All photos for this trip can be found in our
2017 Scotland/Paris Photo Album
Look for the "Week 6" tag for photos added this week.
2017 Scotland/Paris Photo Album
Look for the "Week 6" tag for photos added this week.
We had read about an older area of Paris that has been having a bit of a resurgence so we decided to walk the Canal Saint-Martin, well the part that is not underground that is. Sunday, we took the metro to station Juares where the canal links up with the Bassin de La Villette.
One of the guide books indicated that, on Sundays, traffic was blocked along one side of the canal to provide a "pleasant family friendly environment along the canal". Well, hating to be party poopers but, on this day, from the top of the canal along Quai de Valmy, although the traffic had been blocked, there is bugger all to see except a whole lot of graffiti, numerous areas that looked like homeless encampments and large apartment buildings that, frankly, looked a tad run down and neglected. The canal, although the locks were of interest, looked like it could use a good flush out and cleaning. We walked up a couple of side streets looking for something/anything else of interest. Found a few shops that were open so did a bit of window gazing then returned along the canal. As we turned the corner near the Jardin Villemin, we came across a couple of open shops with some interesting items in the windows, and a couple more sidewalk cafes that were clearly more popular than the ones further up. Maybe this whole area is due for a revitalization of some sort.
A bit further along, we noticed a brocante (a sort of pop-up neighbourhood flea market as opposed to the larger more permanent ones) on the other side of the canal. So we hiked over one of the pedestrian bridges to Avenue Richerand and wandered through the myriad of used goods up for sale, mostly clothing and assorted junk. Along Rue Alibert we came across a pretty good looking row of farmer's market stalls with lots of fresh veggies, fruit, seafood, meats and of course cheese. By this time we were starting to get a bit peckish and there were a number of popular sidewalk cafes here so we decided to venture into the Maria Luisa, a tad tatty looking, but the pizzas were looking pretty decent from what we could see. Although the service was exceedingly slow, the pizzas (4 cheese for Kris and parma ham and cheese for Brian) were very good.
From our brief experience in this clearly working class area we did learn a couple of things.
- You can offer up for sale, dirty wrinkled clothing with a good chance that someone will buy it.
- No ten second rule, or maybe an exaggerated one . While waiting for our pizza, the little boy at the next table dropped his ice cream cone. It sat upside down on the floor near Kris' foot for at least a minute with no perceptible action being taken on the parents part. Not wanting to inadvertently step in it, Kris bent down, picked it up, somehow most of the scoop stayed in the cone, and set it on their table. The mother wiped a bit off the top and handed it back to the child. Did we mention that this was not a spic and span floor!
After lunch, having seen as much of the Canal Saint-Martin as we needed to, we wandered down Avenue Parmentier to the Goncourt metro station and caught a train to the Centre Pompidou where we really only wanted to visit the bookstore and gift shop. There really wasn't any current art exhibition that we were keen to stand in a long line to see, BUT, we had to stand in the same ticket line anyway. Today it wasn't a huge long line and it only took about 20 minutes to get into the building. While in line we had a nice chat with a couple from New York who had a hard time understanding why the city of Vancouver would not be on Vancouver Island. Oh well! We had a good look in the bookstore and gift shop then retreated up the street to a Starbucks for a couple of iced lattes and a sit down rest. Later we walked over to Les Halles to the Monoprix for some dinner groceries before taking the metro over to the Bastille. We stopped there for a glass of wine at Le Bastille sidewalk cafe (one of our go to spots last time we were here) before walking home up Rue de la Roquette.
Monday was a bit of a touristy day and time to knock off a couple of our to do list items. We discovered that bus route #69 runs right past our apartment, along the Seine river past the Louvre all the way to the Eiffel Tower. A tad slower than the metro but, of course, much more scenic. This morning we got off near the Louvre and bought tickets for a Seine river cruise. OK... something to note... when the person at the info centre says "the cruise leaves every half hour" it is not what it might seem.
When you look at your watch and see that it is 12:40pm and it is about a 10-15 minute walk to where the cruise departs, you don't need to hustle your ass over there because there is no departure at 1:00pm as one might have thought. To us, a clearer way to put it would have been more like "it leaves hourly on the half hour".
Anyway, the cruise was quite interesting with lots of sights to see with the biggie being, obviously, the Eiffel Tower...
By the time the cruise ended it was early afternoon and we had not yet had lunch. We had decided beforehand to try the restaurant in the Bon Marche so we wandered through the streets of the left bank to get over there. Talk about a snark hunt! Once in the Bon Marche we asked a salesperson where their restaurant was. Well, which one, there are several. We chose French and she pointed us up one floor where we ultimately could not find any sign of a restaurant. We asked another salesperson who informed us there is no restaurant on this floor and pointed us to a walkover to the next building where "there is a very nice French restaurant". Off we went only to find the only restaurant across the walkover was featuring Italian cuisine as part of a larger Italian promotion in the store. Not what we were looking for... so we headed back to the streets where we had passed by several sidewalk cafes, stopped in at one and had excellent lunches (crepe and salad for Kris and croque madame for Brian).
