Paris with company... so much more fun!

Ana has a friend from school, Irina, who works only part-time, and mostly on weekends, so she has time to do stuff during the day. She is fond of walking and seeing Paris, so Ana asked her if she wouldn't mind accompanying me yesterday, Friday. Luckily she agreed. She's a really cool person, has even more stamina than I do for walking and I think she ended up showing me the other half of Paris I was missing!

You can view pics to follow through the descriptions below, but since I'm limited in how much info I can put in captions, you'll understand better if you read first, then see pics :)

We met at the same metro station I had come out of the day before, St Paul, but went the other way, to find Place de Vosges and the former site of La Bastille. Even though we were looking for it, we found Place de Vosges by chance, by entering through what looked like a museum. After the entrance, instead of entering a building you enter an enclosed courtyard. At the end of it there's a building, and we thought that was a museum or something, and there was no sign for entrance fees, so we pushed through. We were at the corner of an long arched passageway, which was the corner of another, huge courtyard... We kept going but we realized we weren't in a building anymore... this is Place de Vosges! Tourists were lying on the lawn, chilling. Everything was green, quiet, relaxing. It is just a public but secluded spot, and does have an actual road on one side, but on three corners it is kinda closed.

La Bastille isn't anymore. They tore it down after the revolution, and built a theater instead. All that remains is a tall, phallic monument in the middle of the traffic roundabout. From it to the Seine, though, there is a water inlet, a port, for tourist boats. On each side of it they were putting up stalls, as if preparing for a festival or something. Irina told me they often do parties or organize festivals there. Looks neat.

We followed that to the Seine and over it, to the area where the Museum of Natural History was. Tons of children, we just walked through their gardens (mostly under construction, unfortunately... Paris isn't much better than Madrid with that!) Behind this area is the Mosquee. They're open every day... except Fri, their prayer day! Go figure...

The walk from there to the Pantheon uncovered a very nice middle-eastern neighborhood, followed by a more generic touristy plaza with lovely restaurants and shops, and finally the area around the monuments, which was the pantheon itself, and another church (always churches at every corner, in every country, in every city...)

Next stop: Jardin du Luxemburg. Another nice area, to hang out, lotsa green... Unlike Madrid, Paris has many wide open spaces in the center itself. Madrid leaves those for the outside. The Champ Elysee is a huge wide area. All these gardens are also very wide, with big streets around them. Madrid is built with a smaller way-through in mind. The roads behind the main streets are impossibly narrow, cars bigger than a mini have to take care and time to negotiate the corners... I haven't found a narrow alleyway in Paris yet. Buildings are farther apart from each other.

From the Jardin du Luxemburg we walked to the Observatory. Unfortunately it is only open once a month, and you have to reserve an appointment by mail... I thought it would be more of a tall building to see Paris from. But it's actually one of those places where they have a telescope, to see the sky :P

We had plans to meet Ana and Nico for dinner in Montparnasse, a nice area of Paris, home of the Sacre Coeur, a church built on a hill, where you can see most of Paris. I think it's the tallest spot. We took the metro and arrived at Averne. Ana got out of work "early" (5pm on a fri) and joined us on the walk up the steps of the church. If we hdn't walked enough yet, this was 3X as intense! lol. At the top we got a nice view of the smog over Paris. And no Eiffel Tower. It was blocked by some trees and buildings. ;)

Walking behind the church there are some quaint streets, more like what I think of as a typical European town. All geared towards tourists, of course, so tons of souvenir shops, artists, restaurants... We walked downwards to wait for Nico, who didn't get out of work until almost 7pm.

Dinner was at a yummy place whose specialty are huge salads, served with fried/baked garlic potatoes, and your choice of ingredients. Ana keeps wondering at how much I eat... and yet I was the only one that couldn't finish the plate! And I hadn't even eaten anything but a bowl of cereal for brunch that day! Ils sont fous ces Français! :D

After dinner, a walk around... we were at the edge of an interesting street: Boulevard de Clichy. The metro stop is called Pigalle, and I think that is what they call the area. This is where the Moulin Rouge is, alongside all sorts of cabarets, sex shops, and the Erotic Museum. I actually convinced everyone to walk me through it, it was getting dark, and I read it was no good to be alone there at night. And a bigger feat: I got them into the museum! :) (I'll post a photographic walk-through as soon as I have a chance to finish processing pics...)

That pretty much tired Ana and Nico out for good. We headed towards the metro and they took off. Irina, a night-owl like me, was happy to continue my tour of Paris, to see some sights at night. We made our way from Place Clichy to almost the Eiffel Tower, all walking, of course, another 2 hours to add onto our meter :) Along the way, we saw a random bike-a-thon (haven't looked up what that was about yet), Opera, the Ritz, and all the nice areas and buildings in between, mostly the richer sides of Paris, the equivalent of 5th Ave or uptown in NYC. I ended up taking the metro back home only a stop away from where I took it the day before... same beginning and end, different itineraries!

I had been meaning to keep track on maps of where I go... in Madrid I just highlighted the map in my guide. Here I found a map online and tried out a digital version. Here's the itinerary of day 1, and the itinerary of day 2. (Yeah they're in Russian... bite me. It's the only one I found that covered everything.)

Made it home safely, St Denis was mostly deserted at midnight... Still managed to be online for a bit, and had a good night sleep. Today I am thinking of sticking to St Denis, walk about and discover this town by day. There's a famous church here, where the kings are buried... The metro stop itself has tons of statues and ads about it. Tomorrow we're going to the Asterix and Obelix park (yey!) so I can't make a late night out of it :)

Uff, this was long. One day I need to stick to one sight, like the Louvre... and have less to talk about ;) Keeping up with this blog with detail takes almost as long as all the things I do! lol 'Hope enough people out there are reading this and appreciating ;) Miss ya all, all over the world. This one is for you!