Walking Ixus

I got in this evening and had a “London Underground” adventure.
The Underground was shut down for 9 stops going into London from Heathrow. Seems someone jumped and got caught under the tracks. So they shut down service.
After some back and forth between the Underground people and the Heathrow Express people, the Underground arranged free taxis to get us all to Northfields so we could catch the last train into London (there were five of us stranded that chose this option).
The problem was that I needed to get to either Paddington or Lancaster Gate tube stops and that meant transferring to different lines that have already shut down for the night.
That meant an adventure with a Greek Masters student (who knew which buses to take) and the London Bus System (late night).
Long story short, it took 2 hours to leave LHR to get back. An hour longer then it would have by Tube. Grimley says that I’ve experienced the worst of London Transit. I hope so.
Oh yah, updates coming later in the week about my week in Paris. It was surprising, doing laundry is expensive and the weather sucked big time.

Goin’ to LHR via Heathrow Express.
Why would I do that since it costs �13 one way?
Cuz Yumi-chan is here! Yay!
This is her last day in London, helping out some friends. And she’s staying out at Heathrow.
So I’m goin’!
The trains look familiar. That’s because they’re versions of the HK Airport Express trains except they’re about 10 years older…

So unlike my trip outbound where I had a nice empty seat next to me, this train had more passengers on it going to London Waterloo. And naturally I got seated next to some guy with really really really bad B.O. I mean it was the kind of BO that works its way up your nose like the pain you get when your nosehairs get pulled out. THAT bad.
Because of that, I spent much of the trip hanging out in the dining car with 8 Koreans who proceeded to drink all the beer that was for sale.
So I guess it was half an UA nightmare #2, cuz you don’t get a place to hang out on a UA flight!

Some things here are surprisingly cheap. You ask for water, non bubbly and you get Evian. Except over here, since it�s made here, it�s just simply �water� as opposed to some fancy imported French water that spelled backwards is “naive”.
Pain Chocolat is just an Euro, great way to have a fast breakfast. Coffee is good and reasonably priced as long as it’s not Starchuck’s.
The Metro has a tourist pass that�s not a bad deal too.
Some things here are surprisingly expensive, such as doing two loads of laundry. You see, I had this plan to get up early (which I did at 0700), go to the laverie nearby my hotel (I did) and do my laundry (I did not, at least right away).
The laveria had a machine that dispensed detergent. I wrote that in the past tense because the machine was not working. The coin thingy was bolted up and there were no other vending machines in any of the three laverias nearby.
I had to wait until 0900 to go to the Marche to get detergent. Then I did laundry.
A medium sized box of detergent cost about 2 Euro.
It cost 4 Euro to run the washing machine. Since I did two loads, that�s 8 Euro.
Then it took 20 minutes for one load and 30 minutes for the other to dry. That�s 1 Euro for every 10 minutes. Total for dry clothes: 5 Euro.
Add that all up and it cost 15 Euro for two loads of laundry. That�s close to US$20!
Chi Sin!

This Paris trip was fun! Here’s how it really began:
I was chatting with Andrew about a month back or so and just casually mentioned that I was heading out here. He said, “wow, Ellen and I are going to be in Paris in May too on (dates here)”.
So I just did the Paris leg at the beginning of my trip instead of at the end. Which makes sence since I’m flying back to CA from LHR instead of CDG, get it?
Now by an incredible coincidence, Meghan is also here in Paris for a couple of weeks, staying with friends. We exchanged emails and phone calls and voila, she’s at the Orsay with me!
But since you can overdo appreciation of art, we ducked out and visited the Eiffel Tower. The weather didn’t get any better so we passed on going up. That goes on my list of “things to do next time I’m in Paris”. However, we walked around a lot and caught up.
We wound up in the Latin Quarter, having coffee at a famous Cafe (Meghan, if you’re reading this, what was that cafe’s name again?) and dinner at a reasonable French chain restaurant. The mussels were good and the main plates were pretty filling.
Then it was time to go home…tired again!

Ellen and Andrew flew back to LAX this AM via SFO from CDG so I slept in! I didn’t realize how much running around we did here because I slept hard until 1000. And then realized that it wasn’t raining.
I finally visited the Arc d’Triomphe. It’s in the middle of a traffic circle but you can access it via a tunnel that runs underneath it. They wanted 7 Euro to go up to the top and since it wasn’t wet BUT it was windy and cold, I put that on my “do it next time I’m in Paris” list right below “visit the Dupont store” because they were closed for remodeling all this past week.
Since yesterday was the 59th Anniversary of VE-Day, there have been observances all over the city. On many of the buildings, there are plaques that remember those from the Maquis or the Underground who fought the Nazis throughout the Occupation.
There was a humongous tricolour hanging the height of the Arc and their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was immediately below. There were a lot of visitors.
After a brief snack (which is one of the things you do a lot in Paris because the food is good and good priced), I headed up to the Musee d’Orsay which houses art from the 1800s to the present.
The Orsay is located in an old train station that was built for the 1900 Paris Exposition but fell into disuse and disrepair over the years. When they created the Musee, they took all the “modern” art from the Louvre (they didn’t want it anyway) and began a gallery that is more accessible (not as much fire and brimstone religious art) and for many people, more enjoyable.
After about an hour there, I met Meghan, a former SMWMer/co-worker there and we puttered in the Musee for a few more hours.
Art!

