Happy Families in Paris

We spent last week in Paris with Simone, Dallas, Jack and Matthew.

We arrived in Paris last Saturday and it was the day of the Paris Gay Pride march. We waited for an eternity at the Place de la Bastille where the march was due to end. It was extremely hot and a bunch of university students around us were becoming progressively more drunk and generally off their faces which was all very entertaining but after an hour and a half we decided to move on down the march route in order to try to locate the march. We eventually met at the Seine. It seemed more like the Melbourne Pride march – multiplied by 10 - than Sydney’s Mardi Gras. It was very colourful and amusing, more community than spangle.

Gay Pride Paris Style

Simone and family arrived in Paris on Sunday afternoon and we embarked on a feast of sightseeing. In 6 days we managed to fit in the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, an evening boat tour along the Seine, the Musee de l’Armee, the Paris sewers, Versailles, the Musee D’Orsay and finally a trip to Disneyland. This mostly represented the David and Dale Paris highlights tour. It was conducted at break neck speed and has involved a bit of walking. Now Dale and I walk A LOT. Even though we tried to adjust to having 8 year old Matthew with us we nevertheless walked everyone off their feet but to their credit they did a marvellous job of keeping up, particularly Matthew. He ran up nearly the entire 2 first stages of the Eiffel Tower and would have run up the entire way if it hadn’t been for Dallas making him stop occasionally so that the rest of us could catch up.

Climbing the Eiffel Tower

Lunch in the Tuileries Gardens

Climbing the Arc de Triomphe

Lunching at Verseille

Jack has acquitted himself with aplomb in the French speaking stakes. Since about day 3 he has been confidently asking questions and placing orders in French. About this time Jack and Dallas started spending a suspicious amount of time visiting Paris patisseries. Matthew has also become very interested in speaking French and we fear that we have created a monster. He particularly likes the fact that mere, pere and frère rhyme and that pere sounds like pear, which means that he has been telling his father that he is tasty.


We stayed in a somewhat tatty but large, bright and airy 2 bedroom apartment in the middle of the Marais. It was on the 3rd floor and a lovely cross-breeze flowed through the apartment at all times of the day and night. The weather was very hot for the whole week so it was fabulous to return to the apartment and throw all the windows open at the end of each day. Naturally the return to the apartment was accompanied by olives, Dale’s somewhat homemade sundried tomatoes, cheese and wine or beer. Wicked uncle Dale even forced a beer on Jack, who is 15 (Ed – Who’s heard of a 15 year old who hasn’t had a beer?). His mother was not happy and Dallas and Matthew started in with the wise cracks about Jack’s road to ruin.



Lovely, calme aspect from the apartment

Jack is carrying a football with him but we weren’t able to find anywhere for him to kick it. Parisiens seem to ban everything in their parks including all ball games and sitting on the grass. For $E2.60 kids can however play in a wonderful playground in the Jardins du Luxembourg. On the subject of money Simone and Dallas visited London before joining us and they said that they found everything there very cheap so get yourselves to the UK (as well as Spain) asap. In contrast they have found Paris very expensive. The worst example was buying four 500 ml bottles of soft drink on the Champs Elysee and paying $E16, which is the equivalent of $A29. I was with Simone and thought the shop attendant had said 6 not 16 and blithely walked out of the shop leaving Simone to pay. Even allowing for being on the Champs Elysee, this was pretty steep. I made sure that I savoured my drink and thanked God that Simone had paid, not me. On the other hand Dallas did manage to find a particularly attractive little Eiffel Tower statue for the mantel piece at home and only paid $E4. He is very proud of this bargain and we think he is going to create a shrine around it at home. Dale and I are conditioned to French prices so found things pretty much the same as in the past. Eating out was on the expensive side but the quality was good.

Dale and I did some shopping with Simone which was, at times, humorous. In one shop Simone wanted to try a blouse on and in the absence of any shop assistant was unsure about which changing cubicle to go into. As Dale isn’t unsure about anything he just ripped a curtain open and told Simone to use it. In the middle of Simone trying on the blouse a shop assistant then pulled back the curtain and started blathering on about how she had reserved that cubicle, while poor Simone had no idea what was going on. Then she had difficulty removing the blouse at which point Dale entered to cubicle to help her. This seemed to go for an eternity while I started rehearsing how to explain that Simone just needed some help and that Dale is her brother. However, I began to wonder whether the comment about being siblings was actually going to help or make things worse. Everyone can take comfort however. The blouse was removed (although not bought) before anyone in the shop appeared to notice. In the end Simone’s favourite purchase was at Gare du Lyon only minutes before getting on the TGV to go down to Avignon. She bought a fabulous pair of aubergine coloured shoes at the excellent price of $E25.

In terms of the sightseeing, Dale and I really loved re-visiting the Musee D’Orsay and are even thinking that we might go again when we return to Paris in September. Continuing my line in art criticism I think art, furniture and architecture in the period 1840 to 1940 is fabulous and precisely ma tasse du the. The art nouveau furniture in the Musee D’Orsay is every bit as good an attraction as the room of Van Gogh paintings and the rooms and rooms of Monet paintings. The most amusing part of the visit was Matthew spying a particularly graphic painting of a vagina and managing to take a photo immediately while laughing uproariously. The second funniest incident was spying on a young woman standing in front of paintings while gyrating with one arm out stretched as though she was painting or sculpting the work of art through dance. I was entranced by this and immediately made sure I told Dale about it. While I was in another room, all the others then saw her really go for it in front of a massive sculpture where she had a lot of space to move. They all stood watching aghast when she then fell flat on her backside and everyone tried to hide their laughter. Did I say that slapstick isn’t funny?

The evening boat tour along the Seine was recommended by Dallas’ mother Lyn and was an excellent outing. The night lights of Paris were wonderful and it was also most entertaining to see the Paris jeunesse out celebrating the end of the academic year along the banks of the Seine, particularly around les isles de cite, on a balmy summer evening. The only disappointment was that the light show on the Eiffel Tower started just as we rounded the isles de cite and we lost the view for just as long as the light show lasted.

Boating on the Seine at dusk

We visited the Paris Sewers for the first time, which was interesting if smelly. Well actually I didn’t mind it too much but those with sensitive noses were gagging as we walked along a sewer carrying all the effluent from a nearby Paris street. We all wish that John (Dale and Simone’s father) had been with us to explain all the sewerage niceties to us, given his experience building sewerage treatment plants, and to keep the wimps down there a little longer.

On Friday we went to Disneyland. We all started the day with a ride on the Thunder Mountain roller coaster, which was great fun but parted company after that. Dale, Simone and Jack did the scary adult rides while Dallas and I accompanied Matthew on the slightly less scary rides. Naturally Matthew really wanted to go on the adult scary rides but Dallas and I were perfectly happy with the slightly less scary ones. Dale, Simone and Jack loved Space Mountain, Matthew and Dallas loved Thunder Mountain while I really enjoyed the Stars Wars simulator space ride. As it was the last day of school before the summer holidays it was packed and the queues for the popular rides were very long (Ed - this con firmed my long held view that Disneyland is the Unhappiest place on earth if you measure it by groans, moans and frustration).

(Ed - To make me feel better, I ripped this photo off of us on the Thunder Mountain Rollercoaster instead of paying Disney A$30 for a copy. Satisfaction. (Apologies to AT the Copyright Fairy))