Car Parking – French Style

In September 1978 on a Town Twinning holiday I stayed with a family in Evreux in Normandy.

Charles prided himself on being able to slip into the most improbable parking spaces always claiming with a certain sort of logic that that is exactly what bumpers on cars are designed for.  Even if it was quite obvious that there was insufficient space to squeeze his vehicle into he would be determined to get in there one way or another.  One way was to reverse into the vehicle behind and shunt it a few centimetres backwards and the other was to drive into the vehicle in front and shunt that one a few centimetres forward.  He repeated this a few times until he was satisfied with his unorthodox parking arrangements and then he unashamedly got out of his car, locked it and walked away without the slightest guilt.

Apparently however this is quite normal in France and to make it easier for other motorists French Drivers never leave a car in gear when parking their cars.

Charles also had a curiously impatient habit of when waiting at traffic lights and being first in the queue of driving beyond them a distance of about two metres or so.  I asked him why he did this and he explained that it was so he could make a quick getaway.  What was illogical about this however was that he couldn’t actually see the lights change colour and invariably had to wait to be prompted to move off by the driver in the vehicle behind.

Curious drivers the French!

http://apetcher.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/town-twinning-evreux/

Spalding/Speyer Town Twinning

Town Twinning became a big thing after the Second World War as people sought to repair relationships with their neighbours that they had fallen out with and I have often wondered what the process was for getting a twin town?

Perhaps it was like the draw for the third round of the FA cup when all the names go into a hat to be drawn out with each other, or perhaps it was like the UCAS University clearing house system where towns made their preferred selections and waited for performance results to see if they were successful; or perhaps it was a sort of dating service and introductory agency.

Anyway, the city of Coventry started it all off and was the first ever to twin when it made links with Stalingrad in the Soviet Union in 1944 and is now so addicted to twinning that it has easily the most of any English town or city with a massive twenty-six twins.  That is a lot of civic receptions and a lot of travelling expenses for the Mayor of Coventry.  Perhaps even more surprising is that Sherborne in Dorset, a town of only ten thousand residents has fifteen twin towns.

From 1975 to 1980 I worked at Rugby Borough Council and there was a strong Town Twinning Association with a regular group of Council bigwigs rotating biannually between visiting the twin town of Evreux in Normandy in France and then entertaining French visitors the following year.  In 1977 Rugby twinned with a second town, this time Russelheim in Germany, and this meant new people were required to fill the coaches and provide accommodation for visitors.  We expressed an interest in the Gallic option and in 1979 joined the twinners.

In the following year I changed jobs and moved away to Rugby and that put an end to Town Twinning for a while until over twenty years later in 2002.

Now I had moved to Spalding in Lincolnshire whose twin town is Speyer in Germany and responding to a crisis of too few hosts for an imminent visit I decided that it was time to start twinning again.  At this time I was sharing a rented house with a friend and work colleague, Barry Bradley, and the organizer thought it would be amusing to allocate a female visitor to stay with us.  Her name was Helga and I thought this all sounded rather promising…

The coach arrived at about six o’clock on 7th September and I optimistically looked out for a stunning blonde getting off the coach.  Well, the coach emptied and there was no sign of my guest and as people stared to drift away I wondered if she had bothered to come.  Finally the coach pulled away and there she was standing on the other side of the bus.  Oh My God!  My optimistic vision of a Bavarian stunner was cruelly dashed because Helga had more the look of an East German shot putter of dubious gender than a Black Forest beauty queen so I hurried her to the car and if I’d had one I would have put a blanket over her head to get her inside the house in case she scared the neighbours.

We got over the first night but in the morning she didn’t appear for breakfast so I had to leave her and go to work and return at lunch time to deliver her to the coach for an organized trip.  At tea time I took her back to the house to get ready for the civic reception but without warning she packed her bags and demanded to be taken into town to be closer to her friends.

It turned out that she was ragingly homophobic and she had jumped to hasty conclusions about the domestic arrangements.  There was no convincing her that Barry and I were just in a convenient house share arrangement and unable to dissuade her I had to make alternative arrangements for her, which brought my attempts at improving international relations to a shuddering halt.

