ZigZagging The Bridges To The Island Of Ice Cream

After the excitements and excesses of the communion we were immediately off on another family adventure. This trip was a negotiated twofer, ticking D's requirement for a trip for her 10th birthday. For S she was happy with a Parisian adventure in lieu of the more traditional watch, bike or bouncy castle in the back garden. With those terms and conditions agreed, we jumped on a frugal red-eye flight on Sunday morning, parking in the frugally blue car park somewhere on the Meath border. 

We landed in Paris around 9am local time on the Sunday morning and it was like our ninety minute flight from Dublin had magically transported us forward in space and time from a very mixed weather late Spring in Ireland to the height of Summer by the Seine in Paris. Like the previous day at home for the communion, we were absolutely blessed with the weather for the full duration of our trip with the sun always shining and temperatures hitting the twenties during the day. 

I had an interesting exchange with a taxi driver at the airport. He kindly, and completely off his own bat, offered to transport us into the city for €80. I did a quick cross-check on Uber and the estimated trip cost was closer to €40. So that set a strong precedent for the rest of the trip. Paris epitomises architectural beauty and urban planning at scale and much as we love to walk the legs off ourselves on these trips we opted to walk as much as was reasonable but not waste an afternoon traversing the city on foot when we could fly across in fifteem minutes. We also tapped the app whenever we got tired or overwhelmed or needed to be a good distance away at an allotted time. We only had 3 full days and we had a lot to see. For me there’s nothing quite like being chauffeured aggressively by a super competent driver through traffic jams and snarls in a teeming and roasting city in Summer time. The road rage is outsourced. Aside from the desired destination, control is completely forfeited. The soundtrack is exotically foreign to you, all brand new and viscerally exciting French Hip Hop. 

Our only other taxi experience (of maybe 12 trips in our 3 days there) was on our return trip to the airport. This taxi ride involved a stressed and aggressive taxi driver negotiating the chaos of rush hour on the Arc de Triomphe "roundabout" using his bumpers as indicators, nudging competing vehicles out of his path.... and then getting indignantly exercised as only the French can when he was blown off the road by other drivers. This was at the beginning of what would be an epic 3 hour pilgrimage through a continuous 20km traffic jam, six lanes deep (not the taxi driver's fault obviously) to our flight home. M made the observation that the vast majority of those making the evening journey outbound from the city to the more far flung suburbs were brown skinned. The residents of the more central arrondissements are predominantly non-brown. 

On the other hand, we had nothing but relaxed and civilised journeys regardless of traffic conditions in the Ubers. With the feedback loop that exists in the form of in-app customer-provided driver ratings, it really is commercially unwise to be an asshole Uber driver. As evil and unpleasant as the company's reputation is, there's no doubting the efficacy of the model in disrupting forever the old culture of of abuse, rip offs, discomfort and ignorance that typified taxi drivers and taxi journeys for tourists in the past. Vive la difference! 

Before we get stuck into describing the adventure proper, I should try and to give some indication of the meticulous planning that went into this short but action packed trip. Above is a sneak peak at the Paris Edition of the esteemed ClipArt City Guides series. See here for the Barcelona edition. The original of the series compiled fifteen years ago for a life-altering Paris trip has sadly been lost in both the physical and virtual realms. Anyways, in the above document you'll find a section called "Must Dos". This list was compiled one Sunday morning months before the trip itself and collates all of the things each of us said we absolutely had to do on the trip prior to performing any in-depth research. It looks a little something like this...... S: Get a "real baguette" | Get a French beret. D: Visit the Louvre | Visit the Eiffel tower. SK: Shakepseare and Co. Bookshop | "best patisserie in Paris" | Best gnocchi in Paris (la Loconda??) | Walk along the left bank (Boulevard St Germain) | Zig Zag bridge walk along the Seine | Walk the Canal St Martin. M: Mona Lisa @ Louvre | Send a postcard home.  With that small piece of scene setting out of the way, off we go. 

Bazooka Tricolore

The receptionist at our very beautiful, surprisingly spacious and wilfully non-frugal hotel near the Arc de Triomphe was extremely polite but firm in telling us we had no chance of checking in at 10am on a Sunday morning after a full-house Saturday night. We'd been awake maybe 7 hours at this point and, such are the stresses of airports and international transit, we already needed a rest. But we stashed our bags and headed off into the warm haze of our first Paris morning, legs a quiver with tiredness but eager to explore. Given the beauty of the day and the fact that we were already carrying a pre-packed picnic from home I made the call to walk all the way down the Champs-Élysées to the Jardin des Tuileries. It didn't seem ambitious at the time but it turns out that tired legs move slowly while aclimatising to heat and the  is indeed a long avenue. We rechristened the hike the Champs-Élysées Bastard, aka the "Seán's a Lazy Bastard". 

