Paris!

Last week I and a bunch of my friends took a break from the Semantic Web and it's infernal services and went to Paris. Here be our tale, yarrh!

Me, Even, Tommy, Kim, Marianne, Steinar, Reidun, Torbjørn and Kjersti went on the trip together, after getting hold of some really cheap airplane tickets from Sterling (328 NOK!). So without further delay, here's the tale of our four days in Paris.

Day 0 - Saturday

Since the plane to Paris was to take off from Oslo airport, I had to take a plane down to Oslo on Saturday. I used the opportunity to visit my older brother, Asgeir, and his family in Lillestrøm. Spent the night in Lillestrøm with tacos, red wine a plenty and trivial pursuit, nice :-)

Day 1 - Sunday

Sunday I met up with the others at the airport, and at 10:15 the plane took off. The flight went on quite uneventful and we arrived at Beauvais airport a little less than two hours later. Beauvais was a tiny airport seemingly in the middle of nowhere. From there we took an old bus into the city. The bus stopped outside the gigantic Hotel Concorde La Fayette, and from there we took a taxi to our hotel. The driver looked somewhat spooky, didn't speak a word English and for sure drove like crazy through the narrow Paris streets..

Our hotel was the Villa Fenelon on Rue Buffault in the 9th. arrondissement. The hotel was very nice, alltough small. I shared a room on the fifth floor together with Marianne and Even. The room was alright, although there was no lock on the toilet and mirrors everywhere (Mirrors Paradise?).

After settling in at the hotel, we took a walk around the block to find something to eat, Steinar, Tommy and I took a hamburger at a local kebab shop, while the others took their chances at a cheesy and rather filthy café.. No one got sick though..

Later that night we took a walk to find a French restaurant where we could get some authentic french food. We ended up at a rather crowded and busy place on Rue La Fayette. After using about an hour trying to understand the menu, I ordered the Bayonne ham for a entry course and a medium done steak with pommes frites on the side, and of course red wine. What I got was something more like a pool of blood along with pommes frites, evidentially the French like their steaks bloody. The taste was, however, very nice. The red wine, was not very good, but it went down anyhow... For dessert we ordered an extremely sour lemon tart.

After dinner, we took a brief visit to the Hard Rock Café before settling down with a few bottles of red wine at the General La Fayette, a nice café / bar just below our hotel.

Before going to sleep we stopped by the local corner store for a bottle of whiskey and a short nachspiel at room 53 :)

Day 2 - Monday

Monday morning we got up early and got our first breakfast at the hotel. The breakfast was pretty standard, a bun of white bread, a crossaint, strong black coffee and a small glass of orange juice. Not something for those that love a powerful English style breakfast in the morning, but perfect for me, as I'm not really a breakfast person.

After breakfast we took the excellent Parisian metro to the Arch of Triumph at the beginning of Champs-Elysées. We walked all 284 steps up to the very top, quite tedious but definitely worth it. From the top of the Arch of Triumph we got a nice view of the main streets of Paris, although the weather was rather foggy that day. Around the Arch we could see the how the crazy Parisians drove around the arch. By the way, they also park like crazy, I hardly saw a car without any dents.

From the Arch we walked in zigzag mode from one store to another down the street of Champs-Elysées. We stopped at the Petit and Grand Palais to look at the beautiful Ponte Alexandre III bridge with a view toward the Hotel Les Invalides where Napoleon lies buried.

Weird to think that both of the palaces and the bridge where built for the 1900 Exposition Universelle. After a short stop we continued our walk towards the Louvre along the river Seine. Then we walked through the gardens of the Tuileries and beheld the magnificent museum of the Louvre.

We entered the Louvre through the great glass pyramid. We got in quite quickly, only a short line. Inside we walked through the fantastic renessanse art galleries, including the Mona Lisa by Leonardo DaVinci. The building of the Louvre itself was, however, almost as impressive as the paintings it contains. Especially the painted roofs of the great halls.

In the evening we ate at the restaurant Nos Ancêtres les Gaulois at the Isle St.Louis. A nice restaurant with a Gaul image, although playing Britney Spears on the radio kind of ruined that image :p IMHO. Anyhow the radio was soon replaced by a French dude, that sang classical Spanish songs, I must admit I could have lived without that too :p. At the restaurant I ordered the leg of lamb, and it was very tasty, also they had a very nice bread. Along side the meal we got as much red wine as we could drink, straight from the barrel.