So traumatic was this experience that I haven’t twinned again since.

A happier Town Twinning experience:

town-twinning-rugby-and-evreux

Speed Sightseeing and Three Staircases in Paris

On 2^nd September 2002 my son, Jonathan, and I took an early morning flight from Stansted to Paris Charles de Gaulle for a two night stay in the French capital and a plan to see the main sights in just one day.  After we arrived we took a train into Paris and then the metro to somewhere near to Montmartre where we were staying in the cheapest hotel that I could find.

As we emerged from the metro station the city was only just beginning to stir into life as the street cleaning machines scrubbed the gutters and North African men in high-visibility jackets swished the pavements with their besom brooms removing the dog mess and the litter in preparation for the day.

It was too early to book into our hotel so we left our bags and went straight back to the metro station stopping for only a very short time at a McDonalds restaurant for a quick breakfast. And then we joined the commuters making their way to work and took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe where we emerged from the subterranean tunnels into a disappointingly misty Champs Élysée.

The traffic circle surrounding the Arc de Triomphe was extremely intimidating.  There are no lanes and none of the usual rules of driving etiquette as hundreds of cars race and weave in and out of each other like dodgem cars at a fairground. In the nineteenth century after Paris had been destroyed by the Prussian siege in 1870 an architect called Baron Haussemann redesigned Paris with elegant boulevards and long straight roads but he wasn’t blessed with foresight because he failed to anticipate the arrival of the motor car and the pathologically aggressive nature of French drivers.

The French have a ludicrous driving rule called priorité à droite where vehicles from the right always have priority at junctions and roundabouts.  This rule is in fact so ludicrous that even the French themselves have seen the sense of virtually abandoning elsewhere in the country but it remains the rule here at the busiest roundabout in France (probably) and cars entering the circle have the right-of-way whilst those in the circle must yield.  Braking is forbidden and the use of the horn is compulsory, there is no apparent lane discipline that I could make out and entering the roundabout is an extended game of ‘chance’ where drivers simply waited to see whose nerve would fold and who would yield first. In France the very desire to own a driving licence should immediately exclude a Frenchman from eligibility to possess one.

We approached the Arch from the Champs Élysée and as far as I could see there was no safe way of crossing and getting to the monument until we eventually found the underground tunnel which took us safely below the traffic chaos above and into the Place de Charles de Gaulle. We shunned the elevator and climbed the steps instead to the top of the fifty metre high building (the second largest triumphal arch in the World) and enjoyed the views of the boulevards and roads converging and radiating away from this famous landmark.  Close by we could see the Eiffel Tower and this was where we were going next.

The Eiffel Tower is an iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars and has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world.  The tower is the tallest building in Paris and the most-visited paid monument in the world.  Named for its designer, engineer Gustave Eiffel, the tower was built as the entrance arch to the 1889 World’s Fair.  It is 324 metres tall, about the same height as an 81-story building.  Upon its completion, it surpassed the Washington Monument to assume the title of tallest man-made structure in the world, a title it held for 41 years, until the Chrysler Building in New York City was built in 1930.

The tower has three levels but we didn’t have time to stand in the queue for the first stage elevator so we took all six hundred steps to the second level and we would have climbed to the very top if we could but the third level is only accessible by an expensive lift.  I have visited the Eiffel Tower four times now; in 1979 on a Town Twinning visit to Evreux in Normandy, in 1989 on a weekend trip with some work colleagues to celebrate a new career, this occasion and finally in 2004, the last time that I visited Paris.  Unfortunately on every occasion the weather has been overcast and I have never enjoyed the clear views that should really be possible from the top.

Back at ground level the sun was beginning to break through as we crossed the River Seine and onto the Champs de Mars and as it was approaching lunchtime we found a restaurant with pavement tables in the sun and ordered a pizza.  The food was reasonably priced but I remember a large glass of beer cost €8 so I made a mental note to find a mini-market on the way back to the hotel for more sensibly priced alcohol for the evening.

Our next stop was Notre Dam Cathedral but as we had walked quite a distance already we took a Batou Mouche barge ride the short distance the River to the Ile de Cîte and as the vessel made its way through the centre of the city we soaked up the historic sites along both banks from the viewing platform at the back which was crowded now because the mist had finally gone and there was full sunshine and a blue sky.

Although we had already climbed to the top of the Arc de Triomphe and half way up the Eiffel Tower we bought tickets and waited in line to climb to the top of the Cathedral but sadly by the time we reached the top and walked around the external galleries the mist had returned and wrapped Paris in a gloomy grey shroud again.

Jonathan was beginning to flag by now and as it was late afternoon we walked a little further around the streets of old Paris and then took a metro back to Montmartre where we walked along the boulevard with its seedy sex establishments and grubby shops and into the touristy cobbled back streets of the district famous for painters, night-life and a red-light district.  I found a shop to buy some beer and we rested for a while at the hotel before going out again in the evening when we walked to the Sacré Coeur Cathedral which on account of it being built on the highest point in the city involved an energy sapping walk which more or less finished Jonathan off for the day!

The plan was to find somewhere to eat but he was so tired that he preferred my suggestion of returning to the hotel and I would fetch a McDonalds meal from around the corner and we would just stay in and crash! So we did just that.

Even though the French maintain that they despise the Company and the concept of fast food an awful lot of people eat there.  Across France today there are nearly twelve hundred restaurants and in Paris alone there are almost seventy restaurants under golden arches, with even more dotted around the outer suburbs. That’s much the same as London, but with only a third of the population.   In 2007 the chain’s French revenues increased by 11 per cent to €3 billion. That’s more than it generates in Britain and in terms of profit, France is second only to the United States itself.  It is now so firmly a part of French culture that in 2009 McDonald’s reached a deal with the French museum, the Louvre, to open a McDonald’s restaurant and McCafé on its premises by their underground entrance.

It had been an excellent day in Paris but a tiring one and as we reflected on the day we dubbed it ‘Speed Sightseeing’ and we successfully employed this method again in 2003 in Amsterdam and then in 2004 in Rome.

Golf in France

In May 2006 I went to France with my brother Richard and our sons Jonathan and Scot for some golf.  On the first morning we had the standard Ibis breakfast at the hotel and filled up on ham and cheese and bread rolls to keep us going until lunchtime and afterwards we set off for the golf course for the first of the dads v. lads challenge matches.

It was a lovely morning and although there was some cloud it was mostly sunny and we arrived at the course and presented ourselves for our appointed tee-time.  Surprisingly the course wasn’t at all busy so we made our way to the tee and after we had made sure no-one was watching we took it in turns to tee off down the par 5 first.  The green looked a mile away but first Jon and then Scot made easy work of it with impressive long drives that split the fairway.  Needless to say we didn’t follow their example and all of a sudden the challenge looked rash!  The lads stormed to an early lead that they managed to retain through the first few holes.

From very early on I kept making the mistake of walking ahead whilst Richard was still to take his next shot.  This was a silly thing to do and everyone kept reminding me of the last time I was foolish enough to do such a thing and he had put a Titliest ProV in my face and sent me to hospital for a mouthful of stitches.   It was my own fault and I only actually went to hospital after the round was finished when it became clear that I couldn’t drink a pint of beer without spilling it through the holes in my lips that shouldn’t have been there.  We now have a firm ‘stand behind Richard routine’ that is most sensible to observe.

We negotiated the first part of the course and although the lads were out-driving us and achieving impressive distances down the fairways we managed to stay in touch with some astute approach play and skilful putting and by the turn they were only slightly ahead and Richard and I were confident of taking the lead some time soon.  The course was in really good shape and we were pleased to be able to play at a pleasant pace with hardly any one about to put us off of our game.  No-one in front and no-one behind, we were playing millionaire’s golf!

So none of us had a proper explanation for just what happened to Scot when he suddenly developed a two-off-the-tee habit of sending his first shot everywhere but down the middle of the fairway.   Needing all the help we could get we took unsportsmanlike advantage of this and teased him constantly about his waywardness.  All that mockery did the trick and on the last nine holes he lost nine balls, he was hitting it a long way but he was hopelessly inaccurate and suddenly things were looking up for the dads!  Only a few holes to go and the lead was beginning to shrink.

But Jon kept his steady head on and continued to play consistently well and then the wheels came off of Richard’s game as well. As his head went down the lads scented victory and moved in for the kill and with a strong finish made sure of the win.  The beer and the lunch was on the dads.  It had been a good game and in the end it was a thoroughly deserved victory for the two boys.  And as we looked at it there was always tomorrow’s rematch where we could get our just revenge.  Unfortunately the club-house restaurant was closed for the day but they managed to find us some baguettes so we had those and reflected on the game with a couple of beers.

The Eiffel Tower and Ponte Dom Luis I

The Eiffel Tower is an iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars in Paris and was inaugurated on 31^st March 1889. It has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world. The tower is the tallest building in Paris and the most-visited admission fee monument in the world. Named for its designer, engineer Gustave Eiffel, the tower was built as the entrance arch to the 1889 World’s Fair.

The tower stands three hundred and twenty-three metres tall, about the same height as an eighty story building. Upon its completion, it surpassed the Washington Monument to assume the title of tallest man-made structure in the world, a title it held for forty-one years, until the Chrysler Building in New York City was built in 1930; however, due to the addition in 1957 of the antenna (if you can count an antenna), the tower is now taller than the Chrysler Building again.  The tower has three levels for visitors and you can get to the first two via six-hundred steps but the third and highest level is accessible only by elevator.

I have visited the Eiffel Tower four times; in 1979 on a Town Twinning visit to Evreux in Normandy, in 1990 on a weekend trip with some work colleagues to celebrate a new career, in 2002 with my son Jonathan and finally in 2004, the last time that I visited Paris.  Unfortunately on every occasion the weather has been overcast and I have never enjoyed the clear views that should really be possible from the top.

But I have seen sunshine from the top of another Eiffel inspired structure, the Ponte Dom Luis I in Porto, which is an iron bridge designed by Téophile Seyrig a student of Gustav Eiffel.  From the top elevation there were unbeatable views of the river, the old town and Vila Nova de Gaia, a sister city on the other side of the river.  The Douro is the eighth longest river in Western Europe (the eighteenth in all of Europe) and flows through Spain and Portugal and meets the Atlantic Ocean  at Porto.  It was simply fabulous walking across the bridge, the sun was shining, the river was a glorious shade of deep indigo blue and the tiles on the coloured houses on either side reflected the sun and made everywhere look cheerful and happy.

A Life in a Year – 4th October, Bruges, Canals and Carillions

 

At seven o’clock there was blue sky and sunshine but it had turned cooler with a stiff breeze from the sea blowing across the fields and into the garden of the gîte.  We were driving to neighbouring Belgium today to visit the town of Bruges in the north of the country and by the time we had packed the car and set off there were big spots of rain falling on the windscreen.  This didn’t last long and it was one of those days when there were different weather conditions in all directions and it was a bit of a lottery about what we were likely to get.  It was about a hundred kilometres to drive and on the way we passed through a variety of different weather fronts so we were unsure of what to expect when we arrived.

We needn’t have worried because as we parked the car the sun came out and the skies turned a settled shade of blue and without a map we let instinct guide us down cobbled streets towards the city centre.  I had visited Bruges before in 1981 so I thought I knew what I was looking for but over the years I must have got mixed up because the place looked nothing like I remembered it.  I knew that we were looking for a large square and I had in mind something classical like St Marks in Venice so I was surprised when we reached the famous market square to find nothing like that at all.

Belgium became an independent European State on 4^th October 1930, the Year of Revolutions and Bruges is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium.  In the middle ages, thanks to the wool trade, it was one of the most important cities in Europe and the historic city centre is an important UNESCO World Heritage site because most of its medieval architecture is intact. The Church of Our Lady has a hundred and twenty metre high brick spire making it one of the world’s highest brick towers. The sculpture Madonna and Child, which can be seen in the transept, is believed to be Michelangelo’s only sculpture to have left Italy within his lifetime and the most famous landmark is its thirteenth century belfry, housing a municipal carillon comprising forty eight bells where the city still employs a full-time carillonneur, who gives free concerts on a regular basis.  The Carillion is a feature of Northern France and the Low Countries and the Belfries of Belgium and France is a group of 56 historical buildings designated by UNESCO as World Heritage Site. The city is also famous for its picturesque waterways and along with other canal based northern cities, such as Amsterdam in the Netherlands; it is sometimes referred to as “The Venice of the North”.

We really needed more time to appreciate all of this but the price to be paid for convenient close to the centre parking was that we were restricted to just two hours.  Even though I didn’t remember it quite like this the city square was delightful, fully pedestrianised except for the odd horse and carriage and surrounded by bars and cafés all around the perimeter.  We liked the look of the Bruges Tavern which had tables surrounded by pretty flowers and a vacant table with a good view of the square.  The official language in this part of Belgium is Flemish, which is similar to Dutch and the man who came to take our order identified immediately that we were English and spoke to us in that delightful  lilting sing-song voice that Dutch and Belgian people have when they speak English.  He made us feel welcome and we enjoyed a glass of beer sitting in the sunshine.

The girls wanted to shop again so whilst they went off in the direction of the main shopping street we finished our drinks and then took a leisurely walk around the square overlooked by brightly painted houses with Dutch style gables and facades and then disappeared down the warren of quiet side streets that had something interesting to stop for around every corner.  Making our way back to the car we stopped in another, more modern, large square for a second drink where the service was slow and there was an amusing exchange between a flustered waitress and an impatient diner. ‘Alright, alright, the food is coming’ the waitress snapped when she was asked a third time when it would be served.  Our beer took a long time to come as well but we thought it best not to complain.

As we left Bruges to drive back towards Boulogne the sun disappeared underneath a blanket of cloud and we drove through intermittent showers along a road cluttered with heavy trucks all making their way to and from the Channel ports.  This was not an especially interesting journey through a flat featureless landscape and although we had taken our passports with us there wasn’t even any real indication that that we had passed from Belgium back to France except for a small EU sign that that seemed hopelessly inadequate and could be easily missed.

A Life in a Year – 11th September, Car Parking French Style

 

In September 1978 on a Town Twinning holiday I stayed with a family in Evreux in Normandy.

Charles prided himself on being able to slip into the most improbable parking spaces always claiming with a certain sort of logic that that is exactly what bumpers on cars are designed for.  Even if it was quite obvious that there was insufficient space to squeeze his vehicle into he would be determined to get in there one way or another.  One way was to reverse into the vehicle behind and shunt it a few inches backwards and the other was to drive into the vehicle in front and shunt that one a few inches forward.  He repeated this a few times until he was satisfied with his unorthodox parking arrangements and then he unashamedly got out of his car, locked it and walked away without the slightest guilt.

Apparently however this is quite normal in France and to make it easier for other motorists French Drivers never leave a car in gear when parking their cars. 

Charles also had a curiously impatient habit of when waiting at traffic lights and being first in the queue of driving beyond them a distance of about two metres or so.  I asked him why he did this and he explained that it was so he could make a quick getaway.  What was illogical about this however was that he couldn’t actually see the lights change colour and invariably had to wait to be prompted to move off by the driver in the vehicle behind. 

Curious drivers the French!

http://apetcher.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/town-twinning-evreux/

A Life in a Year – 8th September, Spalding/Speyer Town Twinning

Town Twinning became a big thing after the Second World War as people sought to repair relationships with their neighbours and I have often wondered what the process was for getting a twin town. 

Perhaps it was like the draw for the third round of the FA cup when all the names go into a hat to be drawn out with each other, or perhaps it was like the UCAS University clearing house system where towns made their preferred selections and waited for performance results to see if they were successful; or perhaps it was a sort of dating service and introductory agency.

Anyway, the city of Coventry started it all off and was the first ever to twin when it made links with Stalingrad in the Soviet Union in 1944 and is now so addicted to twinning that it has easily the most of any English town or city with a massive twenty-six twins.  That is a lot of civic receptions and a lot of travelling expenses for the Mayor of Coventry.  Perhaps even more surprising is that Sherborne in Dorset, a town of only ten thousand residents has fifteen twin towns.

From 1975 to 1980 I worked at Rugby Borough Council and there was a strong Town Twinning Association with a regular group of Council bigwigs rotating biannually between visiting the twin town of Evreux in Normandy, France and then entertaining French visitors the following year.  In 1977 Rugby twinned with a second town, this time Russelheim in Germany, and this meant new people were required to fill the coaches and provide accommodation for visitors.  We expressed an interest in the Gallic option and in 1979 joined the twinners.

In the following year I changed jobs and moved away to Rugby and that put an end to Town Twinning for a while until over twenty years later in 2002.

Now I had moved to Spalding in Lincolnshire whose twin town is Speyer in Germany and responding to a crisis of too few hosts for an imminent visit I decided that it was time to start twinning again.  At this time I was sharing a rented house with a friend and work colleague, Barry Bradley, and the organizer thought it would be amusing to allocate a female visitor to stay with us.  Her name was Helga and I thought this all sounded rather promising…

The coach arrived at about six o’clock on 7th September and I optimistically looked out for a stunning blonde getting off the coach.  Well, the coach emptied and there was no sign of my guest and as people stared to drift away I wondered if she had bothered to come.  Finally the coach pulled away and there she was standing on the other side of the bus.  Oh My God!  My optimistic vision of a Bavarian stunner was cruelly dashed because Helga had more the look of an East German shot putter of dubious gender than a Black Forest beauty queen so I hurried her to the car and if I’d had one I would have put a blanket over her head to get her inside the house in case she scared the neighbours.

We got over the first night but in the morning she didn’t appear for breakfast so I had to leave her and go to work and return at lunch time to deliver her to the coach for an organized trip.  At tea time I took her back to the house to get ready for the civic reception but without warning she packed her bags and demanded to be taken into town to be closer to her friends.

It turned out that she was ragingly homophobic and she had jumped to hasty conclusions about the domestic arrangements.  There was no convincing her otherwise and unable to dissuade her I had to make alternative arrangements for her, which brought my attempts at improving international relations to a shuddering halt.  So traumatic was this experience that I haven’t twinned again since.

A happier Town Twinning experience:

town-twinning-rugby-and-evreux

A Life in a Year – 2nd September, Three Staircases in Paris

On 2^nd September 2002 my son, Jonathan, and I took an early morning flight from Stansted to Paris Charles de Gaulle for a two night stay in the French capital and a plan to see the main sights in just one day.  After we arrived we took a train into Paris and then the metro to somewhere near to Montmartre where we were staying in the cheapest hotel that I could find.

As we emerged from the metro station the city was only just beginning to stir into life as the street cleaning machines scrubbed the gutters and North African men in high-visibility jackets swished the pavements with their besom brooms removing the dog mess and the litter in preparation for the day. (The French authorities are trying to tackle the problem of canine excrement but are making little progress and even heavy fines (440€ for a first offence) have little impact. In Paris there are sixteen tonnes of dog deposits every day, which causes 4,550 smelly incidents a week.  Removing it costs €15m  a year!)

It was too early to book into our hotel so we left our bags and went straight back to the metro station stopping for only a very short time at a McDonalds restaurant for a quick breakfast. And then we joined the commuters making their way to work and took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe where we emerged from the subterranean tunnels into a disappointingly misty Champs Élysée.

The traffic circle surrounding the Arc de Triomphe was extremely intimidating.  There are no lanes and none of the usual rules of driving etiquette as hundreds of cars race and weave in and out of each other like dodgem cars at a fairground.  The French have a ludicrous driving rule called priorité à droite where vehicles from the right always have priority at junctions and roundabouts.  This rule is in fact so ludicrous that even the French themselves have seen the sense of virtually abandoning elsewhere in the country but it remains the rule here at the busiest roundabout in France (probably) and cars entering the circle have the right-of-way whilst those in the circle must yield.  Braking is forbidden and the use of the horn is compulsory, there is no apparent lane discipline that I could make out and entering the roundabout is an extended game of ‘chance’ where drivers simply waited to see whose nerve would fold and who would yield first.

We approached the Arch from the Champs Élysée and as far as I could see there was no safe way of crossing and getting to the monument until we eventually found the underground tunnel which took us safely below the traffic chaos above and into the Place de Charles de Gaulle. We shunned the elevator and climbed the steps instead to the top of the fifty metre high building (the second largest triumphal arch in the World) and enjoyed the views of the boulevards and roads converging and radiating away from this famous landmark.  Close by we could see the Eiffel Tower and this was where we were going next.

The Eiffel Tower is an iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars and has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world.  The tower is the tallest building in Paris and the most-visited paid monument in the world.  Named for its designer, engineer Gustave Eiffel, the tower was built as the entrance arch to the 1889 World’s Fair.  It is 324 metres tall, about the same height as an 81-story building.  Upon its completion, it surpassed the Washington Monument to assume the title of tallest man-made structure in the world, a title it held for 41 years, until the Chrysler Building in New York City was built in 1930.

The tower has three levels but we didn’t have time to stand in the queue for the first stage elevator so we took all six hundred steps to the second level and we would have climbed to the very top if we could but the third level is only accessible by an expensive lift.  I have visited the Eiffel Tower four times now; in 1979 on a Town Twinning visit to Evreux in Normandy, in 1990 on a weekend trip with some work colleagues to celebrate a new career, this ocassion and finally in 2004, the last time that I visited Paris.  Unfortunately on every occasion the weather has been overcast and I have never enjoyed the clear views that should really be possible from the top.

Back at ground level the sun was beginning to break through as we crossed the River Seine and onto the Champs de Mars and as it was approaching lunchtime we found a restaurant with pavement tables in the sun and ordered a pizza.  The food was reasonably priced but I remember a large glass of beer cost €8 so I made a mental note to find a mini-market on the way back to the hotel for more sensibly priced alcohol for the evening.

Our next stop was Notre Dam Cathedral but as we had walked quite a distance already we took a Batou Mouche barge ride the short distance the River to the Ile de Cîte and as the vessel made its way through the centre of the city we soaked up the historic sites along both banks from the viewing platform at the back which was crowded now because the mist had finally gone and there was full sunshine and a blue sky.

Although we had already climbed to the top of the Arc de Triomphe and half way up the Eiffel Tower we bought tickets and waited in line to climb to the top of the Cathedral but sadly by the time we reached the top and walked around the external galleries the mist had returned and wrapped Paris in a gloomy grey shroud again.

Jonathan was beginning to flag by now and as it was late afternoon we walked a little further around the streets of old Paris and then took a metro back to Montmartre where we walked along the boulevard with its seedy sex establishments and grubby shops and into the touristy cobbled back streets of the district famous for painters, night-life and a red-light district.  I found a shop to buy some beer and we rested for a while at the hotel before going out again in the evening when we walked to the Sacré Coeur Cathedral which on account of it being built on the highest point in the city involved an energy sapping walk which more or less finished Jonathan off for the day!

The plan was to find somewhere to eat but he was so tired that he preferred my suggestion of returning to the hotel and I would fetch a McDonalds meal from around the corner and we would just stay in and crash! So we did just that.