Gee-Eyed By Lunchtime

Re-hydrating, Paris style. 

After several shaded pitstops to re-gather our energies on the avenue we eventually made it to the park. We secured some prime, shaded real estate and much coveted cast-iron chairs and recliners and settled into a powerful lunch of walker's sammies and Cinnamon Rolls. We'd brought these with us from home,  shipping the Novichok-esque glaze (the stickiest substance known to man - sometimes used as spy-catching ointment by Mossad. Visual reference here. ) in its own separate double-bagged Zip-Loc. As the member of the family with the steadiest hand I owned applying the delicious but toxically sticky toothpaste textured substance onto the rolls. I took my responsibility seriously, squeezing it as carefully as if I was preparing to brush my teeth while wearing my best suit. It's crucially important not to get the glaze on your fingers when releasing it from the bag. If you're not supremely careful you can spend agitated hours, particularly on a hot city day, feeling like you have the demoted dexterity of a cartoon character with a couple less fingers at your disposal when two or three stuck-together-fingers become one. Severe "glaze-web" cases require skin grafts. When I managed to dress the rolls to my satisfaction I discarded the glaze-destroyed Zip-Loc into a lidded green bin less than ten feet from where we sat.

Sunday picnic in the shade in Jardin des Tuileries

A short time later a local and self-evidently gloveless man (possibly also homeless but that fact is less relevant) made a bee line for our bin. He presented as a highly experienced, wholly un-ashamed, even sophisticated Parisian dumpster diver whose hands over the years had very likely come into uncomfortably close contact with every imaginable form of human, inhuman, organic and manufactured waste. He had a confident approach which indicated a belief that he was immune to the worst of the world's waste. But his poor, unprepared, filthy, searching hands had never before met anything like Maisie's Glaze. His left arm sank matter-of-factly up to the shoulder into the depths of the bin, his ear pressed to the bin top as if he was cracking a safe. I observed him closely. On first contact with the bag his initial look of mild curiosity almost immediately gave way to absolute visceral disgust, quickly followed by horror as he realised he couldn't shake off the sticky ziploc bag now seemingly attached to him for life.  The ensuing series of facial contortions was a grippingly funny thing to behold. I tried desperately to stifle the public birthing of a hearty belly laugh but the waters had already broken. The guy obviously thought I was some kind of insensitive entitled oaf, mocking him in the indignity of an act of street survival. I thought he was going to cut me and my cast-iron chair in half with the look he gave me as he scurried away with some urgency to the water fountain in a desperate attempt to free himself of the glaze. I hope he's doing OK.

Welcome to a not-as-advertised Paris.

Sculpture in the Tuilieres Garden

Ice Cream On The Way Back up the Champs Elysees

Champs Elysees Shenaningans

Refreshed post-nap on Sunday afternoon and ready for dinner

Note the freshly acquired shorts which we picked up on our way back to the hotel because most of the clothes we packed for the girls were with an eye towards cold or wet weather rather than the surprisingly balmy conditions we were met with. 4 raincoats packed, zero raincoats used. 

I had done my usual research on where to get guaranteed great food within trekking distance of our accommodation. Mamma Primi came top of a couple of crowd sourced lists of best pizza, best Italian and the ever elusive best gnocchi. It's a trattoria popolare (co-incidentally the name of the restaurant where we had our most memorable meal in Oslo) located in a 17th arrondissement neighbourhood. Per the website, it doesn't do reservations so we went and queued an hour before opening time in the evening sunshine. That's a first for me but quite a common practice in this city apparently. 

The Q at Mamma Primi 45mins before opening

Not Obviously Queing For Food

After negotiating the fact that the extensive and detailed menu was only available in French (what in the name of god is a panzerotto? Nevermind, can we get 2?), the food, the wine, the tiramasu were all crazy good and we ate for Ireland in celebration of that fact. Continuing my rehabilitation as a failed vegetarian, I had some prosciutto di parma wrapped around a burrata cremosa and instantly realised that I've been a frustrated foodie for the past 30 years. We made our way back to the hotel under our own steam and collapsed straight into bed. My phone says we walked close to 20k steps on our first day in Paris - and that wasn't even a full day!

Post Dinner

The Long Walk Home After Dinner. Glimpses stolen along the journey of dinner parties at full tilt in salons with book-lined walls moonlighting as ordinary apartments on the Avenue de Wagram. 

Mirror shot of the girls room before our Monday adventures

After an interesting NOT self-service buffet breakfast in the hotel we took a look at our sketchy itinerary and the Louvre was on the list for the morning. First, we made a visit to a speciality sandwich place (according to the card I picked up in the store, it specialised in Corsican variants of typical baguette fillings) to pick up our real baguette lunch which we'd then bring to Louvre. After a slight cultural/linguistic misunderstanding where we asked the lady in the shop for some baguettes and she directed us out of the shop and own the street to a bakery, we realised we were actually in the right place but were asking for the wrong thing. A filled baguette is a "sandwich" and that's what we were after. 