Since we’ve spent so much time in Tulieres and the Opera District (because that’s where their hotel is), we all thought it would be neat to explore Montmartre.
And that’s fine with me because I’ve not see much of this district besides all the places I walk past (closed) at 0100 when I’ve been getting home for the past few nights.
It’s an interesting district. I’m apparently in the nice neighbourhoody part of it because when you go to the other side of the hill that Sacre-Coeur sits on you hit…
Massive Hom-Suppyness!!!
After getting disoriented (very hard to do since we’re all Asian, ha ha!) and walking in the wrong direction, past the pet store (puppies!), the hospital and around the cemetary, we finally found the way to go after a local guy, seeing three Asians clustered around a map in a book, one with a beeeeg backpack (not me) on, offered in english, “are you lost”?
Sweeeet! Anyway, we were sent in the direction of Sacre-Coeur. That direction took us past the Moulin Rouge where we took pix and scared a bunch of mainlanders who were in line to see the show with a growl of “puuuutonggghuaaaaa?” They were totally freaked out.
After Moulin Rouge, we continued our search, passing such places as the Sex-a-Torium and the Sex Museum. We actually took a brief look in the Sex Museum. Then we saw that they wanted 7 Euro for admission and they were open until 0200. This is an actual museum with stuff from the 1700s and 1800s in the front. Just not up for it so close to dinner….yeah, that’s it.
This stretch of barely legal businesses went on for about 5 blocks. Then 20 minutes after that, we find Sacre-Coeur. Since we’re all hungry, we take our pix and we leave. Visiting inside and watching the sunset from the big hill goes on the “next time I’m in Paris” list. Now time for dinner near the Bastille district.
Montmartre, district of artists, has a big church in the middle. On the back side of the hill is a nice neighborhood. And on the front side is the sex trade. Fun!

It does get better!
There’s a Metro stop that coincides with a district called Madeline. If you like food in any way, shape or form, this is the place to visit. Foodie heaven.
We first went to a place called Fauchon that puts Dean and Deluca to shame.
Shame shame on you Dean and Deluca! And not just because you don’t have the Egg Cream outside of New York!
Well, I shouldn’t be too harsh, after all they’re not in the Madeline district. But they ARE from New York which food wise, is the closest thing. They should be able to compete…
But there’s NO WAY they can! I mean, I gained about 5 pounds just looking at all the food they had there! Custom chocolates, cookies and the like. All kinds of jam and spreads. Spices and coffee galore! And that’s just the main floor. They have wine and related stuff downstairs and really fancy teas and a tea room upstairs.
Since I possibly couldn’t bring back everything I wanted to, I settled on a small jar of Vanilla Milk (?) Jam and a small Strawberry Jam. I think that one is going as omayage for Yumi-chan on Monday.
Then we went next door to the Chocolate shop!!! The chocolate was really good, we met a gent from Oregon who is out here with his niece on an exchange program who shops here all the time. He gave us a lot of tips about the chocolate and because he was a regular, the owner(?) knew exactly what to get for him.
And she is used to people having the reaction to her shop that the three of us had (utter amazement and shock). After we bought a lot of stuff there, she gave each of us a 1 Euro chocolate coin.
That was sooo cool. I felt like I was 6 again.
That whole chocolate search was for a mythical chocolate shop that is made with 70% less sugar than typical fine chocolate and is supposed to be excellent. Andrew’s not a big sweets person so Ellen and I were leading the charge for this one.
heh.

Today is Andrew and Ellen’s last day in Paris. They fly out early in the morning tomorrow. Yeech.
Ellen still has some things she wants to do so the morning was for them to do stuff while I woke up and located where the Musee de la Police was. We decided to meet up for lunch near the Pompideau Center. While we were working this out on the phone via texting, I run out of credit on my SIM while on the Metro.
No problemo, right? Drop into a Tabac shop and get a recharge voucher. Follow the prompts, right? Easy, right? Nod your head violently.
Ha ha ha young bison. As if it were going to be THAT easy…
First of all, all the documentation is in Francais. Second of all, when you activate the SIM, you only get one choice of language, Francais. And when you go into the service menu, it’s all in le feu-rapide Francais. Which renders me useless (my Francais skills being high school French many many years ago).
Please keep in mind my experience in Asia with prepaid SIM cards. First of all they are multilingual. Second, it’s not as expensive and Third, English is one of the options! So the way they do it in France was a bit of a cold water shower.
Eventually the lady who runs the place was able to help me reload, but not until 20 minutes passed. Now I’m late for lunch and by the time I find them, they’re ready to leave because I couldn’t respond to their SMS/VMs because I had no credit.
And to top it off, it started to rain in ernest AND the food was so-so for lunch.
It does get better after this though, right? Of course it does…this is Paris you know!

After a late start (because it’s hard to wake up sometimes), we staggered onto the RER for the short trip to Versailles.
That’s a big house.
For one guy and all of his support staff and his concubines. And his wife too I think.
It’s very impressive. I liked the Opera House and the reception rooms. Wasn’t too crazy about the bedrooms, though they were impressive. Do the guided tour. You’ll see much more than the unguided tour and it’ll be explained to you. Get a combined ticket so you’ll have access to the gardens and the grand canal. Wah! I’d guess that the entire complex is as big as the Richmond District back home.
The Hall of Mirrors, where the peace treaty that ended WWI was signed was being refurbished. It’ll take several years to do, but imagine the history in this room. Most of the problems we face today in the world stem from what was done in this very room.
Makes ya think, huh?