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Random Walk
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23 September 2005
This was the day when I realised my five-day batobus pass had expired and I'd only used it on the first day. I decided to start by going to the intersection of Pont Neuf and Rue Dauphine, where Pierre Curie died, and then wander wherever I felt like from there. But as it happened the Metro stop on the island in the middle of the Seine was slightly more convenient, so I went there first. I bought a few souvenirs, took a few photos, then walked over the bridge to the other island in the middle of the Seine. Eventually I took a bridge to the 'mainland' and went to Pont Neuf by Metro. The Pont Neuf Metro station has money designs all over the walls, and some examples of old Parisian money in glass display cases. I think there's a money museum nearby, but I didn't find it. I did come across Money Road (Rue de la Monnaie) while I was searching for a money machine, but ironically I could not get any money from Money Road.
I picked up a discount card/advert for a river cruise, then figured I'd do my duty as a female in Paris by going clothes shopping. I bought some cheap jeans, a nice practical bag which I figured I'd need to take all the extra stuff home with me, and some Mallowpuff imitations by some company I've never heard of. They were squishier than the real thing.
I just searched the web for a Mallowpuffs site I can link to, and found to my dismay that not only Mallowpuffs, but also Toffee Pops are only available in NZ. I love Mallowpuffs and Toffee Pops. In a kind of feigned sorrow that only Mallowpuff-deficiency can bring, I present to you a poem I wrote more than ten years ago - The Empty Mallowpuff. Well, at least I know where I can get imitation Mallowpuffs from... though it seemed to be a clothes-and-handbags shop which was perhaps only selling imitation Mallowpuffs and other assorted fatty food as a consolation to the hapless guys being dragged through clothes-and-handbags shops by their girlfriends. Incidentally, Marc knows where to get Marmite in Switzerland.
I took pictures of random things on the way back to Pont Neuf. There were some fire engines about, and I saw some police running down to where the river cruise boat left from. Having completely forgotten about Pierre Curie, I went on the river cruise.
I recorded the commentary on the cruise with my iTalk. I don't know how I lived as a tourist without a portable sound recorder, it's the logical complement to a camera.
At the end of the cruise somebody mentioned that people under 26 can go to the Louvre for free after 6p.m. on Friday nights, so I went there next. After spending a good amount of time eating a waffle and examining the map of the museum, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing that particularly interested me. I went to the Greek section and wandered around at random. I saw a lot of sculptures of heads without bodies and bodies without heads, or any pants on. I recognised some scenery from the time I went to the Louvre on the Contiki tour, and soon came across the Venus de Milo, one of the two works of art we'd actually looked at that time.
I'm so used to disabling the flash as soon as I turn my camera on that I forget there are times when it's useful, like when you're photographing art at close range in a dimly-lit gallery. So my pictures aren't really all that great, but I assume you can find professional pictures of everything in the Louvre if you really want to.
That night I noticed that the wireless internet at my hotel was working again, so I bought a card to access it for a few hours, then brought my Mac down to the lobby and realised there was another accessible network which did not require the card. Triomphent Champs
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22 September 2005
I've heard the Champs Elysées mentioned a lot when people talk about Paris. It's even mentioned in the publicity for the iPod as the place you would go to stroll listening to your iPod after having listened to it throughout a flight from New York to Paris. I know it looks pretty at night with all the car headlights and taillights, because I saw it on my Contiki tour. So I decided to start my day by walking up the Champs Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe. I found nothing remotely interesting about the avenue itself, although there was a place that made a good brie sandwich and lemon tart. That's not too impressive though, since I don't believe it is possible to make a bad brie sandwich or lemon tart.
I went to the Arc de Triomphe and took pictures, but decided not to climb up 50m of stairs to take pictures from the top. I'd already been up two towers in Paris, and I'm not that fond of stairs. I know I walk too much and eat too little when I'm travelling. The arc looked pretty much how I expected it to. There was a mention of the Swiss Army on it, or at least armées d'helvetique.