After dinner we took the metro out to Champs-Elysées to find a place to go out. People seemed to recommend Queen, as the place to go out on a Monday. However, it didn't quite seem like our kind of place. So only went Torbjørn, Kjersti and Marianne went inside. The result of us continued the hunt, and after checking a few places out we ended up in the Monte Cristo something. A rather crappy place really, but better then the other place we checked out which was full with suspicious looking French dudes with pony tails... And anyhow they did make a damned good mohito. The beer, however, came in 25 cl. glasses and was expensive even by Norwegian standards (and Norwegian beer prices usually makes people cry).

Later we took a taxi back to Rue La Fayette and took a stop by the General Lafayette for a nightcap. There we met up with the gang from Queen and it seems the party factor had been slightly higher there.. merde! Back at the hotel I took on the path of Hell along with my good friend Johnny Walker.

Day 3 - Tuesday

Late start the third day, as everybody was rather ravaged from the escapades of lsat night. Curse the "magic potion" of the gaul restaurant! After a while we got off, and took the metro to the Eiffel Tower.

The weather was better than yesterday and the sight was much clearer. The first impressions of the tower was the massive size and height of the construction. It's a quite grotesque monument of the Industrial Age really, steel girders and steel bolts, along with the massive wheels of the elevators. There was a long line to get into the tower, even though we visited outside of the tourist season. Along with the long queue on the ground, there was also a long line on the second level, to get to the very top of the tower. The view from the top of the tower was wonderful, although there was still some fog, so we didn't get the full view. The tower is insanely high with it's 300 meters! Paris sure is a beautiful city, with all the wonderful structures, the tree lined streets with their symmetric structures on both sides.

Back on the ground we ate lunch at McDonald's. French McDonald's is as crappy as McDonald's anywhere, but at least you know what you get. Afterwards we took a short trip to the great Galeries Lafayette department store. The trip was short since it was insanely hot inside, and everybody was exhausted from all the walking. On our way back home we got thrown off the metro because of some technical problem. And we had to take a different metro line to get back to the hotel, it was a tedious trip and we had to switch metro line several times. Back at the hotel we found out that it would have been a lot faster to walk back, as it would have been a 10 minute walk! Merde! On the plus side we got to see the beautiful Opera building on our way to the alternative metro station.

After relaxing at the hotel for a few hours we walked down to Rue Haussmann to get something to eat. We ended up at the Salles de Reunion restaurant where we ate a bloody duck steak with mashed potatoes and pommes frites on the side. And no red wine today! Back at the hotel we read in the paper that the duck was the most likely bird to catch the bird flu, and that the blood was the most contagious part of the bird. Merde!

Day 4 - Wednesday

Back in shape, we started out early and took the metro to Notre Dame. We went inside and beheld the beauty of this famous and huge medieval cathedral. I do love these massive Gothic structures, and Notre Dame is about as Gothic and massive as you get. The outside of the cathedral is very ornate and beautiful with the famous gargoyles and statues, and the inside is impressive with the high ceilings.

After Notre Dame Kjersti, Torbjørn, Kim and Me took the metro back to the Louvre. There we went through the exhibitions from Egypt, Africa, Oceania, Mesopotamia and saw the crown jewels. I thought the egyptian and mespotamian exhibitions where best, excellent ancient art and artifacts. Also the hall containing the french crown jewels where extremely beautiful and ornate, almost too much.

Later that evening we went to see the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur. A very beautiful and ornate basilica on the top of a hill, it was very nice but too bad the rain was hauling down, and the view was completely blocked. After a long and tedious walk in the rain we settled on an Italian restaurant below the basilica, to eat italian pizza and drink italian red wine. After that we just returned to the hotel to get some R&R.

Day 5 - Thursday

On the fifth day we got up early to start on the long road home. First off we took a taxi to the Beauvais airport, there we sat several hours, as the plane was delayed. Beavais airport is not a nice place to be, it is expensive, small (the departure hall is a tent!), and the whole place smelled of something nasty. When we at last got in the air, the flight went flawlessly.

Back at Oslo airport it snowed and snowed, and we had to wait a long time. The weather didn't clear up, but the airplane finally arrived anyhow. And we got home to Trondheim after a rather bumpy landing at Trondheim Airport. It's good to be home where people speak a language I understand and the tap water is drinkable :-)

Paris is for sure a very nice city, but I can imagine that it is even more beutiful in the summertime or in the late spring. And I will definitely return some day, as there still are a few things on my todo list:

1. Party in the Latin Quarter
2. Visit Versailles
3. Drinking absinth in the cathacombs

Finally some useful french phrases: