Buns2025: Day 5 – Paris

Soundtrack – anything but “Candles in the Wind”

It never fails to amaze me how badly the worlds of accommodation and travel fail to to be in sync. Flights arrive all the time, but most hotels only let you check in between about 2pm and 1am. You might be able to store your luggage, but I’m yet to find a hotel that will let me check in at 8am or 9am, even if I do offer to book a full extra day (I won’t rule out that there may be places of the 5 star variety allowing this, and if I ever get to the point of being ablke to afford a European 5 star hotel I’ll give it a try and let you know).

I’ve just taken a paragraph to describe how I got to my hotel many hours before I could check in, so I stored my luggage and headed out to waste some time. The plan was to just wander the local area (11th arr), get breakfast, and then sneak over the border into the suburbs to the Puces flea market.

I wandered through the fog down the Boulevard de Magenta, which was generally quiet being a Sunday morning. Made it to the Place de la Republique, a large open square with a big statue. Around the base of the statue were piles of flowers, candles and notes, at first glance it looked like detritus from a big Saturday night, but as I got closer and read some nearby signage, these were from a few days before, marking the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 13 November 2015. I felt quite heavy at that point, I certainly remember hearing about the attacks, but to stand where thousands of people came together after, and easy walking distance from my hotel, shit felt real. I stood in quiet reflection, saddened that there are those who feel they need to express such violence at innocent bystanders. Heavy that such violence can happen to anyone, at any time, when all they are really doing is going about their day. The people in restaurants and seeing bands and catching public transport aren’t the ones responsible for the actions of the wealthy elite, they’re soft targets for cowards.

Okay, rant over for now, further down the road I found the Bataclan, the theatre restaurant where The Eagles of Death Metal were playing when terrorists killed 90 attendees that night. On the footpath in front of the building are a number of raised circles in tribute to the victims (I haven’t been able to find out if the exact position of each one is significant). Tired, and after a long week, I shed a few tears. It’s one thing to stand in the place of a distant historical brutality (and there will likely be a few such places on this trip) but it’s another to be where this recently happened, places that have seen sadness and violence in my own lifetime. Another Mick Thomas quote, “There’ll always be a band to see, a book to read, a game to go to, songs to write and pools to swim and a dog that needs a ball to throw to” — thanks Mick that last bit is cutting me harder right now. Life goes on for the rest of us, and the older I get the less inclined I am to make that life harder for anyone who isn’t deliberately and maliciously trying to make life harder for others.

It’s amazing how fog and light rain can make a city seem grey and get me all waxing philosophical, maybe that’s Paris talking to me through a lack of sleep and empty stomach. I found a place not far from the Bataclan, Chez Gaston, offering a choice of 3 breakfast formula: Le Parisien, Le Complet, Le Nordique. All the French practice I did in preparation was paying off, as I understood most things on the menu (I had to cheat and look up ouefs brouilles as my lessons hadn’t covered “scrambled”). The French seem to understand crispy bacon, so that’s one thing in their favour. For my first croissant in France, this one was wonderful, soft, buttery, a little salty, I think part of the pure joy that makes the croissant is the texture. There’s a whole bunch of stuff out there about dunking croissants in coffee, one side proclaiming it to be the true experience, the other a cardinal sin. With no firm belief either way, I did sneakily dunk my croissant to try, dip my pastry into the beverage so to speak, and while it was good, I didn’t see the light: a good croissant needs nothing, neither does a good coffee need a pastry. If it’s your think, dunk away, but I remain convinced.

People smarter and more knowledgeable than me have written reams on the whole Paris thing of the inner 20 arrondisements and the suburbs, or banlieues, the places beyond the central ring. If this interests you, go looking, you’re not likely to get anything educational here (the whole blog should probably have this disclaimer). Suffice that from my reading I did at least feel I should set foot outside the 20, so I headed out to the Puces Marche, a large flea market just outside the ring. Here is a maze of stalls of bric-a-brac, antiques, and some stuff that can be filed under random shit. Plumbing supplies, doll parts, door handles, paintings, 200-year-old wooden furniture, chandeliers, postcards, records (both vinyl and what looked like old police records with mugshots and fingerprints), Kenny G CDs, jewellery, retro fashion, animal skulls (possible even a human skull or two), books, old toys, movie posters, tools, electrical fittings, ex-soviet union egg beaters, lighters, pipes, old bottles, rocks, fossils, old boxes: if you are looking for random old French shit, this is the place. I spent a couple of hours just wandering among the maze of alleys, filing away in my brain of useless knowledge that this is the place I’d need to go to if ever I had to restore a late-19th century French maison, right down to sourcing the light switches. Puces, a flea market with everything but the fleas (though there were various preserved insects in containers and plastic, so I could even be wrong there).

