Paris Attractions | Singapore Travel Photo Blog @ travelerfolio.com

Romantic Paris

After about 13 hours of direct flight from Singapore, we finally touched down at Charles de Gaulle Airport. We were a bit disorientated at first, and there were so many people at the airport. We went through the immigration custom very smoothly without any problem linked to the SARS issue from our country. However, we were quite worried as our passports were not stamped at the custom. We clarified this at the information counter and were relieved that it was not mandatory for that.

Paris is beautiful beyond words, with nice alleyways between the fine, elegant old buildings. Our backpacks were very heavy. We headed directly to AIJ, an international hostel providing bare-bones accommodation; but most importantly, it is located in the city centre and walking distance to Bastille district and Ledru Rollin Metro Station.

We checked in at AIJ Hostel around 10am but it was still early to get our room. We left our backpacks in a storage room with other people’s backpacks. Rather concerned with the safety of our belongings, we used a chain to secure our backpacks together and padlocked the chain.

We walked to Bastille. It was like a marketplace with many people.

We visited the Carnavalet museum (Musée Carnavalet in French) in the Marais district, free admission. This museum is devoted to the history of Paris from its origins to recent times. The architecture of the building is in renaissance style. It has many reconstituted palace rooms and a collection of paintings.

Saw this artefact depicting the two planes that crashed into the World Trade Center.

Lunch time. We walked to a peaceful and refreshing garden in The Place des Vosges that lies at the heart of Marais district. There were many people lying on the soft short grass; some were reading and some were just relaxing under the blue sky. We bought some kebab sandwiches from a nearby Turkish stall and had picnic at the garden. We were rather prudent in spending Euro dollars (in 2003, it was S$1.98 = 1 euro) so we tried to share food and buy out meals.

Notre-Dame & Hôtel de Ville!

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Notre-Dame & Hôtel de Ville

Notre-Dame de Paris, a Catholic cathedral located on the Cité island surrounded by the Seine river. It is one of the masterpieces of Gothic art in Western Europe dated back in the 13th century, with stunning stained glasses and a huge interior. The Walt Disney movie “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame” has given it quite a lot of publicity too!

At the opposite side of Notre-Dame is Hôtel de Ville (means “city hall”). It is a magnificent building housing the City of Paris’s administration, but the square in front of the building was once the main site for all sorts of executions! OMG!

Surprisingly, we met a lot of friendly people in the city (we often hear tourists recounting their unhappy experience with the stuck-ups in Paris). However, it seemed that the Black officers at the Metro Stations were rather sulky.

It is easy to travel around in Paris, except that we have to change trains many times and it can be quite confusing to tourists. It was the first time we saw buskers boarding the train to play music inside.

Back to AIJ hostel, we checked in our dorm. It was a very simple room with two double-decker beds that were not very comfortable. In the middle of the night, we were shaken by someone who opened our door! He opened it slightly and closed it shortly. We think it should be the housekeeper, but he should have a record on how many people staying in the dorm.

Louvre Museum, the World Famous!

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Louvre Museum, the World Famous

We were early birds queuing up at the entrance to Louvre Museum on Sunday morning, the first Sunday of the month and it was free admission to all!

Louvre holds some of the world’s most famous works of art. It is so big and fascinating! It houses antiques, paintings, sculptures and royal treasures from all over the world.

The world famous Mona Lisa painting is actually a relatively small painting as compared to paintings that are a lot larger in Louvre. Apparently, Mona is encased in a bullet proof box. Under tight security, all we could see from a distance among the crowd, was her renowned enigmatic expression, smiling wanly through the yellowing varnish glass.

And the Mummy is still so beautifully wrapped up!

Venus de Milo – the Greek goddess of love and beauty – is so charming! She is so glamourous despite having missing arms! And she certainly steals the limelight and deserves everyone’s admiration.

Liberty Leading the People commemorates the French revolution of 1830. A woman personifying Liberty leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the flag in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other.

Wondering how the huge pillars were transported from Egypt in olden times.

Filling up our stomach at a cafe in Louvre.

Parisians really know how to enjoy life, relaxing under the warm sun and sipping cups of coffees and wines.

The central courtyard of the museum is occupied by the Louvre Pyramid, which serves as the main entrance to the museum. It is a glass pyramid designed by a Chinese-American architect.

Just before the museum closed, we were madly rushing through every corner of the museum that we had not visited yet!

Montmarte & the Red Light District

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Montmarte & the Red Light District

After we left Louvre, we adjourned to Montmartre, a hill known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur (“Basilica of the Sacred Heart”) and a nightclub district. It was not all exhausting but somehow enjoyable walks uphill on cobblestones and steep staircases connecting one street to another, with old houses and little parks that still retain the village characteristics.

There are full of painters and souvenir shops too. Many penniless artists who once worked and lived in Montmartre included Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh.

We entered a restaurant and had an overly charged meal, though before the trip, we had already read about how to avoid that kind of situation when ordering drinks, especially Evian! I asked for table water but the waiter served me Evian that cost €5 (about S$10)! I wanted to tell the waiter that was not what I wanted, but he was really fast to open the Evian bottle cap! I had never drink such an expensive mineral water before. =(

At last, we reached the top of Montmartre, the highest hill in Paris where the gleamingly white Basilica of the Sacré Cœur was built at the end of the 19th century. The Sacré Cœur is a holy place and a flagship of Catholic devotion to the Holy Virgin in Paris. It attracts many pilgrims from all over the world and has a large network of affiliated churches.

