (edited)

Sat 17th December

Checked out of my Amsterdam hotel and walked over to Centraal, the main Amsterdam train station. After cashing some more travellers cheques with a very friendly woman, I joined the queue to buy a ticket, only discovering after a 10 minute wait that I was in the wrong line.

Ok, no big worry. Where's the International ticket office? Ah, there. Right. Enter office. 'Please take a ticket from this machine and wait til your number is called.' Easy, I think. Press button, take ticket. Wait. When my number is called I got to the window, only to be told by the woman behind the desk that my number 'does not exist, get a new number.' She serves someone else.

Ok, this is strange. Back to machine. Press button. Wait. Same deal. My number does not exist.

I have a brief moment in which I feel like the protagonist in some strange, Kafkaesque version of Terry Gilliam's Brazil: if my number doesn't exist does that mean I don't exist? I fret, angst-ridden, then seize the initiative and ask another woman behind the counter to please explain what I'm doing wrong. She kindly takes pity on my flummoxed state and explains that I'm pressing the wrong button on the machine. I should be pressing one of the three red buttons and not the white button. Feeling increasingly surreal, I return to the ticket machine and press a red button. Success at last: my number starts with the right prefix! I take a seat and wait. Again.

Finally I get to the right window, with the right piece of paper, and organise my ticket to Paris - Paris! Cliches await! - via Brussels.

It was a pleasent trip but not especially noteworthy.

At Gare du Nord, one of Paris' two main stations (to which I was delivered by train from the airport) I caught the metro to Republic, a station around which I'd been told several youth hostels congregated. Unfortunately the several hostels I tried were fully booked, and I was getting sick of lugging my increasing heavy backpacks around. In a state approaching desperation I booked myself into the Holiday Inn (!) for the night, paying only 198 Euro for what would have normally been a 488 Euro room; presumably because I checked in late in the day and it would otherwise go empty. Even so, this was hideously expensive, even by my sometimes extravagent standards.

Once I'd dropped off my bags in my room I headed straight out: I was eager to see something of the city. In retrospect I should have eaten something first...and perhaps made better plans as to where I wanted to go!

I emerged at Chatelet Station, and walked down to the Seine and the Ile de la Cite just in time to hear the bells of Notre Dame tolling, and to see the cathedral itself bathed in the evening sunlight: a beautiful sight. Although I'd arrived too late to climb up to the towers or descend into the crypt, I was still able to stroll around inside Notre Dame, awed by the vast vaulted ceilings and the stained glass, and witnessing the incense-waving introduction of the 6pm service, because as well as being a tourist attraction of course, the cathedral is still a fully-functioning church.

Leaving, I decided on the spur of the moment to walk along the Seine towards the Eiffel Tower, and somehow got completely lost, heading east instead of west.

I should have realised at this stage that if my usually strong sense of direction was letting me down, I was extremely tired and hungry. Heading back to my hotel or at least sitting down for dinner would have been a good idea. Instead, I valiantly if stupidly pushed on, trying to catch a train to the Eiffel Tower and getting lost for a second time, this time on the Metro.

By this stage I was getting pretty cranky. I decided to forget about the Eiffel Tower and head over to Montmartre for dinner isntead. Bad move. By the time I came up above ground again my mood was such that I simply stomped around for 15 minutes muttering to myself and unsatisfied by the menus of the many cafes I passed. I wanted something bohemian: after all was Montmartre, home of artists, poets, Parisian decadence incarnate! To my jaundiced eyes it looked more like Brunswick Street, Fitzroy on a busy night, swarming with tourists and yuppies and berefit of any soul.

I scurried back onto the Metro. Back in the vicinity of my hotel I found a netcafe where I wrote the following:

"Am now in Paris. Arrived Saturday arvo. Paid four times as much as I'd like for a bed in a hotel, just near Republic metro station, as none of the hostels I tried had beds available.