The hunt for a real baguette

A bagful of win. 

After a quick unplanned but fun detour to an upscale stationery store / post office (both the girls said this was a highlight of their trip) we were on our way to the Louvre. We bought some postcards and stamps to post home. Hilariously only 1 arrived (you can see it in the last photo). Turns out there was a fatal process breakdown in the girls' card composition. We never checked but we suspect that while the card was filled with doodles, witty observations and notes-to-future-selves by the girls they most likely neglected to put any address on the card. I'm not sure they were even aware that was a requirement, so lets call that a parenting fail.

Photo op only. We didn't venture in. 

The Louvre

The Louvre

The Louvre was interesting, but not a particular highlight (although S got *really* into the audio guide thing so I won't speak for her). That said we only spent 3 hours in the museum and focused on seeing the Mona Lisa in the flesh. It's an incredibly vast museum where any of the several wings could easily consume a full week of immersion if you had the time or the inclination. I'd love to go back and do just that but this wasn't the trip for immersion and the crowds were fairly intense. 

The Louvre

The Louvre

The Louvre

The Louvre

The Human Zoo. I mean The Louvre. 

Here's what this masterwork before you looks like on your ipad

A Real Masterpiece. Sketched by S over lunch after her morning in the Louvre. 

Picnic lunch at the Louvre gardens. Real baguette. Check. 

Not sure what these things are called. They were kind of like doughnut nuggets but with savoury flavours. We picked up a few in the sandwich place and they were very delicious as you can tell from D's expression. 

Mamadou

As we were sitting eating our lunch in the sunshine in the gardens outside the museum, a school tour of maybe thirty 12 year old kids sat down near where we were eating to have their own lunch. This player (plus two or three other vendors) wandered onto the stage laden down with a huge haul of die cast mini Eiffel towers in a variety of different sizes ranging from almost too wee to obscene. Having completed a half-hearted circuit of the seemingly disinterested schookids the other less charismatic vendors had wandered off to find shade. But within 5 minutes most of the kids had purchased multiple replica towers from Mamadou much to our bemusement and the chagrin of their teachers. Just before the kids were finally rounded up by their minders to leave, obviously having spent their entire allowance, they inexplicably began trading snacks and food with Mamadou for even more towers. He seemed more than happy to oblige. The margins on those towers must be only massive. But it goes to show that as a salesman, no matter the product, you either got it or you don't. If further proof were needed, I asked to take his picture with the girls and after an ambitious pitch to sell me one of the XXL towers, in exchange for the photo he settled for me purchasing 2 mini towers *each* for the girls, a mid sized tower *each* for me and M (both of which now sit side by side on our hallway windowsill) all for the princely sum of €10. The girls are obviously highly enamoured of his variably sized charms so we'll call that tenner a bargain.

Rue de Rivoli 

A French beret. Check. 

Street Theatre on Rue de Rivoli

In case you're wondering about S's expression, there's a steaming, overflowing bin just out of shot. "Bouquet de Refuse" is decidedly non-complementary to one's recently augmented Francophile self-image (she'd just bought the beret). Note that with the acquisition of the beret, D now had a spare hat. .... and that's why daddy goes hassidic later in the post. 

After lunch we had a choice of two options for the afternoon. Go wandering around the Canal St Martin area or zig zag the bridges along the Seine and finish up at one of the oldest and most highly regarded ice cream spots in Paris - the Berthillon ice cream parlour on Ile Saint-Louis (re-branded for the day as the "Island Of Ice Cream"). OUr inaugural zigzag of the bridges was in Dublin over the Winter where we zigzagged from Ringsend all the way up to the Hapenny bridge. By such simple and parochial beginnings are international city break family activities born. Despite the implicit prospect of the legs being walked off them, I was on a losing proposition once ice cream was mentioned and so it came to pass. Off we set across the Pont Neuf bridge towards the Island of Ice Cream.

Bridge One

Bridge Two

The Edge Of The Island Of Ice Cream. 

Looks like Katy Perry hit many of the same sites as we did on her grand tour of Paris in 2011. 

  

Impromptu Street Playground

Bridge Three

"Gypsy Jazz on Bridge Four. Cleaner To Bridge Four Please."

Bridge Five

Score

Eating Ice Cream Street-side On The Island Of Ice Cream

Impressive optical illusion. Not nearly as impressive as this or even these though. 

Ile Saint-Louis

Ile Saint-Louis

Ile Saint-Louis

A mid afternoon kerbside snack

Ile Saint-Louis, Rabbi Herzog presiding

S seeking favours at the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris

Late Afternoon Light in Notre Dame Cathedral

We stumbled across this huge old carnival carousel in a residential square a few blocks up from the Seine and of course surprise gave way to desire, horses were selected and money was exchanged and round and round they went. 