We had decided to go back to the Eiffel Tower in the evening when, at sunset, they turn on the 20,000+ lights. We had a few hours to kill before then, so after lunch we jumped the metro to the large Le BHV Marais department store on Rue de Rivoli. This store is just huge and they carry the most amazing array of goods. Check out their website to get an idea. We spent a couple of hours looking around in the store then stopped for a rest at the Starbucks on their 5th floor.
A little after 6:30pm it was getting on to dusk so it was time to finish off our touristy day by jumping back on a #69 bus to the Eiffel Tower. By the time we got there the lights were indeed on and it was a pretty cool thing to see...
It was starting to rain, there was a large queue to go up the tower and it was totally overcast so views would be limited, any of which is a reason to not go up the tower on this day. Since we have been up the tower on a previous visit, we decided to give it a miss and headed over to the bus stop to catch the #69 back towards home. The number of hawkers selling tower related souvenirs is pretty astounding not to mention the ones selling bottles of wine or champagne to "mark the occasion".
Back at the bus stop we found some cover while we waited for our bus. Just before it arrived, the lights on the tower started to glimmer. It was 8:00pm. They do this every hour on the hour from sunset to about midnight for about 5-10 minutes. Pretty neat (just as I started the video a van pulled up right in front of me, but you can still see most of the tower)...
Tuesday, we decided to "go up the hill" to Montmartre. There are a number of really good fabric stores, that Kris discovered on our last trip, on the hill below the La Basilica du Sacre-Coeur du Montmartre, so we decided to start there. We took the metro to the Chateau Rouge station because it appeared to be at about the same level, on the hill, as the stores were. We used our iPhone GPS to navigate the narrow streets leading toward the church, when we encountered a large set of stairs...
...128 steps to the top which put us just below the beautiful church...
... with a fabulous view out over the city. The Eiffel Tower is out of site off to the right, but everyone wonders what the hell is that monstrosity on the horizon. The best we could tell is that it might be Tour Montparnasse, a 210 meter office tower...
.... BUT... we found that we were now 128 steps above where we wanted to be. We thought maybe we should have taken the side street just before the bottom of the steps but it seemed to go too far down the hill so we just obediently followed the GPS up the steps. Lucky though, because we were now on the same level as the top of the funicular and, to boot, our metro pass was good on it. The trip down was a lot easier than the trip up.
Browsing the shops, Kris picked up some beautiful linen that will become a new blouse when we get home. We stopped at Le Ronsard, with it's nice views up at the church, for lunch (quiche lorraine for Kris and croque madame for Brian). Very good.
Leaving the area, we walked down the Rue de Steinkerque, a street where there must be more cheap tourist crap than anywhere else in Paris, then decided to walk down the hill. After a couple of blocks we came to a bus stop where the sign indicated bus 85 would go directly to where we wanted to go. So on we got! We got off on the corner of Rue Drouot and Rue de Provence and reasonably quickly found our way to the entrance of Passage Verdeau around the corner on Rue du Faubourg Montmartre...
... there are 3 Passages Couverts in this immediate area, Passage Verdeau, Passage Jouffroy, and Passage des Panoramas where you leave one, cross the street and enter the next one. They are all glass covered pedestrian walkways with cool looking stores and restaurants. It is a bit like the Plus 15 system in Calgary, connecting different areas while helping pedestrians avoid any inclement weather...
Coming out of the Passage Panorama, we were right at the Grand Boulevard metro station so we went in there and, after a couple of transfers found ourselves home.
Wednesday we jumped a 69 bus over to Rue Rivoli where we got off at Saint Paul and wandered the Marais for a couple of hours, eventually making our way to the Musee d'Arts et Metiers. This is a really interesting museum but we think you really do need the audio guide as all of the descriptive texts, for the very cool exhibits, are all in French only (go figure). We did stop and take a few pics of the Cray-2 supercomputer on display though...
... our friend Neil, in Calgary, would like that!
After the museum we jumped on a #20 bus that took us down Blvd Beaumarchais to the Bastille where we got off and went into Dalloyau for a selection of macarons then walked over to Starbucks to have a couple of lattes and eat the macarons. Yummy.
Home for a rest. For dinner we decided on Le Paris, the very first restaurant we ate on on our first trip to Paris. This time it was megret de canard for Kris and pasta bolognese for Brian. After dinner we stopped for one last sit out for some wine at Au Cadran Voltaire, where we must now be regulars as the waiter treated us each to an extra glass of wine. Nice way to end our last night in Paris (for this trip anyway).
