I had promised two dear friends of mine that we would go to Paris together when they would come and visit us from New York but then again, when you’re 30, it’s high time you break (some) promises—hehe binuang ra! ;P
K’s first move: Book a hotel.
My first move: Cancel the hotel and book a hoStel. I didn’t want to spend a lot on accommodations and besides, it’s Paris! One wouldn’t expect to do a lot of sleeping in such a spectacular city, heller?!@#% Luckily, K agreed despite the prospect of having to possibly share a room with two other anonymous people. Hmmm…do I sense a backpacker in the making?? Hehe
So off we went to Paris on a 3.5 hour drive a day before my birthday with my 5 euro worth of French (unsaon man kuno pagtranslate ug “singkong tapok” sa Ininglis, beh?). And on our way I was prepping myself for my self-imposed mission: I would take pictures of the ugly parts of Paris. You know when other people would go to other beautiful places and just take photos of the beautiful parts? Well, I wanted to do the complete opposite. I wanted to take pictures of the other side of Paris, the side where people didn’t get to see…the side which they don’t show on “Discovery Travel and Adventure”.
When we arrived at Paris late in the afternoon, we checked into our hostel, which claimed to be one of the most popular hostels in Paris, the 3 Ducks (see photo below), and was located “at the foot of the Eiffel Tower” (their exact words—but puleeez, it ended up being a 2km walk to the Eiffel Tower and for a Filipina, that is a long walk!). I was naively imagining a hostel at the foot of the Eiffel Tower which I was hoping was just photoshopped to appear as if the Eiffel Tower didn’t have a hostel at it’s foot. Duh?
The 3 Ducks http://www.3ducks.fr/en-hostel.php
We got some brochures at the bar and decided to take a tour in the Montmartre District /Mohngh-maahgh-tuh/ (or something like that). We took a metro there to get the “local” feel and ofcourse because we had already found a good parking spot for our car just a block away from our hostel and we didn’t want to lose it.
Paris MRT
NOTE TO SELVES: Should you ever decide to live in Paris in the future, just buy a scooter or better yet a Smart Car (“mini-ca” ba) OR a pedicab, as finding a parking spot in Paris can seem to be as likely as the sun shining in Belgium (ooohhh! That was low! Oops! I’m gonna get in trouble for this! Hehe--JUST KIDDING! ;)
THE MONTMARTRE DISTRICT
An emerging new age tour in Europe is called “New Europe Tours”. And it most certainly doesn’t hurt that these tours are FREE! The tour guides work solely on tips. (www.neweuropetours.eu)
So without further ado, we took the 6pm New Europe “Montmartre” Tour and I will share with you some stories that made me appreciate going on tours and WILL continue to make me go on these type of tours.
THE MOULIN ROUGE
When we went there, the show that was on was called “Feerie”. They said that it was rumored that the Feerie shows would soon be nearing its super-duper-mega last curtain call because another show would be taking its place. Pretty much the evolution of the Moulin Rouge has been dictated by the tips that customers would give. The dancers soon realized that the higher they raised their skirts, the higher their tips went…and eventually, they became smarter and realized, “What if we don’t wear anything underneath??”. And so the tips came pouring in! hehe But ofcourse, the Moulin Rouge of today is very different AND the Moulin Rouge movie is an exaggeration of the real deal…or so I’ve heard. ;)
K and I have decided that when we’re 40 or 50 then we can be ready to watch the Moulin Rouge. Most of the people who were lining up to watch it were in that age bracket anyway. The cheapest ticket was 80 euro and if you wanted to watch the show and have dinner, be prepared to spend 150 euro. The strip bar right across is 20 euro. Take your pick.
Café des Deux Moulins,more popularly known as: Amelie Poulin’s cafe
After the Moulin Rouge, Amelie Poulin’s cafe was the next stop of the tour. I couldn’t even call it a quaint, little coffeeshop. It was located in the corner of a steep street and when K and I went back to have a drink there after the tour (just so we can say that we have actually HAD a drink on Amelie’s coffeeshop) there really wasn’t anything spectacular about it, apart from maybe the picture of Amelie hanging on the wall or plastered all over the menu’s.