Happy out.

Outside the Pompidou Centre

Legs. Walked Off. 

Gold Taps! Gold Fricken Taps!

Rockin the Rue de Vernet On Our Way To Dinner

Is "nonchalant" like, a French word?

 Best Burger In Paris. Check. First Ever Cherry Coke. Check. 

Echoes Of Barcelona

An Uber provided recovery vehicle

Our last morning in Paris again started with a great proxy buffet breakfast, an early checkout and car ride to the left bank to Shakespeare and Company bookshop. 

To me there are two main types of book shop. There's the generic type, dominant in airports and shopping centres where you can wander in and wander back out again without being tempted to purchase a single title. Then there's the type where there's character and expert curation and categorisation where you struggle to leave the store with less than a handful of books and had a hard time at that deciding what the handful would be. This bookstore is definitely of the latter type. We spent a good hour exploring the shelves of this historic and institutional bookstore and we all exited with a book or two.

The light and book filled beauty of the finest and best located city bookshop anywhere. Our New Favouritest Book Store

Mon Voisin Totoro - off the Boulevard St Germain. First appearance of Ziggy on the Blog. 

Boulevard St-Germain

The girls got a huge kick out of our return to the eatery where it all began. D can be seen in the reflection capturing the moment. La Loconda is also home to the waiter who originated my life's motto: "Gnocchi Gnocchi, Yum Yum". It was at this restaurant on Rue de Dragon 15(?) years ago, upstairs on a very romantic but slightly unstable little cast iron mezzanine - which effectively became the building block for our little family empire - where the togra pósadh was originally made one starry February night over two fulsome glasses of red wine and generous plates of unforgettably delicious gnocchi - although M claims not to have finished hers with the excitement of it all. 

Lunch at Abri Soba. Only the dinner menu has actual sushi :(

Beauty At Scale. Our Stomping Ground As Seen From Eiffel Tower. 

Tourist.exe Has Crashed. Entering Standby Mode. 

While the girls had chatted excitedly about "going shopping" in Paris before we got there, the only real shopping experience we had (or had time for) was the accidental hour or so we spent in that great little stationery store on Monday morning ("Square Ink" I think it was called on the Rue des Mathurins). The girls bought little gifts for their friends and random small bits and pieces with their own money and they were more than happy with that as their sole shopping experience in Paris. Bless 'em / Thank Christ. The above photo was taken at ground zero of the Paris luxury shopping experience - the Galeries Lafayette department store. On our way from lunch we were passing and literally popped in for the quickest of gawks. We walked through the ground floor, in one door and out the other. Delighted to report that the girls were more mesmerised with the fish tank pictured above than with any of the other offensive bling being aggressively hawked in the aisles. Bizarre scenes of queues of predominantly Asian consumers, velvet roped into the luxury brand concession stands, literally queueing up to drop huge amounts of cash on so called "differentiating" luxury items with hundreds of others doing exactly the same thing. We're at an odd universal luxury moment in our relationship with consumerism. Watching the colouredy fish is probably the safest bet until things normalise. 

From there it was East and across the river to our final planned touristical event - the Eiffel Tower. We queued and were full on security scanned twice. This on a day when we'd be getting security scanned anyway in the airport prior to our flight home so that made me a bit grumpty. 

Paris as Advertised. Eiffel Tower..... Check. 

I pour scorn on selfie sticks, and then this kind of ruthless cropping happens

THIS is how to rock a selfie. Group Tour Eiffel Tower

Home Stretch. On our way back to the hotel to pick up our bags before heading to the airport. 

The best marketing I’ve ever seen. Above the fold, organic fruit and local wines. Below the fold, cheese whizz, pocky and pink foam. Above the fold lures you in, but you leave with below-the-fold-Pocky and cheap biscuits for the flight. 

Coffee, pastries and books in a streetside café.... Check.

The shadow cast by the Eiffel Tower from the Eiffel Tower itself

Le Tour de France

La Vie En Rose - I bought a little music box in a small store on Ille Saint-Louis that plays the mournful melody perfectly and I've been playing it every day since I've been home. It sounds *just* like an ice cream van jingle when you play it through guitar pickups to a valve amp via a distortion pedal. The neighbourhood kids do not appreciate the similarity. 

Lessons Learned: Daddy should on Q for touristical culture (Louvre), never for touristical tat (Eiffel Tower). There are infinitely better visual experiences of the tower available for free on the streets and parks around the tower. Also, a motorbike trumps traffic jams. 

In a final burst of creativity, on the (long) journey on the bus back to frugally blue the phrase “Lozenge-shaped-schnozzle” was birthed. It's a phrase best served as a bone-weary jet-lagged tongue twister. Try it quickly tem tines. 

And Out. Thanks for reading.