Am now tired, hungry, footsore and broke - and in a bit of a cranky mood as the tone of this blog update probably suggests. This keyboard isnt helping matters - none of the letters are where I expect them to be so I keep typing q insteqd of a then have to go back and retype everything. Damn the French!

Currently looking at having to get up at 8am to try and get a bed in a local hostel. Failing that I'll look for a cheaper hotel and waste half the day in the process when I should be visiting Wilde's grave. What fun Paris is. Hopefully it will look better in the morning, after a solid night's sleep..."

Sunday 18th December: A good night's sleep did the trick.

Spent last night in my room hiding from the world, drinking champagne, eating steak and reading - not the best way to spend my first and only Saturday night in Paris but I was feeling antisocial, exhausted and overwhelmed.

Woke refreshed and much happier at 8am. Raced round the corner and reserved myself a bed at a backpackers for a few nights. Back to bed for another few hours. Checked out at 11am, dumped bag with the hotel staff, and caught the train out to Pere Lachaise cemetery, which was enchanting.

One of my main reasons in coming to Paris was to come to Pere Lachaise and visit Oscar Wilde's grave. I had planned to take a bottle of champagne with me (one glass for Oscar, one for me; one glass for Oscar...) but unfortunately the supermarket I visited didn't have chilled champagne, and I simply couldn't offer Wilde a glass of warm champage, now could I? Instead, I simply sat by his grave and paid my respects by reading some of his decadent novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The tomb itself depicts a sphinx, and is covered in lipstick kisses left by Oscar's admirers, some fresh, some faded, as the above photo shows. Other pilgrims had left flowers, someone else had presented Oscar with a book of poems: Desnuda, by Arcelli Tellez (perhaps left by the author?), and yet another devotee had left a sealed letter addressed to 'Mr Oscar Wilde Esq, C/- Pere Lachaise'. It was all rather lovely.

Carved into the back of the memorial are the following words from Oscar's The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which bought tears to my eyes as I read the four brief lines:

'And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long broken urn
For his mourners will be outcast men
And outcasts always mourn.'

Thereafter I wandered about the cemetary for an hour or so, visiting the graves of Sarah Bernhardt, Gertrude Stein and Edith Piaf; was reduced again to tears by monuments commemorating the dead of Auschwitz, Belsen and other concentration camps; and generally enjoying the tiers of tombs, the stained glass, the mossy tombstones, and the avenues of ornate crypts. Despite the sunshine a chill breeze sometimes nipped, rustling the leaves above me as I leant upon a rusted iron railing and absorbed the atmosphere of this tranquil resting place. It is peaceful, despite the countless personal tragedies its graves and walls contain.

The afternoon saw me spontaneously take in a river cruise along the Seine ogling architecture (mmmmmmm, architecture), departing from and returning to the Place du Pont Neuf; followed by a leisurely café lunch - quiche, salad and wine. Feeling sustained and relaxed, I then caught the train down to the Eiffel Tower, which is where, once again, my time in Paris started going wrong...

Go look at the tower if you must, but don't bother buying a ticket to visit the top level unless you really, really like queues. I waited for 45 minutes just to get into the first lift; then there are more queues for each successive lift to the next level, and more queues as you wait to get down. Admittedly the topmost viewing platform provides an amazing panorama of Paris, but all up I spent an hour and a half in queues in order to get a 10 minute city view.

Grumpy again now as I write this in the late afternoon and with a tension headache to boot. Don't think I really like Paris, and don't want to end my holiday like this, grimly determined to make the most of a city I'm not having fun in. Really wish I had stayed in Ireland longer now, and skipped Paris altogether, to be honest.

Will seriously consider leaving tomorrow seeing as all the things I want to do - catacombs, Musee d'Orsay - aren't fucking open on bloody Mondays! So, at this stage its 50% likely I'll go back to Amsterdam, a 25% chance I'll head on to Berlin, and 25% possible I'll stay in Paris after all. Or maybe I'll go out to the country for the day...