Avilas in Paris

Paris is a place steeped in mystery and romance, rightly so, depending on the day.  As long as I can remember, my sister has had an obsession with the city going as far as decorating her room in Parisian theme.  So when my sister, mom and dad booked their flights to come visit me in London, I introduced the mystique of Eurostar--a two point five hour city centre to city centre train service ferrying tourists between the alternate universes of London and Paris.  

I've been to Paris quite a few times now and am a bit cynical.  It's beautiful, don't get me wrong.  But my inner city dweller needs a bit more to be impressed by than national monuments swarming with tourists in trainers videoing their every step.  Alas, watching my sister's face light up at the Eiffel Tower, my mom practically running to see Notre Dame and having to drag my dad out of the Louvre was an altogether worthwhile experience.  

Notre Dame in sepia tones 

 

Locks on the chain bridge 

 

On the metro, as I kneed a small Indian man with dry, cracked hands who'd rubbed his groin area up against Jaclyn's leg, I quickly learned that my sister attracts more than her fair share of creepers.  And there's a lot of creepers in Paris.  In fact, and I say this with experience, we were overcome with rude Parisians who pushed, jostled and yelled at their fellow man.  

 

 Onwards we went.  We sort of stopped at Sainte Chappelle, a beautiful chapel just a stone's throw from Notre Dame.  I say we sort of stopped because none of us wanted to pay the 8 euro entrance fee to see a church 1/10th the size of Notre Dame, which was free to get into.  So Paul, wielding his youthful age and EU passport accessed the chapel for free and snapped a load of photos.  The rest of us sat on a bench wondering why eight vans of riot police were assembling just in front of us.  We never really found out.

 Instead we made our way slowly to the Eiffel Tower where my mom snapped roughly 300 photos and my sister tried to position both herself and the tower into a range of selfies--an arduous task.  We opted not to wait in the 2-hour-long queue and made the slow walk away from the tower when it spontaneously burst into twinkly fairy lights.  Jac was underwhelmed: 'it cheapens it, don't you think?'

This is when my dad saved the day with this:

We headed back to our hotel in probably-convenient-if-you've-flown Montparnasse, right next to the catacombs, a series of underground vaults with the skeletons of millions of ancient Parisians.  It's been on my list of venues to see for some time and, yet again, we missed it.  Alas, Hotel du Midi Montparnasse was a welcome home away from home.  It probably wasn't best for a short weekend hop due to its location far away from Eurostar but we had a balcony overlooking some part of the city and the surrounding area was delightful.  I introduced my family to the boulangerie, fromagerie, poissonerie.  Everything sounds cuter in French.

Our day two was much of the same.  I walked my parents to exhaustion, fended off the creepers and found a boulangerie to end all boulangeries.  We also took the boat before ending up in Montmartre, the little artisty enclave that provides all kinds of delights:

 

All in all, I'm certain my family enjoyed Paris but I'm not sure if was what they expected.  As for me, I'll go back but who needs the tourist spots when you can wander an antiques market, people watch whilst same-side-sitting and eat all the cheese your stomach will allow.