Thursday we were up early to finish packing, final cleanup in the apartment, lock up the apartment and head over to the taxi stand across the plaza and we were off to the Gare de l'est for our train trip to Frankfurt. Leaving Paris our train picked up speed pretty quickly and soon reached over 300 km/h...
... the countryside goes by very quickly at that speed and it is most amazing when you pass a similar train going in the opposite direction; just a very brief "swoooosh" and it's gone.
We arrived at the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof a few minutes late, just after 1:00pm. From there we found our way to the track for the S8 S-Bahn train to Mainz, about a half hour out of Frankfurt, where we checked into the Hotel Schottenhof, our home for the next 3 nights.
Note... we ended up booking this place because this weekend happened to be the "book fair" week in Frankfurt, during which time hotel rates etc skyrocket in Frankfurt. A half hour train ride into and back out from Frankfurt is a small price to pay for a hotel rate of about $100 CDN instead of over $300 CDN per night.
Anyway, we got booked into the hotel and by this time it was late afternoon so we decided to just wander around part of Mainz and find a nice German restaurant for dinner. Well.. we couldn't find a German restaurant for love nor money. We found lots of fast food places like Subway, Burger King and McDonalds along with a myriad of Thai, Turkish and Chinese places but finally after what seemed like an eternity we did come across a German restaurant where Kris had a chicken schnitzel and Brian had a cordon bleu. Man, were we hungry and were they ever good, BUT, were they ever way too big. After the lovely side salad that was served first, neither of us could finish the main dish. Afterwards, we made our way over to the Karstadt department store to have a look around then headed back towards the hotel. We jumped a bus back to the haupbahnhof then stopped at the sidewalk cafe Besitos Mainz, a Spanish tapas place, for a couple of glasses of wine before calling it a night.
Friday was a shopping day in Frankfurt. After a nice breakfast in the hotel (included in price) we took the S8 into the Konstablerwache, a large underground metro station in the heart of the Zeil, the main stopping street in Frankfurt. We started off the day with a couple of Starbucks lattes then spent the rest of the day on the Zeil, with the main large stores being Peek & Cloppenburg, Karstadt, and Galeria Kaufhof. Here's a few pics of the Frankfurt skyline from the 7th floor outside eating patio at The Galeria Kaufhof...
We stopped for an excellent lunch at Central Park Corner on Grosse Brockenheimer at the end of the Zeil. We each had a large bowl of tomato soup (should have shared one) then shared a smoked salmon with creme fraiche flammenkuchen (like a really thin crust pizza). After lunch a bit more shopping at COS and Oska, a coffee break then onto the S8 back to Mainz.
For dinner, we walked down Bahnhofstrasse to Hunkar Ocakbasi, a Turkish restaurant where we had the best Koftes (meatballs; for Kris) and lambkoteletts (lamb cutlets; for Brian) along with excellent salad. Yummy! Then a stop at Besitos Mainz for the usual wine and people watching.
Saturday was basically a repeat of Friday except for lunch we tried the shrimp and tomato flammenkuchen and for dinner we tried an Arabic place across from our hotel where the kebabs, although quite good, were not up to the yumminess of Hunkar Ocakbasi. Since it was our last night in Mainz, it called for a last sit outside at Besitos Mainz. On this night, since the Mainz football team had played a game in the afternoon, the place was quite boisterous. Folks, all decked out in their team regalia, were having a lot of fun.... and it lasted all night long. When we got up at 4:00 am Sunday, to finish packing and head for the train station, there were stills fairly large numbers of folks out partying.
Sunday was our travel home day. We got to the Frankfurt airport a bit before 7:00am and lucky thing too. No lineup at Lufthansa; we were first in line at the VAT customs counter and subsequently first in line at the VAT refund counters. Sweet... because by the time we were finished there was already a substantial line forming.
It ended up being a very long day. By the time we arrived home in Courtenay it was over 28 hours since we got up in Mainz.
We definitely recommend avoiding a connection at Heathrow in London. That place is brutal. On our flight from Frankfurt we sat with a Canadian woman who warned us that our 3 hour layover would be barely enough time. She was not far wrong. Even though we were on an international flight connecting to another international flight we had to go through two long lines of security (one right after the other) and we had to walk a long way even though we were in the same terminal. We ended up having just enough time for one last Cafe Nerro and scone with clotted cream and jam before getting to our gate and boarding our flight to Vancouver. On this flight we ended up with a window and aisle seat with nobody between us. Yeah! The meals were more than decent and the audio visual equipment all worked perfectly. Another Yeah!
In Vancouver, our friend Marian came out to the airport and we all had a nice visit and meal (burgers of course) at the White Spot. The one last glitch was the wait at the Comox airport for a taxi but we did eventually make it home around 11:00pm.
End of this trip!
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