A week in Paris
Mar. 29th, 2026 06:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcR. and I are back from a week's tourism in Paris. I enjoy how we continue to find ourselves agreeing often: R. certainly sees why I prefer Paris to London, it's so pleasantly walkable. Now I wonder about the affordability of property in Île-de-France transport zone 5 and which other French cities might be just as agreeable and also have plenty to offer. I have traveled plenty in North America, especially over my years being client-facing as a government contractor, but hardly at all in Europe. I have visited Paris a fair few times but mostly for work. R. has an appetite for further travel so we will see more in time.
Being dragged reluctantly into the modern world, I attempted public transit using a Navigo pass in a smartphone. On the first day, after the joys of a rail replacement service to get closer into Paris, I found that the Métro barriers didn't think I had a valid pass but no per-trip one was on offer in the app, nor was any physical pass available in the station at that time. It remains an unsolved mystery: I just bought the more expensive day pass and the per-trip option appeared in the app the next day, things worked as hoped thenceforth. The Métro Itself seems to be in the midst of the same kind of modernization effort that we are also seeing in Glasgow.
For me, Paris tourism is typically some combination of walking and Métro around central Paris visiting various attractions and just taking in the environment. We hadn't prebooked much so we had some freedom to go as our whims and increasingly aching bodies would take us. The weather was generally good, I consider us lucky. We kept sufficiently on the beaten tourist path that I scarcely had to inflict my poor French on those who indulged me with patient amusement as I mutilated their beloved language, mostly it was useful just for reading in-French signs describing historical things, though sometimes I'd read far enough to discover the English translation provided below. My skills are now such that I was pleased to correctly guess
The gardens varied rather. Many of them seemed to be wide, dusty, pale gravel paths, lawns, conical shrubs, cuboid trees, statues, hedges with right angles, etc. We wandered through the Jardin des Plantes which at least had flowers, a variety of rather well-grown ones indeed, though no fewer right angles. I think the Japanese might be rather better at the kind of garden I like.
Paris has a considerable abundance of publically accessible magnificent buildings that I enjoy seeing and being inside. For example, on our last day we visited the Musée des Arts et Métiers where the tour turns out to end in the Prieuré Saint-Martin-des-Champs which was a pleasant surprise for me. On this visit, some of the more outstanding examples included buildings hosting dead people, ranging from Bonaparte in the Invalides to Rousseau and Voltaire in the Panthéon. For the above métiers, I was interested to see an IBM 7030 from 1961 and a Cray 2 from 1985, though one feels old to also see floppy disks and DVD players among technology museum artifacts. The exhibits included what looked very much like the first videocassette recorder that my family had, back in the early eighties; seeing it reminded me of the feel of its rather mechanical controls. Separately, the Musée de l'Armée has plenty of exhibits, including a couple of Enigma machines.
I tend to try to avoid tourist magnets so it was only on this visit that I first saw inside the Louvre. Having once served as a palace, it's also an impressive building, and fortunately large enough to accomodate the many tourists without being too unpleasant to experience. It's a nice contrast to the British Museum, which gets cramped and is full of visitors naughtily touching things. Thinking of the exploitation of the colonies, I wondered if France is like Britain in having many of its largest, shiniest things coinciding with the time of empire. The loot included such exhibits as the Code of Hammurabi and a Phoenician sarcophagus that was in nice condition, I was glad to get to see them. There were nice "local" exhibits too, like a statue of Joan of Arc hearing voices. I often found myself liking some of the less-emphasized works more, it occurred to me that someday I could get to answer some computer's series of binary preference trials and have it learn what I like and how that differs.
I was also glad to get to see the Musée Carnavalet which was quite new to me. It offers a long history of Paris and was part of what made me realize how much of the little French history I knew, I have forgotten. I am inspired to learn more: not specifically about the Revolution or suchlike, more the broader tapestry of changes in government, reaching back into the distant past like Charlemagne and forward through the Empires and Republics.
In this visit, we did not emphasize local food, we didn't have fancy meals nor did we visit any traditional French cafés. We ate some fast food, and sat down at a couple of nice Vietnamese cafés, and a nice Afghan café: that is, they were cheap and the food was good. Each evening, we stopped at a grocery store or two on the way back to the apartment we'd rented, picking up a baguette each day, things to eat with it, etc. In the local stores, I was amused to see Scottish products: cheese, salmon, etc. A notable aspect of the fast food restaurants is that the order status screens reflected reality, unlike the implausible ones here that display such fictions that they should just turn them off.
