Planning a London/Paris museum hopping trip (1 Viewer)

[Dennis Nicholls]

Since Andrew is a shrink, I'm sure he charges a hefty sum for lying on his couch.

I never quite understood the business model for the Chunnel. Is it mostly for passengers, mostly for autos, or mostly for freight?

 

[Francois Caron]

The Channel Tunnel's business model is probably "Anything that needs to be moved."

Ooooops! Never mind Andrew!

(Knowing he's British, he'll probably charge me more than double what it normally costs in North America!)

I need one last bit of help from you all. Where in London can I buy a reasonably priced jacket suitable for London weather i.e. wind, rain, and moderate to cool temperatures? I can't find anything suitable in Montreal. Our weather is either too hot or too cold, meaning the stores either sell windbreakers or winter coats. And the only thing the stores are selling now are the coats.

Thanks!

 

[Francois Caron]

A few things.

Forget the jacket. I found a nice one at Marks & Spencer.

Rush hour in the tube is an adventure in itself!

For North Americans, leave the phone at home and BUY one instead with a TalkMobile World SIM card. £30 gets you a Nokia 1610 (?) with a £20 credit. Afterwards, calls to North America cost only 4p a minute, or EIGHT CENTS a minute! And you get to keep the phone (although it'll never work in North America

)

Finally, is there a way to find out if you've properly "touched out" at a tube station? I might have missed the last one by accident. It's not serious since I've probably already hit the maximum for the day.

Thanks!

 

[Jay H]

Was going to suggest MEC, which is Canada's sort of equivalent to the US's REI (aka recreational equipment, inc.)... they sell outdoorsy stuff and I've bought some stuff from them...

www.mec.ca

Jay

 

[Francois Caron]

An update.

MY FEET HURT!!!

The Globe Theatre is a must-see! You can get standing room tickets for only £5. But you MUST stand during the entire performance! Sitting on the ground is forbidden.

I was at the last row of the top level and had a near-unobstructed view. And the acoustics in the place are AMAZING! No sound system is used at all, so the sounds from the performers and musicians are "uncompressed at infinite bit rates".

I tried climbing to the top of the dome at St-Paul's. At the last staircase, my heart said "No [bleep]ing way!"

Yesterday's visit of the Towers of London and today's visit of the Churchill War Room were much better than I expected. The Towers took an entire afternoon to complete. The War Room took two hours, but I could have stayed much longer.

I also passed by Buckigham Palace where two teenagers were caught by the police diving for coins in the fountain! They were NOT doing a good job of talking their way out of the situation!

I won't have time to visit the National Gallery, but I did see Trafalgar Square. Tomorrow, it's the British Museum. If I finish early, MAYBE I'll go to the Gallery, but I have two more stops to do first which I'll be doing early in the morning.

That's it for now. I'll let you all know how the trip to Paris goes later this week.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Do you have your Nomex (R) suit for the Chunnel?

 

[andrew markworthy]

Yes, certainly - IF you can find my house a hundred miles from London in a roughly westerly direction with no further information.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Francois, try the Bristol phone book.

 

[Francois Caron]

Good idea! Although that would probably make me a stalker.

Andrew, if I do find you, can you cure me of my stalking habit?

I'm heading to Paris tomorrow! It should be interesting to see if the Parisians can comprehend my French Canadian "haccent."

 

[andrew markworthy]

At best, all you'd find is some of the more in-bred relatives of my sister-in-law's husband (who was previously married to my other sister-in-kaw - it's an interesting family). One of them is considered daringly cosmopolitan by the rest of his family because he's the first one to live outside the same tiny village in at least a couple of centuries.

And I'm not making that up.

To get to me you'd have to pay the toll on the Severn Bridge (unless you plan to walk, in which case it's free) and head a little further west.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

M48.....Severn Bridge....good heavens!

In the immortal words of Monty Python, "leave that Welsh tart alone!"

 

[Francois Caron]

It is now 9:30 AM and I'm sitting in the departure lounge of St-Pancras International. My original ticket was for the 2:04 PM train. It is now for the 1:22 PM train.

I'm leaving early!

Too bad I don't know when I'll arrive in Paris...

On the bright side, I finally have access to free WiFi! And the VPN connection to my home computer works! I can finally catch up with my tor... er... work! Yeah! That's it! Work!

The battery on my Fujitsu U810 should be good for four hours, more than enough time before the train deparrts.

As for next Thursday, it'll be tricky. Can I catch an early enough train to make it to my flight at Heathrow on time? Or will I have to leave Paris a day earlier than originally scheduled?

Andrew, I'm not into stalking inbreds. You're on your own.

 

[Francois Caron]

i've arrived in Paris in two and a half hours. The trip in the tunnel was totally uneventful although you can still smell the remnant of the fire.

I've resolved the Thursday dilemma. I've moved my return date to the following Monday. I'll be staying in Paris one extra full day and head back to London on Friday. Then I'll have two full extra days in London before my trip home. The idea of travelling both by rail and by air on the same day simply wasn't meant to be. Eurostar is simply too unpredictable these days even though they make every effort to get everyone on a train, and I did very well on today's journey.

The best thing about these changes is that I now have time to finish seeing what I've originaly missd or would have had to skip over.

 

[Philip Hamm]

Please continue the travelogue. I love Paris and would be interested to know where you went and what you thought of it.

 

[Francois Caron]

No problem in providing a travelogue now that I have a permanent Internet connection for free.

Now for Paris.

Oh my God...

Paris is a cesspool of degenerate debauchery and corrup...

JUST KIDDING!!!

Paris is a wonderful place! In my first full day, this is what I've noticed.

