CHEMIN

I popped over for a short trip to Paris recently to catch up with my mother (who regularly visits France to see her family). As opportunities to catch up with either of my parents are rare these days, I booked us a lovely room in my favourite part of Paris; Rue Mouffetard in the Latin Quarter.

GRANDE ARCHE DE LA DEFENSE

Designed by Danish architect Johann Otto von Spreckelsen

RETRACING OLD STEPS

It was my first time back in Paris since leaving definitively about a year ago. Whereas once I was cynical enough to be rolling my eyes at the enchanted tourists, I was myself finally able to appreciate it again for the city that it can be. The edges of bad memories of being pushed and shoved about in the metro softened by observing people actually being courteous, by not riding the peak hour lines or times, by not having to be anywhere at a particular time (except for the train station Anne, except for the train station...)

FOR WHOM THE BELL DINGS

Not my actual bike, but representative of the coolness of my bike - despite its lack of ding bling
Now that spring is (allegedly) on it's way, I've pulled the bike (and my ever expanding butt) out of winter hibernation and found it's had little banlieu rats nibbling away at it while it was stored in the private communal courtyard of the Paris apartment block. For starters, someone tried to have a little chomp away at the bike lock and being too lame to properly steal a bike I figure they just decided to steal the bell instead. How much street cred does that get you these days?
One thing I have learned about living in Paris is that whatever it is, if it's not nailed down, someone will steal it. The other thing about Paris - is that if it is nailed down, they will steal the nails. And then they will steal it.

OLD BONES GET NO REST

Visiting damp tunnels full of centuries old skeletons is probably not everyones idea of a great day out, but there's something I rather like about roaming about in tunnels. And if there's one thing that Paris has got a lot of, it's tunnels. In this case, Paris' famed catacombes.

These particular tunnels were originally limestone quarries - some dating back to Roman occupation (of what was then Lutece). During the late 1700s, there were severe problems with overflowing graveyards and poor burials - especially in the region of Les Halles (once a famous marketplace, now a tragically designed commercial district). To combat the disease caused by these unsanitary conditions (becoming even more problematic during the revolution), it was decided to transfer the bodies to the former quarry sites and create mass graves.

There's something very anonymous about this sort of experience. Graveyards at least give you an indication of who each person was, but here I found myself wondering, as I looked at the rows and rows of skulls, who they were, how they lived, how they died. Though it's sure that these old bones get no rest with all us tourists wandering through day after day.

PICASSO MUSEUM

Europe on a shoestring travelling pro-tip: Museums in France are free on the first Sunday of every month. I recently took advantage of a free cultural day and strolled down to the Hôtel Salé to check out the Picasso Museum (and to compare it with the Barcelona collection...)

30! HELP!

This is it.
The big three oh.
Had to happen eventually right? I remember as a teenager that I could never possibly image EVER being so old as 30. Well, it happened. All I had to do was wait, time did the rest.

HIGH CLASS CONFECTION

At some point every couple of weeks or so, I'll find myself lost wandering nonchalantly through a posh area of Paris (no, not all areas of Paris are posh, promise), and will stumble across what I can only describe as an haute couture chocolate shop. This shrine to hedonism distinguishes itself from the normal riffraff of plain old amazing French chocolate shops by the addition of ridiculously too good to eat chocolate art.

With Easter approaching, there is already a torturous assortment of chickens, rabbits (and for some reason I can't fathom, gnomes...one chocognome I recently spotted was meant to have a chococarrot in his chocohand, except that it had sort of slipped down to his choconetheregions and he was looking pretty excited about Easter is all can say) in the window of pretty much every other patissier. Meanwhile, the High Class chocolate simply get on with their weird and wonderful creations as part of the day to day showing off, and they might chuck in the odd chicken to prove they're paying attention.

Yesterday night, while displaying my astute knowledge of the layout of inner Paris ('where the hell we NOW? And where's the putain de metro station gone?') to a visiting friend, we found ourselves (intentionally of course) on the impossibly chic Rue Saint Honore (think Cartier), I passed by the creme de la creme of all the chocolate concoctions I've seen thus far. A giant exotic bird made of dark and white chocolate with a chocolate waterfall in the background. Wonder if they've managed to scrub my nose print off the glass yet?

TOOTLE, TOOTLE, PEEP! HONK, BEEP, BEEP!

Sometimes, if the timing is right, I will take the bus instead of the metro for the last section of my daily commute. I much prefer the bus, there's hardly anyone in it, and I can have a nice warm seat, breathe and read whatever book I'm engrossed in (with said book at normal distance from my nose rather than pressed up against my face).
While I wait for the bus, midway between the hellish stretch of road that links La Defense with L'Arc de Triomphe, I amuse myself watching the morning flow of vehicles where traffic merges at a horrific intersection. When I say 'merges', those cars can get themselves into such a tight crossweave that D&G could probably sew a garment out of it.
There is quite often a couple of traffic police in place to do the work that a set of traffic lights can no longer manage. I love to watch them whistling, pointing, waggling their white-gloved hands at naughty motorists. And I love to watch the motorists who, much in the way of children playing 'freeze', try and creep through unnoticed everytime the white-hands and whistles turn their backs. But they do a great job, considering the stunts drivers try and pull off even with the traffic police in full view (sometimes you've just got to give them points for sheer inventiveness).

WHEN IS A PUBLIC HOLIDAY NOT A PUBLIC HOLIDAY?

when the trains are on strike.

I have a choice of 3 different ways to get to work (outside of walking 6 km) using the public transport system. I like to mix it up a bit, to keep my brain mildly occupied with the thought that each time I probably should've chosen one of the OTHER two that morning. My most common is the RER, a regional rail system that extends a good distance to the surrounding Ile-de-France areas. I can generally get a seat (though, sometimes it's puzzlingly packed to the doors, and I've not yet discovered the causes of these random fluctuations) and it's a lot nicer than the bus or metro which are generally like a tin of sardines - packed to the brim, and funny smelling.

HOW TO...

get out of paying a public transport infringement fine...

To get to the appeals office before it shut, I raced from one end of Paris to the other in a record-breaking time of 40 minutes armed with the dodgiest 'I can not speak French very well' accent I could pull off, in an optimistic attempt to talk my way out of paying a 50 euro public transport fine:
"I did not understand"
"it was the first monthly pass I ever bought"
"they did not tell me" *struggles slightly with verb conjugation for effect*

OLD AND DUSTY

So, after living in Paris for over two months now (ooh lala!), I finally hauled derriere to check out one of Europe's largest collections of 'look at all the stuff we stole from other civilizations' (though, granted, some of it was bought...) aka the Louvre - a building with a very long history having first been constructed sometime in the 1100's as a fortress (no-one needed museums back then you see, everything was new, but they did need to protect themselves from other folks set on stealing all their stuff that would itself later end up in a museum).

That's probably ironic somehow. Let's progress...

After a time, the Louvre lost its military significance and became a royal residence, where very rich people could loll about being decadent all day - until it got plundered by the English (amongst others) in the 1400s who came and nicked all their stuff to later put in their own museums (told you it was going to be ironic, right?)

Anyway, eventually it became a museum in its own right (after all the lolling nobles had their heads chopped off), though there are certain areas that make you feel like you're about to bump into a very annoyed man in breeches demanding to know why all these peasants are trampling through his hall.