Lunch was at a little bistro down around the corner from my hotel, offering all manner of local offerings. I went for the croque madame, and an Alsatian beer. This madame was certainly on the larger side, it sure was one big-ass sandwich. Wonderful bread, soooo much cheese, ham, and a soft ouef du plat on top. The biere (Meteor) was good, crisp, not too hoppy, just right for a big sandwich (and frites). Would have loved to try dessert but I was too full.

Checked into my boutique hotel, it’s not huge but at least the shower is not right next to the bed — the room is a battleaxe so there’s a bedroom, corridor just wide enough to allow the door to open, and bathroom at the other end. No cupboards or drawers, but the clothes rack does have 10 hangers, because Paris right? It just felt good to know that I’ll be here for the next 5 days, and better to just lie straight and horizontal for the first time in over 24 hours. I unpacked and then took a nap.

The Eiffel tower is big. 300 metres tall, tonnes of steel, millions of rivets holding it together, originally built as a temporary structure to show off that the French could build pointy penis-structures taller than anyone else, or something like that — isn’t overcompensation behind all the world’s tallest buildings? In the end it was probably too hard to take it down so then left it, then when radio came along it was perfect for an aerial. I’m sure at the time there were dumb assholes scared that the radio waves would give everyone consumption or beam signals right into the ID, unleashing an epidemic of penis envy, but as tin foil hadn’t been invented what could they do? It was probably the only thing going on at the time that the nimbys and cookers of the time couldn’t blame on Jewish folk. My other favourite Eiffel tower story is that when the Germans captured Paris in 1940, the last thing the tower workers did was cut the elevator cables so any invader hoping for a quick selfie from the top would have to take the stairs.

I wasn’t going to take the stairs, too old for that shit. I’m sure wikipedia could tell me how many, but somewhere the other side of a fucktonne is about my guess. What is capitalism for if not paying extra to take the lift to the top. As I had some time spare before my allotted time, I took a stroll across the Seine to the Trocadero, through the crowds taking selfies or paying enterprising folks set up for special selfies: a bright light and a bunch of love heart balloons for a prop. The other challenge is to not trip over the traders selling little light-up tower souvenirs who spread their little blankets everywhere. Another potted Eiffel tower fact – a few years ago the French got copyright on the light show that illuminates the tower, which is why all the brochure pictures are taken in the daytime. Technically they can sue your ass if you try to make money off pictures of the tower at night. Ah, it’s a wonderful world. Every hour there’s an extra 5 minutes of strobes that go off all over, and everyone goes “ahh” or “oo la lah” or something. Other enterprising traders on the way up to the trocadero are selling bottles of wine for folks to drink on the grass, or the deluxe package of a bottle of vin rouge and a pack of cigarettes.

So for the second time this year I found myself standing where an iconic photo was taken, this time where Hitler had his holiday snap taken with the tower in the background on his 1940 quick visit. Not sure how I felt about that, I think it’s the first time in my travels I can say I stood where Hitler did, on any given day thousands likely also follow the same geographical path, generally oblivious to the history, and hopefully not the same ideological path.

The lifts to the top of the tower are smooth and quite fast. The first one goes at an angle, like a funicular, there’s a stop at first level, for folks who want to have a look around. There’s a change at level 2 for a lift that shoots straight up. At the top there’s two levels, an enclosed viewing area, then up a few steps to the open area (well, an open cage), there’s a champagne bar here. Even though the night was pretty cold, I figured I should spend the 20 or so euro and get a glass of Moet served in a narrow plastic cone (safety over style I guess). Even with some fog and cloud around it’s an impressive view, night time is probably also good in that the obelisk Montparnasse tower isn’t as prominent.

Full of near-frozen bubbles I headed down. There’s an option to take the stairs from level 2, apparently it takes 10-15 minutes, but I’d already done plenty of steps today so took the lift to level 1 to have a wander there. Levels 1 and 2 have eateries and souvenir shops. Did a lap of Level 1, though didn’t notice if there was any sort of marker for the spot where an early French inventor tried out his winged parachute suit for the first and last time (there’s black and white footage on the internet).

The walk back from the tower took me past the Flame of Liberty, which is a full-sized replica of the flame atop the statue of liberty, atop the Pont de l’Alma. It’s also above the tunnel where the drunk speeding chauffeur driving Diana, Princess of Wales, and her boyfriend, son of a millionaire sexual assaulter, missed the road and hit the bridge, leading to multiple deaths and the totally unneeded reworking of the Elton John song. The bridge itself is covered in graffiti tributes to Diana, because that’s apparently how people want to remember her.

There we go, bookended the day with the recently and senselessly deceased.

Then it was back to the hotel, and time to get reacquainted with the back of my eyelids. Monday’s plan is to hit the Louvre early, and get all arty and stuff.