That evening I went back to the Apple Expo, where I bought a Griffin iTalk, the best voice recorder for iPod (and I know because I visited the Belkin stand next door as well.) Griffin makes cool stuff, as I knew from my experiences with the iMic and iTrip.
Aah yes, I also bought a skirt that day. A fashionable Parisian skirt. At least, I assume it's fashionable because it's Parisian, but I probably found the only unfashionable skirt in Paris. Oh well, fashionable things are only fashionable for a short time, while unfashionable things remain unfashionable until just after you've thrown them out. Ivory and Eiffel
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21 September 2005
The next day I went to the second and last day of the Science in the Service of War and the Responsibility of Scientists symposium. I thought it was interesting, most of it was in English but I think I could understand about 40% of what the French speakers said. However, you probably wouldn't find it interesting, so I won't describe it here.
After that I decided it was about time I went to the third floor of the Eiffel tower, since the lift was broken when I was there for my Contiki tour so I only got to to go the second floor. I was hoping to be up there before dark, so I could take photos while it was still light, and more while it was dark, but by the time I got to the third floor the sun was setting. It's probably just as well, because I discovered that after leaving my spare batteries in the wrong bag for the Segway tour, I must have moved them to the other bag, which turned out to be the wrong bag again because I had the other bag with me up the tower. My camera ran out of power after only a dozen photos or so. Still, I got a few fairly nice ones of the Seine in the sunset.
I also realised that on the Contiki tour I hadn't stopped at the first floor either. There's some interesting stuff on the first floor -- exhibitions, movies etc, and a good view of the crowds at the bottom.
There was a group of Japanese tourists in the lift with me on the way down. I seem to keep encountering Japanese people, and chickening out of saying anything in Japanese. Actually I'd probably end up saying something that was 20% Japanese, 50% French and 30% nonsense. At least I'm still fairly fluent in nonsense. Apple Expo
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20 September 2005
The first day of the Apple Expo. I got there just before it opened, and wandered around for a while. I sat and watched some of the demonstrations (in French) of Tiger, the iPod Nano, iTunes 5, etc. I confirmed my suspicion that when people are talking about computers, I understand French perfectly. I guess I already know the meaning of what they're saying, so I just need to fit that to the sounds I'm hearing.
Later on I met Marc, who said he'd seen Steve Jobs wandering around, presumably while I was watching the demonstrations. I was sitting there talking to the weird Swiss guy from Zurich, when along came a weird Swiss guy from New Zealand. Now, if you think you're surprised that suddenly I know another weird Swiss guy and that a weird Swiss guy can come from New Zealand, just imagine how surprised I was! In fact he's not originally from New Zealand, but from some part of Switzerland and I'm not 100% which at the moment. However, he's lived in NZ for most of his life and that's where I met him about nine years ago. I hadn't seen him for a few years, and had no idea he was travelling, when suddenly there he was at the Apple Expo in Paris. His name is Edwin and he runs the New Zealand Daily Poll (when you travel to the other side of the world and surprise me, you get a few bytes of publicity), which hasn't been anywhere near daily recently, and now I know why. He and his friend Claire (I hope I spelled that correctly) are currently touring Switzerland, so maybe they'll come visit me in Geneva.
Then all too quickly the two weird Swiss guys had gone to do their own things, and I went back to wandering aimlessly around the various stalls. I was amused to see Kodak Dental on the programme, since Kodak Dental is the result of Kodak eating PracticeWorks, one of the competitors of the company I used to work for. Out of curiosity I went to their stand, to find it completely empty except for a security guard who occasionally sat on the chair in front of the small stand. My previous employer hasn't made a Mac version of their software for about ten years, but I'm sure they'll be amused by that photo nonetheless.
I bought a wifi locator, because I've always regretted not buying the one I saw (at half the price) in Canada. It shows the signal strength, so it will be very useful for when I have no idea whose wireless network I'm using and thus which position I should be in to get the best reception. I wish I'd had one in Regensburg. Segway or the highway
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19 September 2005
If you've been paying attention, you'll know that something I like to do when I'm a tourist is to go up a tower and take photos. So what do you think I did on my second full day in Paris? I went up the Tour Montparnasse, of course! (I bet you weren't expecting that.) It's the only tall building in the centre of Paris, apart from the Eiffel Tower, since once it was built the authorities thought it was so ugly they wouldn't allow any more to be built. It has a pretty good view of the city, and indeed, of the Eiffel Tower. There's also quite a nice café up there.