Last night's return flight was from Charles de Gaulle into Edinburgh so we took our usual commuting route, the train into Queen Street, as part of our journey back home to Glasgow.
Being dragged reluctantly into the modern world, I attempted public transit using a Navigo pass in a smartphone. On the first day, after the joys of a rail replacement service to get closer into Paris, I found that the Métro barriers didn't think I had a valid pass but no per-trip one was on offer in the app, nor was any physical pass available in the station at that time. It remains an unsolved mystery: I just bought the more expensive day pass and the per-trip option appeared in the app the next day, things worked as hoped thenceforth. The Métro Itself seems to be in the midst of the same kind of modernization effort that we are also seeing in Glasgow.
For me, Paris tourism is typically some combination of walking and Métro around central Paris visiting various attractions and just taking in the environment. We hadn't prebooked much so we had some freedom to go as our whims and increasingly aching bodies would take us. The weather was generally good, I consider us lucky. We kept sufficiently on the beaten tourist path that I scarcely had to inflict my poor French on those who indulged me with patient amusement as I mutilated their beloved language, mostly it was useful just for reading in-French signs describing historical things, though sometimes I'd read far enough to discover the English translation provided below. My skills are now such that I was pleased to correctly guess
beforefor
avantbut, on hearing
trente, realized I'd not have easily recalled the number thirty without the prompt. I also marveled at the excellent
rthat the automated message on Métro line 2 uses in saying,
Couronnes.
The gardens varied rather. Many of them seemed to be wide, dusty, pale gravel paths, lawns, conical shrubs, cuboid trees, statues, hedges with right angles, etc. We wandered through the Jardin des Plantes which at least had flowers, a variety of rather well-grown ones indeed, though no fewer right angles. I think the Japanese might be rather better at the kind of garden I like.
Paris has a considerable abundance of publically accessible magnificent buildings that I enjoy seeing and being inside. For example, on our last day we visited the Musée des Arts et Métiers where the tour turns out to end in the Prieuré Saint-Martin-des-Champs which was a pleasant surprise for me. On this visit, some of the more outstanding examples included buildings hosting dead people, ranging from Bonaparte in the Invalides to Rousseau and Voltaire in the Panthéon. For the above métiers, I was interested to see an IBM 7030 from 1961 and a Cray 2 from 1985, though one feels old to also see floppy disks and DVD players among technology museum artifacts. The exhibits included what looked very much like the first videocassette recorder that my family had, back in the early eighties; seeing it reminded me of the feel of its rather mechanical controls. Separately, the Musée de l'Armée has plenty of exhibits, including a couple of Enigma machines.
I tend to try to avoid tourist magnets so it was only on this visit that I first saw inside the Louvre. Having once served as a palace, it's also an impressive building, and fortunately large enough to accomodate the many tourists without being too unpleasant to experience. It's a nice contrast to the British Museum, which gets cramped and is full of visitors naughtily touching things. Thinking of the exploitation of the colonies, I wondered if France is like Britain in having many of its largest, shiniest things coinciding with the time of empire. The loot included such exhibits as the Code of Hammurabi and a Phoenician sarcophagus that was in nice condition, I was glad to get to see them. There were nice "local" exhibits too, like a statue of Joan of Arc hearing voices. I often found myself liking some of the less-emphasized works more, it occurred to me that someday I could get to answer some computer's series of binary preference trials and have it learn what I like and how that differs.
I was also glad to get to see the Musée Carnavalet which was quite new to me. It offers a long history of Paris and was part of what made me realize how much of the little French history I knew, I have forgotten. I am inspired to learn more: not specifically about the Revolution or suchlike, more the broader tapestry of changes in government, reaching back into the distant past like Charlemagne and forward through the Empires and Republics.
In this visit, we did not emphasize local food, we didn't have fancy meals nor did we visit any traditional French cafés. We ate some fast food, and sat down at a couple of nice Vietnamese cafés, and a nice Afghan café: that is, they were cheap and the food was good. Each evening, we stopped at a grocery store or two on the way back to the apartment we'd rented, picking up a baguette each day, things to eat with it, etc. In the local stores, I was amused to see Scottish products: cheese, salmon, etc. A notable aspect of the fast food restaurants is that the order status screens reflected reality, unlike the implausible ones here that display such fictions that they should just turn them off.
Last night's return flight was from Charles de Gaulle into Edinburgh so we took our usual commuting route, the train into Queen Street, as part of our journey back home to Glasgow.
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Date: 2026-03-29 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-03-29 06:20 pm (UTC)