The Edition You All Been Waiting For - Day Two In Paris

I know I know I am way pass due, but I finally pieced together my second day of my trip to Paris. I haven’t forgotten everything I did during the three days of being there. It is hard to forget spending time in a place you have never been, it isn’t like living there and seeing the same thing over and over until you get sick of it. Like in Utah it took me fifty some odd years to get to Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake, even though I have been to the lake many times. I may not remember it exactly the way I experienced it, but it is close enough.

As usual I was up before the sun and trying to be quiet in an apartment that the floor creaks with every foot step is difficult, but I didn’t want to wake up my hosts so I stayed mostly in my room or the living room on the computer. Mammodouy and I had a long day the first day there and I wanted to let her rest the best she could. Popeye got up and did his morning run and returned around eightish (I don’t own a watch so I’m guessing on the time). We decided the night before that we would let Mammodouy rest in in the morning to regain her strength (we did a lot of walking the first day) so Popeye suggested to take me to see his friend in a village on the out skirts of Paris.

His friend repairs guitars and one of Popeye’s hobbies is collecting guitars. Popeye was telling me about a late fifties Fender bass that he picked up that needed some repairs so he gave it to his friend to repair. We left around nine for a village by the name of St-Nom-la-Bretèche which is close to Versailles. The village was small, but the surrounding area around the village has two (maybe three, can’t quite remember) golf courses. One of which is one of the best in France, and like all golf courses there are houses that border the course. These houses are some of the richest homes in the Paris area and are like normal rich homes that you see all over, so I didn’t get pictures of them.

The above pictures are of St-Nom-la-Bretèche.

After seeing Popeye’s friend, he took me to see Versailles. It is a small château that was built built before Louis XIV decided to live in it until he was forced to move back to Paris. When I say it is small I was just joking, the palace is huge. It would easily cover three to four city blocks and that is just the main building.

We took about 15-20 minutes just to drive past the front and one side of the building. Popeye did however take me into the gardens. The gardens themselves had a couple of small villages in them; one in particular was called the Queen’s Garden. Popeye told me that they used the village in the Queen’s Garden in a couple of movies, the village is a few centuries old.

 These are some of the pictures I pulled from the internet. I just wanted to show you the size of Versailles.

After driving around the gardens for about a half hour (driving is about the only way you can see the whole garden), we stopped so that I could snap a few pictures. After the Gardens we drove back to Paris where Popeye took me to a shop that specializes in cheeses and bought around six different types of cheese. We went back to the apartment and had lunch of cheese and bread. After lunch we got ready to go out again this time with Mammodouy to tour some more of Paris, Popeye agreed to drive us around, he is one of the best parallel car parker I have ever seen. Popeye was able to park his LandRover in a place I wouldn’t attempt to park Smart car. He had inches between both bumpers and with just a few forward and back maneuvers he was in and out with no damage to any vehicle, I would say more about his driving, but I don’t want to give him a big head (his beret wouldn’t fit).

Popeye first tried to get us to the island of Notre Dame, but all the bridges were blocked to traffic going onto the island. They were having a carnival from Brazil and weren’t allowing traffic onto the island. Then he decided to take us to one of the highest points in Paris called Montmartre, which Mammodouy said it is actually a small hill, but all the roads leading to the top were blocked off because someone wanted to use the hill to try to break the world’s record skateboard jump, whether he did I have no idea. So Popeye took us around to see the parts of Paris that aren’t so famous on the normal tours of Paris.

We went and saw the poor village of Paris and Popeye told me that the buildings there are sinking into the ground due to the water seepage from the Sine. He said that if you placed a marble against one wall it would roll to the other side of the room. The only thing that I noticed was a lot of vehicles were covered with graffiti, so you wouldn’t want to leave your car parked there over night.

We then drove through the middle class village (they call the various sections of Paris villages, which is what they were centuries ago, just like in the U.S. they are called towns. Even when they are overran by the cities). The average apartment here would cost roughly 3 to 8 hundred thousand euros and that is for a studio, of course that is if you can find one for sale. Usually they are passed down through generations.

Popeye then took us to see the rich area where an 800 sq. ft. apartment would cost in the neighborhood of 1.3 million euros, again if you can find one.

All of these villages were in the old part of Paris and even though they have been renovated they all had the same look. Apparently Paris is trying to keep the old area of Paris looking as much as it did centuries ago, which I admire.  You can see in the distance the business district and there are more modern buildings and high rises there, but in the old part of Paris the only high rise (or skyscraper) was the one I mentioned in my first blog about Paris. The city passed a law prohibiting buildings of that type being built in the old Paris.

Otherwise Paris as the world knows it would not exist anymore. I say good for the city officials for trying to preserve the Paris the world has come to love. Popeye took us down one of the richest streets in Paris; it was lined with jewelry shops on both sides for about two blocks. Mammodouy told me that if you told a taxi driver to go to that street the driver would know how much money you had.

We did eventually make it to Notre Dame and this time was able to get out and see the building. Although the building is huge, again I was disappointed in the way Hollywood displays it. It is on an island in the middle of the Sine which I never knew I have always seen it with streets and buildings all around it. And although the stain glass windows are awesome they are not the 50-60 foot size that they seem to be in all of the movies that people are always getting thrown through. I’m really starting to believe what everyone is saying about television and the movies "that everything looks bigger on screen".

 

After Notre Dame, Popeye took us to dinner which was fabulous, thanks Popeye, then it was time to go home and to bed.

This is me pretending to read a menu. It was all in french and I had no idea what I was going to eat, Popeye and Mammodouy did all the ordering for me. I had no regrets.

Mammodouy or Popeye feel free to add or correct anything that I missed or got wrong, but this is how I remember it after a month and enjoyed it all. Still to come will be day three which will eventually leave my brain and placed on paper.

Until the next time — Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.