But at least we could say that we had been there. :)
Little details:The director (or was it the producer) was apparently very fond of this coffeeshop for some reason that he decided that that was the perfect place to shoot part of his movie. So he talked to the owner and ofcourse, the owner was ecstatic. What owner wouldn’t want a movie shown in his café? The owner thought, “Oh, two or three weeks should be okay.”
But then, he soon found out that he was supposed to close his shop for 4 months!
Anyway, he still ended up agreeing and now his café earns him hundreds of thousands every year…thanks to little miss Amelie Poulin.
AU LAPIN AGILE
This ordinary looking night-club was once a favorite spot of struggling artists, one of which came one night, without any money but called on a waitress and ordered food anyway. As the artist was as broke as the ten commandments at that time, he decided to ingeniously sketch the waitress on a piece of table napkin as payment. The waitress, surprisingly, thought this was such a sweet gesture (pfff…women!) that she accepted it and so the artist got away with a free meal. The next day the artist came back and applied the same system. Again it worked and so he came back every day for a month.
After a month, the owner got wind of this and approached the budding artist. He said, “Hey, I can’t just accept table napkins with sketches as payment for your meals! I have to have something more substantial!”.
The artist said, “Okay, if you will promise to continue feeding me I will give you one of my paintings every week with my own promise that someday I WILL become famous and my work will be worth a whole lot more.”
Owner, stopped for a moment and said, “Okay, it’s a deal.”
And so the artist got his free meals in exchange for a couple of paintings. This deal lasted for a couple of years.
In the end, the artist became one of my most admired painters (drumroll please!): Pablo Picasso. Tadah!
And the owner, by then, had a basement full of Picasso paintings which he ofcourse, sold for a hefty sum of money (ummm… just more than a million for each painting) and retired happily ever after in the south of France.
So, the moral of the story is…?
LE BATEAU LAVOIR
This is one of the places where Pablo Picasso studied art together with another now famous artist, Amedeo Modigliani.
One day, as they were leaving their school, one “bystander” said to another (not exact words ;), “You know what , someday, these guys are going to be famous.”
Taking this to heart, the other “bystander” then waited one day for all the students to leave the building, broke in, and stole some paintings.
Picasso was the first at school the next day. When he found out that the paintings were stolen he broke into a fit of rage, breaking glass, semi-tearing down the place, and wound up in tears. Modigliani, Picasso’s biggest rival then, came next, and upon finding Picasso in that state, consoled him and said, “Don’t worry, Pablo. We can always make more paintings.”
Pablo, wiped his tears, and eventually confessed that he was crying because not a single one of his paintings was stolen. Everything that was stolen were works of Modigliani.
he he.
The LOUVRE
I admit, we didn’t really consider going inside the Louvre for the sole reason that we didn’t have enough time. The Louvre, they say, now holds around 35,000 works of art and that would approximately take 6 months to view! With only a day and a half, I seriously didn’t want to spend it inside the museum looking for the Mona Lisa by going to the Sully wing and taking elevator D…or E…then turning left and taking elevator G…or was that F? Then going to the…Whatever!?!@#%
So, the next day, we decided to go Asian and take pictures outside instead! :)
Did I mention that that day was my birthday? The weather was not very pleasant that day but hail couldn’t have stopped us from taking another tour. Remember when I said I would take photos of the ugly parts? Well, here it is…
You’ve seen it. You’ve seen it on tv, you’ve seen it in magazines, you’ve seen it in the pictures we took. In my mission to take photos of the ugly parts of Paris, I failed. Not because I couldn’t, but because there weren’t any. Paris is such a beautiful city, with a very rich history and there is just surprisingly, nothing bad I can say about it. They say Parisians are quite rude and snobbish, but all the locals that we had encountered there were quite okay.
Paris, admittedly, was not really one of THE places on my “to visit” list but I would definitely go back there in a heartbeat. To The Louvre, Rodin, and Picasso museums—See you next time!
Oh! Oh! And I would even go back just for these little morsels of heaven:
The Paris Macarons http://gridskipper.com/archives/entries/061/61929.php
When we drove back to Belgium I had a very surprising surprise party waiting for me. Being away from home will never be easy, but that day, K (together with our conspiring friends!?!@$%), made it all better. I would like to thank all of you again for making me welcome 30 with a bang... World, here I come!!! *wink*
