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27 March, 2010
The day turned out very… German! In the sense that wherever I went, I mostly kept hearing German speech around, while it hadn’t been the case previuosly.
In the morning I felt like visiting The Centre Georges Pompidou. I took the metro to Les Halles, walked out of the station and… stood agape. First, the weather was so nice and pleasant! Second, my eye was caught by the very beautiful Saint-Eustache church, around which everything was blooming with white and pink flowers. And third, I saw a black cat. Then – another one at a distance, and one more a little further. These were live cats, not figurines, as I initially thought: they were moving their heads and ears, licking and grooming, although sitting in the same place all the time. But when a fourth cat, also black, jumped down from somewhere above, I thought I was going crazy!
Generally, the place – Forum des Halles – was unimaginably beautiful! All the greenery, flowering trees, fountains, bridges and crossings, and the sky with white puffy clouds looked absolutely fantastic (okay, the sky did turn grey at some points, but I really don’t know how come all my pictures seem to capture only these moments)!
After a bit of a walk around the place, I found the Centre Pompidou, but for some reason decided against going in. Instead, as I was feeling like walking even more, I took the tube to the Luxembourg Gardens.
On the way, a guy with some papers came up to me and started shilling for something, but I cut him short: «J’comprends pas!» – I told him cheerfully. The guy made another attempt: «Español?» – «Non!» – I replied. «English?» – Again: «Non!». Looks like this simple trick was the best I could think of – the guy just shrugged and walked away.
I really enjoyed the Jardin de Luxembourg. Again, largely because of the weather – it turned out that it majorly affects your impressions about a particular place. From time to time it was drizzling, but despite this it was bright and sunny, and beautiful white pillow-like clouds were sailing across the sky. Among the rich greenery, here and there, there were sculptures of various French queens – starting from the canonized Clotilde, Bathilde and Mathilde up to Mary Queen of Scots and Marie de’ Médici. I couldn’t find Marguerite de Valois or Catherine de’ Medici though – not sure whether it was me not searching properly, or for some unknown reason they are not represented there at all.
Around noon, I deigned to dine at the brasserie “Le Luco” on Boulevard St.-Michel. I had duck fillet in pepper sauce, and crème brûlée for dessert.
After fortifying myself with nice food, I walked to the Montparnasse Tower, in order to head up its viewing platform – I had heard that the queues there were much shorter than to the Eiffel Tower, plus you would get a view of the Eiffel Tower as well. So, together with other tourists, I took the lift to the 56th floor, the whole outer wall of which was basically one large window providing excellent panoramic view of the whole Paris. There I also came across a Russian tourist group of a very impressive size: apparently they had just arrived, as the tour guide, who, by the way, was telling very interesting stories, kept repeating: “This I will show/tell you tomorrow/the day after tomorrow/later”.
From the 56th floor, I got to the last one, the 59th, where the viewing platform was. Great view, it’s just a pity that the Champs Elysees were far away – I really wanted to get a bird’s-eye view of the Place de l’Étoile to make sure that the place really looks like a star.
Then I went back to the hotel, where I somehow managed to twist my ankle (right in the hotel room, wearing ordinary slippers and not killing stiletto heels as one might have thought!), so didn’t go anywhere in the evening. My ankle hurt so badly that I was struggling to walk the distance from my bed to the bathroom! So I called my Azeri friend, who had twisted her ankle a week before, and she brought some gel, which made me feel better. We stayed in all evening, listening to music, eating sandwiches, chatting and laughing.
Travelling Leila 