- The entire city is one gigantic museum!
- The Eiffel Tower is one big tourist trap.
- I can't get lost in this city. All I have is a subway map, and I only need to find a station to know where I am. And the stations are so close together.
- The subway trains however desperately need handrails over the center seats. You can easily fall over the passenger in front of you when the train stops in the station (guess how I know this).

- The mobile service here is expensive. So expensive that it's CHEAPER for me to stay with my UK TalkMobile World SIM and pay the roaming rates than purchase a SIM card locally which most of the time the purchase cost doesn't translate to an equivalent calling credit.
- The language "haccent" barrier is no worse than in London. Sometimes it may take a try or two to comprehend what someone is saying, but it works out in the end.
- People are just as nice in Paris as they are in London.
- Anything on rubber tires is a threat to all pedestrians, especially those who jaywalk (same as in Montreal).

- There are a LOT of scooters in this city. They could dramatically reduce the city's pollution levels to "near spotless" simply by banning all two cycle engines. Vespa engines would be exempted since their engine's design makes it as clean a a four cycle engine.
- You can actually rent a standardized bicycle with a pre-paid card, then pick up and leave the bike at the city's many rental bike racks! A fantastic solution for those who don't want to own anything with a gas engine! And the first half hour is free!
- The public toilets: they actually exist! And they're fully self-cleaning! There's even water to wash your hands!
- The Paris tap water has exactly the same side-effects on my digestive system as the London tap water: NONE AT ALL! The only reason to even consider buying bottled water is if there's simply nothing else available. Stop throwing your money away.
- The food is just as expensive in Paris as in London. Visitors from the USA and Canada should expect to pay between 1.5 an 2 times their usual price for their restaurant meals. If you object to this, try a grocery store and make your own.
- The hotel elevators are very, very tiny. This is normal since most of Paris' buildings were built at a time when elevators weren't even a concept. So they fitted the elevators into the existing buildings as best as they could. So if you can't fit in one, that's YOUR problem.
- It happened again. People were asking ME for directions, including a couple whose accent identified them as being either French or Swiss. I'm like a Tardis with a functional Chameleon circuit! Wherever I land, I blend in!

- DON'T shake an Orangina bottle. The product is carbonated.

I'll be visiting the museums this week along with filming the métro during rush hour in order to witness just how bad it can get. I've already done London, and I can attest that it can get very bad and VERY HOT in that one!

The only hiccup is that I've run out of minutes on my prepaid mobile, and the TalkMobile on-line system only accepts UK addresses. So I can't top up online. I can't even call customer support. Any suggestions? Is there a place in Paris where I can top up remotely?

More to come.

 

[Michael Harris]

That happened to me too back in 2000. I went to Paris to see the end of the Tour de France, which happened to be on my birthday. I brought my bicycle with me since there was going to be a mass bike ride through Paris before the actual last stage. Anyway, I arrive in Paris, get to my hotel, change into bike clothes, and armed with a map, I started to explore. I ended up near the Eiffel Tower. While there I was approached by two drop-dead gorgeous blondes how asked me in Scandinavian accented English "Do you speak English?" I said "yes" and they proceeded to ask me for directions. Now, this is my first time in Paris since 1985! I opened my map, which I studied in advance, and I directed them to their destination.

I'm really enjoying reading these posts as I love both London and Paris. I've not been to London since 2000 and to Paris since 2004. I plan on going back to both in May. I can't wait.

 

[Francois Caron]

Translation: you let them go and you didn't score.

Today, it was two elderly women at the Louvre who were having trouble with their digital camera. They asked me what the message "Memory Full" meant (they only spoke French, their son's camera was set to English). I couldn't help them much aside from saying they'd have to erase a few pictures from the camera to make room, but that I didn't know how to do that since I've never used that camera before.

The Louvre is a monster museum. Unfortunately, it's so overwhelming that I had a lot of trouble just trying to appreciate any single item with the possible exception of Louis XIV's portrait in which he looks totally gay.

The biggest disappointment and horror scene involved the Mona Lisa. All alone, isolated behind bulletproof glass, she reminded me of a starlet being swarmed by hundreds of paparazzi with no means of escape. There were so many people desperate to take a picture of the painting despite the existence of so many high quality copies available on the Internet, it made it impossible to simply appreciate the painting with all those camera flashes going off all at once!

And what's the deal with the Venus de Milo? She's all busted up! He arms are missing, her nipples are clipped, she's cracked and pitted all over, and her face is no better or worse than the female faces of all the other sculptures in the museum. What is it with her that makes her so popular? I simply don't understand it!

I found the sleeping hermaphrodite to be a bit funny mainly because her bed looks like an inflatable raft you would use at the beach.

I might post a vignette tonight on YouTube of the Mona Lisa mob scene so you can all see what I mean. I'll also post the first vignette which I've filmed at the Eiffel Tower. Again, it's a bit of a mob scene. All this will depend on how much time I have.

 

[Carlo_M]

+1.

Dude, you totally passed up a Penthouse Forum Letters moment! (not that I know what that is)

 

[Francois Caron]

Imagine the possibilities if they were TWINS!!!

Here's the first vignette. I might make another one later tonight.



Getting the mobile phone to work is a real bitch. There aren't anywhere near as many mobile phone shops here in France as there are in the UK. I've managed to contact TalkMobile, but they can only accept UK issued credit cards over the phone! The only option I have available is that someone in the UK gets a voucher for me which I can then activate over the phone. But aside from people on-line, I don't know anyone personally in the UK.

Arg.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

What a shock! Francois doesn't look a thing like his avatar.