Alarms were duly set for noon, yet verily was I up and raring to go ten minutes before it sounded. I don't know how, I was operating on six hours sleep in the past fifty-two but perhaps it was my endorphins throwing in the towel and concurring that if we were going to collapse into our club sandwich at lunchtime we may as well enjoy ourselves doing it.
The plan for the day was Montmartre and to meet another dear friend who had found herself living in Paris by various twists of fate. This delightful quartier is found lurking behind the Sacré Coeur and if Galeries Lafayette is Paris in a ballgown, Montmartre and Pigalle is Paris in a negligée. In the former you find the Moulin Rouge, prostitutes a plenty and lots of stange leather things. In the latter you find an abundance of cafés, bookshops and gnarly denizens variously busking or watching life go by. We had a coffee and a tarte au citron of such deliciousness I abandoned all hope of ever finding joy again in Montmarte surrounded by tourists laughing, Parisians smoking and falling autumn leaves. It was all desperate French.
Aprés tout it was time for us to wander back down the white stone steps at the front of the Sacré Coeur to meet my dear hosts in front of yon merry-go-round off of Amelie. This was at first a stroke of romantic genius on my part but failed to take into account the sellers of bracelets
The sellers of bracelets all have terrible grins and stalk around the bottom of the Martyr's Hill (Montmartre) and every so often will lunge at your wrists in an attempt to affix to them a frayed bracelet woven of thread. They will then charge you an exorbitantly high price for this piece of tat which you are unable to get off your wrist given the nature of the knot they have tied. Mainly its best to avoid them at all costs but I am half minded to advise the readership the best course of action is to run screaming at them as one would a flock of belligerent one-eyed Parisian pidgeons. This would be purely for my own amusement and thus very wrong of me. But funny, terribly funny to imagine...
Of course after having made our way down the steps, on my part imaginging if I would roll or bounce witha misplaced foot, we gave the aul gluteals a bit more of a stretch walking up and into the basilica itself. It was (well, presumably still is, though I haven't checked BBC news in a while) beautiful, there was a choir of blessed sisters (collective noun, a superfluity; well I suppose too much is better than nun at all!) and the songs they sang reverberated around so that you could feel them in the soles of your feet. Much nicer than Notre Dame, no hunchbacks though, juts some very nice holy brethren.
Next on our magical mystery tour as the Champs Elysees. Actually it wasn't so mysterious as 'twas my dearest wish to see it and so I dragged everyone to Paris' high street where all shops and things is. But there was Cartier and Swarovski just where a cool young man was bodypopping like there was no tomorrow; Vuitton and Guerlain where we witnessed a Michael Jackson lookalike busting a move in sparkly gloves; at one end you have the Place de la Concorde where despite its name, the guillotine gave Antoinette and Robespierre a short back and sides; and at the other the looms the colossal Arc de Triomph, commissioned by Napoleon who had a lot to compensate for. He was very underwhelming, a disappointment really. Never had any confidence with the ladies. Marie-Louise must a been a patient woman.....to think only five foot six...
Night was once again falling as we made for that glorious staple of student life; pasta in any sort of sauce available and made our plans to head to the cinema. A film all in French! I was astounded to be able to understand any of it, but even more astounded at the prices those damn Frogs will charge for a wee bag of Pick n Mix. Not amused. Even moreso when I compared it to Woolworths, remembered that great emporium had shut up shop as it were and became very melancholy over the recession. But not for long; oh never for long.
Because at last bed beckoned and eight hours sleep were paid to the sleep debt, which never seemed to matter before university, and in the morning it was sunny and clear and I was for a-wandering.
Goodbyes said, it was time to wander round the city on my own. Or at least, within a few streets of Notre Dame. Postcards purchased I was able to find a terribly nice café which outdid itself in coffee and strawberry tarts and I sat next to the window alternately scribbling missives and writing the Parisian Odyessy. I was worried they'd throw me out after an hour, but surely not. A budding Baudelaire staring thoughtfully at a little notebook is excellent for business, I'm amazed they don't hire people to give this exact effect; I'd do it in a minute, it felt like a bohemian rhapsody. And all this was topped by a cherry when a group from Ohio wandered in, guffawing loudly, sat just next to me taking off their coats, knocking my little table in the process and sending my postcards tumbling to the floor which in turn caused the serveur to rush over, not to take their order but to pick up my correspondence and say;
"Les américains, huh? Ne t'en fais pas, petite." (Americans, eh? Pay them no mind darlin.)
Granted it would have been complete idiocy to say this aloud in English. Sarkozy would probably have recieved a sharp note from Obama. But he didn't have to say it at all and after months of "I speek eeenglish, don worry" as an answer to your query said in a foreign language, it was nice to be trusted as a francophone, not a franco-phony.
So I toddled off out of Paris touristland, muttering bye-byes under my breath, and caught the Metro to Porte Maillot where my bus would leave for Beauvais. All was well, followed the signs for Sortie, climbed up the steps, glimpsed the station in the near distance and made my jolly way towards it...until I was stopped by six lanes of inner-city traffic.
Okay, thats all right, I say to myself, I shall walk down to a crossing or some such. Except there is no pavement and the grassland is punctuated by hidden hollows making walking in kitten heels a tightrope act. But verily I see someone mere yards away and assure myself there is indeed an escape.
That is until I've walked for another five minutes and come to the realisation I am in the middle of a massive fecking six lane roundabout with no way out. I've passed the fella with the backpack three times now. We have begun exchanging the flash of smile when two human beings realise that each is in the same awful situation of not knowing what the hell's going on. On the fouth sortie, we stop and shake hands.
"Er, parlez-vous francias? O espanol? Or English even?"
"My English is better than my French, Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"
"Oh, not a word of German I'm afraid. Are you, ah, lost too? I'm Aileen by the way" (well, he was an attractive German)
"Hans Gruber, yeah that about sums it up. Been on this damn roundabout for 35 goddamn minutes. No way out, you see"
"Yes, yes, I know! It's all traffic, not a pedestrian crossing in sight. Shouldn't be allowed. What do we do? What do we do?! Make a break for it? Its our only chance. Let's go!"
"No, no! Calm down mein Freund, already lost an Italian backpacker to a minute sixteen rush of madness. No...we're going to have to play this smart."
Hang on, that may have got a bit out of hand there but it would take a genius who hadn't noticed the Die Hard reference to realise it was not an impeccable narrative of true events. In the end me and a German toruist (called Michael disappointingly enough) decided to boot it across six lanes of traffic in a barely sufficient lull.
The journey home from these places is never really interesting, which is odd because you find thousands of petites moments on the way There, but Back Again was never the thrilling bit of the Bilbo's story. It was all very quiet until I got into 39 Santa Engracia, dropped my bag, wondered if I could be arsed to go make some scrambled eggs, went to switch on my bedroom light which promptly exploded and plunged the whole flat into darkness and ended any chance of hot food. And so the credits roll and the screen fades on a Parisian trilogy, until all that is left is a cinematic
Fin
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