Barb and Baden’s Excellent French Adventure – Final

This will be the final chapter of our Excellent French Adventures.

Before I continue, I wanted to expand on the experience that we had at the George V hotel that we visited a few days ago. When we entered the front of the hotel, there is a typical revolving door. With most revolving doors, you have to push them and walk through. For most hotels this would be fine but the guests of the George V obviously cannot be bothered to push their own doors so a small button is placed at the inside and outside of the door. By pressing the button, the door starts to rotate by itself so no pushing is needed. For most hotels this would be ok but the guests of the George V obviously cannot be bothered to push their own buttons. The solution to this problem is that at the George V, there is a woman who’s job is to stand by the door and when a guest wants to go through the door, she pushes the button. That’s it, her only job. I guess you have to expect these kinds of details when you’re paying $8,000 a night.

Oct. 21, 2002:

Today we planned to visit the famous Musée de Louvre (museum) and made an early start to get there before the crowds arrived. To describe the Louvre in one word, I can only use huge. I had read that someone could spend every day at the Louvre for their entire lives and not see anything. This might be a slight exaggeration but this is simply a huge museum with tons of items on exhibit. We only spent about 3 hours there and skipped about 90% of the museum. By far, the most famous item in the gallery is the DaVinci’s Mona Lisa. While most other paintings may have 6-7 people standing in front of them, the Mona Lisa had 30-40. A close second is the Venus de Milo sculpture. For some inexplicable reason which I have not been able to understand, many of the tourists who were at these two masterpieces seemed to be obsessed with having their picture taken in front of the object. Are people not going to believe me that I saw the Mona Lisa unless Barb or I are seen in a picture posing in front of it?

Soon after leaving the Louvre, the weather started turning bad and it rained for most of the afternoon. As a result, most of the rest of the afternoon was spent shopping. To be honest, Barb was planning on going shopping no matter what the weather was like.

Oct. 22-23, 2002:

By now, about 8-9 shopping bags cover the floor of our hotel room. Barb confesses that she has been to about 50 stores in Paris. I quietly consider that only having 8 bags out of 50 stores is not such a bad sign (one of the bags is mine).

We temporarily interrupt the Paris shopping spree to experience more French culture and we go to the Musée d’Orsee (Orsee Museum). Braving the one hour line up, we finally get in and see the best of the French impressionist artwork. Artists like Monet, Renoir and Van Gogh are all featured in this museum as well a many others that I have never heard of.

Barb heads back to the seemingly endless litany of stores to shop while I have plan on touring a cultural landmark perhaps more significant than the Lovre and d’Orsee museums: the Paris sewer system. Touring the underground sewers in Paris is actually something that I had heard of several years ago on a television documentary and sought it out after leaving the last of our museum tours. The Paris sewer system is claimed to be the most advanced in the world and offers public tours to showcase their efforts. It was all quite fascinating and an informative tour once you got past the minor issue of the thousands of cubic metres of raw sewage rushing by your feet and the putrid smell. The Paris sewer system ranks up with the Eiffel tower and the Arc de Triomphe as the must see items in the city.

Oct. 24, 2002:

Today being our last day in France, we spent the morning packing up trying to fit all of the new things that were bought into the suitcases. Despite the loss of Barb’s suitcase on our flight from London back to Vancouver, the return home was with mixed feelings as we had such a good time in France.

Highlights of our France Trip:

-French pastries for breakfast every day with café au lait.
-Strolling along the Mediterranean on the promenade in Nice.
-Fabulous Monte Carlo
-Seeing the Eiffel tower up close for the first time
-Shopping in Paris (Barb made me add this one)

Barb and Baden’s Excellent Adventures will return again in 2003 from a location yet to be decided.

Baden