Travelogue : Paris - Louvre, Champs-Elysées, Eiffel Tower

The Louvre Museum was initially built as a fortress in the 12th century along the banks of river Seine. It went through a lot of changes, destructions, reconstructions and enlargements for over 4 centuries. It was finally at the conclusion of the 18th century, it was opened as a museum for the public. Though renovations and changes were still being done till as late as the end of the last century. During the reign of Francois Mitterrand, a massive metal and glass pyramid was added as the entrance lobby. At a height of 70-feet, this pyramid, which was designed by an architect named I.M. Pei, has a lot of controversy surrounding it. As is remarked in the Dan Brown novel "The Da Vinci Code", there are several conspiracy theories running around about Francois Mitterrand and his penchant for the number 6. This pyramid also features prominantly in the initial frames of the movie adaptation of the same novel. A couple of meters away is the downward pointing La Pyramide Inversée, which provides daylight into the lobby of the underground malls in the museum campus.

The museum has 4 levels - lower ground floor, ground floor, 1st and 2nd floors, with each floor divided into 3 sectors each - Denon, Sully, Richelieu. The lower ground floor has access to the Medieval Moats where one can see the foundation base which was revealed after excavations were done. The lower ground floor also has relics from Islamic art, Pre-classical Greek art, Italian and French Sculptures. These sections continue vertically onto the ground floor, where there is an elaborate section for antiquities from Iran as well. In the French Sculptures section of the Richelieu one can view the "Tomb of Philippe Pot", while the Mesopotamia section has some great relics of Hammurabi etc. The most vouched painting of the Louvre is the Mona Lisa. Infact the whole section of the Italian paintings and sculptures is a major attraction why people come to the Louvre. As you enter the museum, there are arrows indicating the path to the Italian section on the first floor, where La Giaconda or Mona Lisa is awaiting the curious visitors. Though photography is supposedly banned at major places in the museum, but people cannot resist taking their snaps along side the most famous painting of the world. In the same hall there are plenty of other master pieces from maestros like Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. Other prominent paintings hanging nearby are the "The Wedding Feast at Cana", "The Raft of Medussa" and the "Madonna of the Rocks". Continuing on the same floor, but in the section of Richelieu are the Apartments of Napolean and othe Monarchs from the Rennaisance era. Visiting the Louvre is an exhilirating experience, but an avid art lover would just not get enough of it. Paris is home to many other famous museums like Musee d'Orsay, Musee National d'Art Moderne etc. which have some amazing artifacts on display.

Coming out of the Louvre, one is standing facing the L'Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. This Arch was constructed at the orders of Napolean I, to celebrate the victories of the French army. Continuing your walk westwards, you enter the Jardin Du Tuileries with the Tuileries Palace on your right. The Tuileries Garden has a broad promenade and a serene water-fountain encircled with seating chairs, which provide a perfect spot for having a good evening walk with your family. Further westward is the Obelisk of the Place de la Concorde, one of the largest squares of the city. At its centroid is an Egyptian Obelisk, gifted by Mehmet Ali, to the French people. On either side of this obelisk are massive picturesque fountains. In the nearby vicinity are the palaces - Grande Palais and Petit Palais. The Avenue des Champs-Elysées starts from here and extends uptill the L'Arc de Triomphe on the other end. It is interesting to note, that La Pyramide du Louvre, L'Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, the Obelisk in Place de la Concorde, the Champs-Elysées, L'Arc di Triomphe and the Grande Arche de la Défense are all aligned in a straight line. The Champs-Elysées is the most famous and broadest avenue of Paris. As you walk down the promenade, you can see all the high-street shopping stores of Paris. Surely, not a place to be along with your partner, or you would risk shelling out heavy currency in any of its high priced stores. However its a great place to treat your eyes with stores like PLanet Hollywood, Disneyworld, fashion stores like Zara, Benetton, Gap, etc. The Champs-Elysées is also a place where the Parisians love to celebrate their joy and happiness, be it the national day of 14th July, New Years Eve, world cup victory etc. Its also the last stretch of run for the bikers of Tour de France.

The Eiffel Tower is synonymous with Paris. After all this monument has been adorning the Paris skyline for more than a century. It was initially constructed as an exhibit for the World Fair being hosted in Paris during 1889. Designed by Gustave Eiffel, it had been the tallest building in world for a long time. After the fair was over, the tower was commissioned to be torn down. But the Parisians had begun to love this monument, that the decision was overturned. Since then, the tower has been used for many purposes besides being a popular tourist spot. For instance during a certain period, it was used a giant thermometer, with lights indicating the current temperature The tower has 3 levels. The 1st and the 2nd levels are accessible through stairs. There are about 700 steps from the ground base till the observation deck on the 2nd floor. The top summit is accessible through a lift from the 2nd level. However one can take a lift to each of the floors from the base ground. The lifts run on all 4 corners of the tower. The view from the topmost level is very breathtaking. I would personally suggest to be there around sunset and view it from the top. And when it becomes dark, the city becomes bejewelled with monuments all around light-up by the focus lights. For all the right reasons, Paris is called the "City of Lights", because when you see from the top of the Eiffel Tower, you see a vast ocean of lights below you. During the night, there are huge beams of light skirting the Parisian sky from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Every hour, there are glittering lights blinking along the body of the tower for a couple of minutes, giving an amazing sight in the night sky. Below the Eiffel Tower you will find a lot of immigrant workers selling mini-replicas of the tower and along with other such souvenirs, they also sell a bottle wine with glasses. The idea of having a romantic moment with your loved one on the tower top or in the sprawling lawns at its base, is as dramatic as you can imagine it to be.