Before I left for Paris, I found this Marie Curie Walking Tour online. Being a Marie Curie fellow, I thought visiting Marie Curie related places would be a good idea. I didn't much feel like doing all that walking just to look up at apartments though, so I headed straight for Rue Pierre et Marie Curie and found the Marie Curie Museum.
On the way there I found the Rue St. Jacques, and had to resist the urge to call out, 'La rue St. Jacques est ici!' Remember when I went to Frankfurt, and saw Goethe Strasse out the window of the taxi? The first few phrases of German I learnt, from the Pimsleur's German for English Speakers audiobook, were asking where Goethe Strasse is, and saying it's here, or it's not here, or it's over there. Well, I started learning French the same way, with the Pimsleur's French for English Speakers audiobook. These introductory Pimsleur's audiobooks are pretty formulaic, so the first sentences were about the location of Rue St. Jacques and Boulevard St. Michel. I found and photographed both.
I arrived at the Marie Curie museum at the same time as some other people, who had apparently arrived for some special event that I didn't know about. I pretended that I was there for the same reason, since it turns out that the museum is actually closed on Mondays, contrary to what that web page says. A few more people arrived, and the lady from the museum seemed surprised that so many people had come. I'm still not sure exactly what this was for, but she took us on a tour through the museum, telling us about the lives of Marie and Pierre Curie, all in French. I reckon I understood about 53% of what she was saying, maybe more. A Japanese guy arrived about halfway through, and he was told (in English) that the museum is actually closed on Mondays, but he could look around if he wanted. His country was thanked for paying to preserve a whole lot of clippings about Marie Curie, and he mentioned that Marie Curie is the most famous scientist in Japan. The museum lady said they get a lot of Japanese visitors.
We went to the actual laboratory where Marie Curie did experiments, but with only replicas of the furniture since the real thing is too radioactive. There's a real page of her notes there, alongside a sheet of that stuff I can't remember the name of, photosensitive whatchimicallit, which shows the pattern of radioactive blotches on that sheet of paper. Luckily (said the museum lady) the radioactivity from the single sheet of paper only penetrates a few centimetres, so we were safe. If I'd planned this further in advance, I would have got a film badge from CERN so I could measure how much radiation I was exposed to.
I bought a set of postcards and a keyring as souvenirs, which involved pronouncing the French 'r' at least once, yet I'm fairly certain that I got through that entire visit without anyone guessing that I'm not really a Parisienne who knew all about the reason they were doing a tour on that day. That was cool.
I took a few quick photos of a statue in Luxembourg, a park probably about as big as the country (well, maybe I'm exaggerating) and then took a bus back to Champ de Mars in time to start my Segway tour. The tour meets by the South leg of the Eiffel tower, and the guides can be recognised because they're riding Segways... I don't think I could imagine a more conspicuous meeting point. I asked if they'd ever tried 'low-riding' on the Segways like Woz does, and they hadn't, but maybe they'll try it.
I was the only person on the tour who'd ridden a Segway before, and perhaps that was why I seemed to be going faster than them at first. But I think I got less confident on it as the night wore on, after so often almost hitting things... by the end of the night I was lagging behind, and my legs and feet were so sore from standing up for more than three hours. Still, it was great fun, and I got to see a lot of Paris landmarks at night. I'd left the spare batteries for my camera in the other bag, so I took photos sparingly. But I finally have a few pictures of me on a Segway, which is cool... the one thing I regret from San Francisco is leaving my camera in the Hummer while we went whizzing around on the Segways, so i didn't get any pictures of myself on one. Those things are cool. Marc is a great source of vacation ideas, if it weren't for him I might not have thought to go to Paris and I wouldn't have even considered the possibility of a Segway tour. Though perhaps I would have noticed the other tours by the tower, and asked about it. Next Page |
