2008 for me, would be marked by the significance of my first visit to Paris... here's a taste:
Paris, 23rd Oct – Day 1
No matter how many times you might have heard this before, I still feel the need to state the obvious; Paris is a truly English-unfriendly place. Aside from a general dislike for Englishmen, the French don’t like English-speakers of any other nationality either. Nor do they weakly attempt to communicate in the language; and when they do, it is with disdain.
RER. The metro was my planned route into Paris from the airport. It took me a long while of reading signs and deciphering some French phrases before I got on the right train.
Hotel Agora. A stroke of genius, if I may say so myself. I had scoured the net and settled on this hotel because of its proximity to the RER stop of Chatelet de Halles, a convenient stop that was at the centre of Paris with close proximity to just about everything I would want to see on foot. Further research into the Hotel’s location reinforced the notion that it was a good pick… it was on a street full of cafés and pedestrians. And I was so spot-on right.
Funny thing about the hotel tho; some things are tiny… The elevator that guests can use to reach the upper floors, presumably necessary when one has heavy luggage to tote, is a 2½ feet by 2½ square shoe box. Let me put it another way. The only way I could fit my hard case bag was if I had stood it upright and I sat on top of it, otherwise the bag and I could not go up the same lift together… the shower stall in the room was the same size except this time I thankfully didn’t have to deal with luggage in a confined space as well. Having said that, it was still a challenge to soap my toes because I couldn’t bend over to do it. But that really is all I have to say about the hotel that slants negatively.
Oh and the staff spoke English, just as the brochures said they would, but I'm beginning to think that the disdain that they spoke it with might have been taught to them as a default method of expression that went with the language... or something...
Food. A good and hearty, hot and spicy Turkish kebab in 12 degree-temperature on a Paris sidewalk café had hit a spot. Ok, ok… so it isn’t quite close to French cuisine, but I already had my fill of Franco-Italian, pseudo-fine-dine three nights running in Monte Carlo and thought a break from routine would be nice. ;-) Besides, I had noticed that there are probably equal, if not more, foreign type restaurants than there were French ones in the section of Paris that I was in, so it isn’t really unusual or exotic to have an unpatriotic dinner.
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