Even though the French maintain that they despise the Company and the concept of fast food an awful lot of people eat there.  Across France today there are nearly twelve hundred restaurants and in Paris alone there are almost seventy restaurants under golden arches, with even more dotted around the outer suburbs. That’s much the same as London, but with only a third of the population.   In 2007 the chain’s French revenues increased by 11 per cent to €3 billion. That’s more than it generates in Britain and in terms of profit, France is second only to the United States itself.  It is now so firmly a part of French culture that in 2009 McDonald’s reached a deal with the French museum, the Louvre, to open a McDonald’s restaurant and McCafé on its premises by their underground entrance.

It had been an excellent day in Paris but a tiring one and as we reflected on the day we dubbed it ‘Speed Sightseeing’ and we successfully employed this method again in 2003 in Amsterdam and then in 2004 in Rome.

A Life in a Year – 19th August, Boulogne-Sur-Mer

 

I didn’t have high expectations of Boulogne-Sur-Mer because I imagined it to be a place of little interest where people arrive by ferry and drive through very quickly without stopping on their way to more interesting places.  From the garden of the gîte where we were staying we could see a large Cathedral and a tall military column and so as we were so close it seemed only good manners to go and have a look.  On the approach to the city through shabby pot holed streets there was little to make me review my original perception and when we parked the car and walked into town I didn’t really expect this to be a very long visit at all. 

Some postcards in a souvenir shop showed some surprisingly nice views of Boulogne so we set out for the Cathedral and the old town to try and discover the best part of the city.  At the top of the steep hill there was a medieval city wall and a gate leading inside and suddenly Boulogne took me by surprise because inside was something I was not expecting at all.

Boulogne’s Old Town is built within the original Roman walls and has recently been well restored and it was in complete contrast to the concrete and glass of the sea front and the shopping streets.  Here was the beating heart of a medieval city with a castle, one of the biggest Cathedrals in Europe and narrow streets lined with charming properties, little shops, cafés and bars.  In the middle was a public space with imaginative public art based on bits of old motor vehicles and scrap parts which was probably only the French could do this well.

The sun was shining and my opportunity for my favourite moules et frites and we found a pavement café on the Rue de Lille where a Frenchman was playing accordion to entertain the diners and I achieved my holiday objective of enjoying a pot of steaming molluscs.

 

After lunch we strolled around a while longer, outside the huge Cathedral, which was rebuilt in the nineteenth century as a symbol of the revival of the French Catholic Church after the Revolution in which the old cathedral and so many other churches were closed and destroyed.  We didn’t go inside but even from the street we could appreciate the size of the massive dome, which is one of the biggest in Europe.  At the other end of the old town was the town hall where there was free entry to the Belfry Tower that included a guided tour and history of the building, which was helpfully given in English as well as French.  There was a long climb with a couple of stops for informative narrative and there were good views from the top of the tower and we were lucky to be part of quite a small group of visitors because we had time and space to enjoy the rooftop vista.

We left the old town by a gate next to the Castle Museum and I am forever amazed at the bits of trivia that I pick up on my travels because who would have guessed that inside is the most important exhibition of masks from Alaska in the whole world?  Why isn’t the most important exhibition of masks from Alaska in Alaska? We didn’t go inside because we weren’t sure that Molly would appreciate it so we left and walked through the gardens beneath the walls and back to the agreed rendezvous point with the girls where they were waiting for us after completing their shopping.

On our way back to the seafront there was another surprise because Boulogne, it turns out, is the biggest fishing port in France and there is a large fishing fleet including deep-sea trawlers and factory ships, as well as smaller sea-going and inshore fishing boats.  A third of France’s fresh fish catch is landed here, and a huge quay-side fish processing factory makes 20% of the nation’s tinned fish, and half of the frozen fish, fish fingers and other fish-based ready meals.

While we had been exploring the old town the girls had enjoyed the Nausicaa Aquarium and were waiting for us on the white sandy beach when we returned slightly late to meet them. Every winter storms strip the sand away and then every summer the city council imports several hundred tonnes from further up the coast to make sure that Boulogne has a beach to enjoy at least for a few months.

Boulogne had taken me by surprise that’s for sure and because of that it has now made its way onto my ‘must return to’ list!