We went into the Basilica and the interior is very finely decorated.

We were soaking up the breathtaking views, with Paris beneath our feet.

As the night fell…

We walked downhill to Moulin Rouge, a traditional cabaret that is famous internationally as the ’spiritual home’ of the traditional French Can-Can. It offers musical dance entertainment for adult visitors from around the world. Quite a small building, simple and old, but a lot of people were queuing up for the show.

As we were walking through the red-light district, sexy show girls wearing colourful wigs were soliciting us to see their show; and a Black guy even greeted us with “Ni Hao” (a similar meaning in Mandarin as “Hello”), hoping that we would enter their nightclub.

Back to AIJ hostel, a young Japanese girl entered our dorm and occupied the only vacant bed left. She was travelling alone. As a girl, I think she was bold enough to share room with strangers and guys! She occupied the lower deck while our guy friend occupied the upper deck. He was always happily chatting with her.

Arche de la Défense, Sainte Chapelle & Latin Quarter!

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Arche de la Défense, Sainte Chapelle & Latin Quarter

What a different scene of old Paris at Arche de la Défense (La Grande Arche)! Where are the romantic pathways?! Here is in the major business district of La Défense in Paris. This district constitutes high-rise buildings and though it’s not far from the old city, it seems completely out of place in the city of romance. Many tourists assume that La Défense is some kind of military zone, but it is actually named to commemorate the soldiers who had defended Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.

Nothing much to see in this business district, except looking at working people busily moving around.

Musée d’Orsay closes every Monday. Too bad, we went there on Monday. This museum is best known for its extensive collection of impressionist masterpieces by famous painters like Monet and Renoir.

We bought 10 metro tickets at €9.60 for a better discount.

We walked to La Sainte-Chapelle (The Holy Chapel). The Sainte Chapelle is a pure masterpiece of Gothic art, a chapel designed as a shrine for Jesus Christ’s thorn crown and other precious relics during the colourful Middle Ages by the king of France. The most visually beautiful aspects of the chapel are its stained glass and rose windows, that are considered the best of their type in the world. The rose windows depict scenes from the Old and New Testaments, moments from the passion of Christ, tree of Jesse and the history of the passion relics.

The Latin Quarter got its name because Latin is spoken there. We bought ourselves some cheap lunch; other than being a quaint, historic area with many cafes and restaurants, nothing much about it that could fascinate us.

We happened to see the Pantheon, a famous burial place, but we didn’t visit it. To us, it was just another historic building with a dome.

Suddenly the weather became very chilly and our teeth were chattering! Yet, we still had a long way to walk to the metro station, so we all walked like zombies!

Arc De Triomphe, Champs Elysées & Eiffel Tower!

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Arc De Triomphe, Champs Elysées & Eiffel Tower

The most dangerous shot – we were risking our lives to take this photo!! The Arc De Triomphe stands 49m high, 45m wide and 22m deep. It honours those who fought for France during the Napoleonic Wars and is also the tomb of unknown soldiers. It is an arch of triumph commissioned by Napoléon at Champs Elysées avenue.

This guy is so tall!

The Champs-Elysées is known as the most beautiful avenue in the world and also a top Paris district for city life, with galleries of designer labels. We heard that there were Chinese people wooing tourists to help them buy branded goods with their passports and in return, these tourists would get a token from these wooers. Indeed, we were even approached by a Chinese lady who persuaded us to help her buy Louis Vuitton. We turned down her request to save our time.

Eiffel Tower – the most visited paid monument in the world – was once an eyesore to many when it was built. The objective of the project was to demonstrate the capabilities of modern steel engineering at Paris 1889 world exhibition, and originally had no use at all! A novelist supposedly ate lunch at the Tower’s restaurant every day as he claimed that it was the only place in Paris where he couldn’t see the Tower!

There was some restoration work going on at the lower part of the Eiffel Tower, and it was not uncommon to see that at tourist attractions too. We went up to the second floor only as we thought we would only see tiny buildings on the third floor (top floor), just like what we experienced when we were on top of the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai. Also, to get to the higher floor, means higher ticket price. Our friend bought the ticket to the top floor. This awesome photo was taken from the top floor of Eiffel Tower.

It took a while for us to get into an elevator that brought us up to the second floor. The unobstructed panoramic view beneath the Tower was spectacular! It was windy and chilly too!

Aerial view from Eiffel Tower.

As the elevator was always packed with visitors, we descended the stairways. It took us quite a while to reach the ground floor and we were pretty tired after walking down the long flight of stairs made of solid iron! Our friend who ascended to the top floor was supposed to meet us at the ground but he wasn’t there. We were very cold while waiting for him. There were many blacks selling souvenirs at the ground floor. Our friend finally met us and he claimed that he had a diarrhea at the top floor toilet! What a spot to answer nature’s call!

Château de Versailles, the magnificent palace!

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