Travelogue : Paris - Arrival

Last month when I was at the Mini Europa park in Brussels, while going around the miniature replica models of the European monuments, one city that caught my fascination was Paris. For past couple of summers, I had been making plans to visit Paris, but they never materialised due to some odd reason or the other - either not having an appropriate group to go around with or not having booked the tickets or accomodations well in advance. Over the last 1 or 2 years the cheap flight schemes have changed the way people travel and plan their holidays in Europe. Ryan Air, German Wings, Easy Jet and similar flight services have some good offers for backpackers and young travellers like me, who dont mind the absence of the occasional courtesy of the air hostesses or the free onflight beverages during the relatively short flights inside Europe. Though these cheap flying offers have become a phenomenon in the travel airspace, one has to take these offers with a pinch of salt. The reduction in the ticket prices is often offset by the extra travel one has to endure coming to the city center from the airports where these flights operate, because sometimes these airports are quite a bit far and wide away from the city perimeter. And in cases like Paris Beauvais airport, the travel in the shuttle bus from Beauvais airport to the city ring of Paris is almost as long as the flight duration from Venice Treviso. To add to my travel woes, my baggage arrived in a badly handled shape. Though I checked in my tripod as fragile baggage, it reached Paris severely demented. I am not sure if I could be able to use it for taking precise night shots as I used to before.

The Beauvais airport shuttle bus drops you at the Porte Maillot center. We had a booking in a hotel close to the metro station of Porte de Vincennes and so we took the metro line 1 directly from Porte Maillot which took us straight to our destination. As I had mentioned in my previous post related to travelling in Greece (about arriving in Athens), I am personally receptive to the general vibes of a city from the initial infrastructure the city presents to its visitors. I am a big fan of the metro services in cosmopolitan cities. Living in Munich, I used to enjoy the luxury of hopping around the city in a well connected network of U-bahn which would run late into the nights. Though the U-bahns in Frankfurt were not as clean and tidy as compared to Munich, they connected the city pretty well and helped thousands of commuters move around the city without much chaos. Among the metro networks, I rate the London Underground the best. I found it amazingly organised and well managed. Inspite of being a complex network, the Underground stations are built in a planned manner, helping a new commuter or a visiting tourist through simplistic use of colour codes for the various lines. The metro network in Paris (owing to the size of the city and its over 2 million inhabitants) is a similarly complex but well organised network. Since we were too tired with the exhaustive travel (spending the same amount of time in the very uncomfortable seats of Ryan Air and the very comfortable seats of the shuttle bus), we didnt have much energy or zest to explore anything that night and headed straight to the hotel room.

I had taken French as a subject during my college days. For two years we had read the story of the Vincent Family travelling to France from Canada and experienced their vacation in Paris through the textual description of the L'Alliance Francaise text book used in India to teach French language by numerous colleges and high schools. I salute my French teacher who had taken the effort to work on our accent and rectified our grammar. Being an Indian, we had a naturally heavy accent in the French we spoke in the class. I still remember the absurd manner in which our other friends (who did not take French as a subject) would pronounce the title of the ballad "La belle dame sans merci" (written by John Keats), during our English poetry classes. As a student back then I had sincerely hoped to visit Paris some day and see in reality the places and streets I had read so much about. Over the years, sadly to say I have lost my touch with the French language, but I can still manage to understand the written French and some tidbits of spoken French. After having learnt French and getting an interface with the French culture, it was a natural progression to take interest in anything related to or connected to France. When the "Les Blues" won the Fifa World Cup in 1998, I was the biggest supporter of France in my neighbourhood. Since then Zidane has been an idol to me and I have been religously following his matches. Though Zidane is not a Parisian and I don't expect to see any of the current French footballers in Paris, as a die-hard fan of the French team I was very much eager to see the most vouched city of all Frenchmen. As is my ritual custom of watching a movie or reading a novel based on the country or the city I am planning to visit - before departing for Paris, I had seen "The Da Vinci Code" and "Mr. Bean's Holiday". Though there have been some better movies and novels based on the city of Paris, I could only manage to lay my hands on these. With my mind virtually on the streets of Paris and refreshed with my petit French vocabulary, I was all very excited to see the city I had dreamt to see since my school days.