Paris Day 4 – 1st Jan 1996

Eiffel Tower

1 Jan 1996

New Year’s Day. Our last day in Paris. We set off after 12 noon, Amar, BG and Venky to the police station and the Indian Embassy for FIR and duplicate passport, J, V, and me towards Musée de Orsay. The museum is closed on Mondays, so we walked along the cobbled paths for about 2 hours. Unsurprisingly, not many people out on the roads this morning.

Met up with the other guys at the Eiffel Tower, and it was indeed a clearer day. Went up and looked down on Paris from various levels – second floor, top floor, and first, in that order. Eiffel Tower looks much better by night than by day, but even by day, it looks impressive. By night, all the sharp details are smoothed out by shadows and the sodium lamps add a touch of depth to it.

On the first floor, there were many interesting pieces of information related to the tower – the various famous people who visited it, some bits about Gustave Eiffel the engineer behind it, how it was built and so on. It was getting late and I was as usual clamouring for food, so we couldn’t read and remember all the pieces. There were some working models showing how the tower is built such that it sways just 4.5 inches in the strongest wind. Also how the iron expands due to heat and the face of the tower facing the sun kind of moves backward, away from the sun, and in the evening as it cools off, moves back in place. There were some good audio-visuals too, but we couldn’t see them fully.

That’s really the end of the trip, unless you count another visit to the hostel to pick up luggage and another visit to Mac D’s at Gallieni. The return coach driver was very British. I enjoyed his running commentary, a stream of instructions and information. Other people started feeling they were on a school excursion. The return trip was also most uneventful, despite having an Amar-sans-passport. Reached London by 5:20am, and home [Reading] by 7:30 am.

All the French I picked up are thanks to Fodor’s guide to Paris. The guide is really well written. The author writes about the city with genuine love for it. Going by what’s written there, you should spend 3 or 4 months in the city and soak in its essence. That would be the ideal way to get the feel of any place, I think. Walk along what’s called the Latin Quarter, populated by the university students (the name comes ‘from the university tradition of studying and speaking in Latin’ as Fodor’s guide says), see all the museums at leisure, sit by the roadside cafes and drink-in (or drink in) the atmosphere…

I have left out many small details, like the beggars on the metro stations (one or two of whom we were getting familiar with, in the 3 days we travelled up and down), the chaotic traffic, the noisy people (not only tourists, even the locals), the roadside vendors, the roadside artist who wanted to sell me one of his paintings (it was very good, so I didn’t want to bargain with him – but didn’t want to pay him 50 francs either!), the park behind the Eiffel Tower where Vipul and Jayesh did not allow me to sit and dream, the caretaker in the ladies’ who enquired after my family and wished me a happy New Year… well, this has to end somewhere, and I think I have written most of my impressions down.

It was back to change requests on OpenPAS browse diary from the afternoon of 2nd Jan… the browse goes on!