The Devil is a Parisien Dimanche

Paris is stunningly beautiful. Food practically spills out onto the road from all the patisseries and boulangeries and cafes and what have you. Like London, there are beautiful churches and buildings around every corner but the Parisians seem to have sorted the place out so that the most prominent civic monuments are given their rightful space (though I guess this all came at a cost to the lower classes when the various rulers decided to impose their "town planning" schemes on their subjects...). Even their centrepiece waterway is spared the riverfront developments and given a line of trees along its banks. From the time JPB and I arrived 'til our Saturday night at Eiffel Tower, we simply couldn't have seen any more beauty and splendour. Paris is truly magnifique!

But then Sunday arrived. Dimanche.

My first day in London was a Sunday and the place was alive. People were out taking full advantage of their city. In particular, all of the shops were open and packed with people. True, London was experiencing the kind of weather that even a Sydney-sider would consider to be superb, whereas Paris had turned gloomy and grey. But, in any other city, it would have been fine if we could find a decent place to spend some money.

At about lunch time we discovered that even the department store down the road (Bazar d'Hotel de Ville) was closed. What hope did we have? Only the crappiest shops pushing crap-arse multi-coloured Eiffel Tower models were doing business. We couldn't even get a decent croissant!

So JPB and I decided to ditch our shopping efforts and went off on a river cruise. Nice. By the end the rain had stopped, which allowed us to get out and take pictures. I guess I would have had a better time if I had gone to the toilet before the cruise, otherwise I wouldn't have spent the entire time busting to go to the loo and enjoyed the sights more. My bad, yes. After the cruise we found that the tickets entitled us to a discount at the Conciergerie, an old prison that housed about 4000 people in its history including Marie Antoinette. Besides the old clock (which is outside anyway and free for all to see) and the Hall of the Men-At-Arms, it is by far the CRAPPIEST tourist destination in Paris. Don't bother going, even with discount, it sucks.

Not happy with the way our day was turning out, we decided to quit the sight-seeing and headed down to the cinema. The Devil Wears Prada was showing at the Odeon on St Germain Boulevard so the pass the time 'til Seance we headed down to a pub for a beer each. SEVENTEEN EUROS LATER (not to mention the expresso that was four euros fifty a pop!) we headed back to the cinema only to find that the movie we wanted to see was Complet and there was a massive line to buy tickets for the NEXT session.

Unperturbed we headed across town (over the Ile de la Cite) to Beauborg only to find that the cinema there showed Version Francaise. Not only that but at that moment someone had fallen off the Centre Georges Pompidou (or jumped off, we weren't sure) and apparently died, and the police and ambulance were starting to gather. Pulling out our respective city guides we decided to catch the metro up to Opera and, after walking down the street in the wrong direction, finally found a session in English.

Really enjoyed the movie, BTW.

Had some pretty unremarkable French food and headed home, glad to have the dreaded Sunday firmly in the past. Except the next morning, JPB woke up and wasn't feeling very well.

The lesson is: Paris is great, except on Sundays when it really really sucks.

And lundi isn't much cop either!

But I do still love the place.

Tags: Paris, JPB, Sunday.