Paris on foot

Although I am in Paris for 5 nights, I am staying at least at 3 different hostels. My first night in Paris I stayed at the D'Artagnan hostel, near my bus station, but far from most Paris attractions. It was a massive hostel, with a diverse crowd. The people I happened to meet were mostly from Latin America, so for most of my first evening in Paris I spoke Spanish and was even persuaded to try an abhorrent Mexican drink concocted from red wine and Coca-Cola. That night I wandered the boulevards in the eastern part of the city, delighting to find that most McDonald's had free wireless internet, so I could check my email as I walked around town.

The next morning I moved to the 3 Ducks hostel on the opposite side of the city, just south of the Eiffel tower. This was the sister hostel of Amsterdam's Flying Pig, but the similarity was limited to the dominance of college-age Americans among the clientele. The hostel featured draconian room access and curfew policies, very limited public space, and loud drunken singing at night accompanied by the regular rumbling of the metro underneath.

After dropping off my pack, I went on a walking tour of the monuments, weaving my way all around Paris, from Hotel des Invalides to the Eiffel Tower, to the Arc de Triomphe, to Sacre Coeur in Monmartre.

The monuments were pretty but so familiar from photos and film that most of them had no effect on me whatsoever. I took pictures out of a sense of duty, more than anything. I was also a bit disappointed with the lack of variety among the city areas I saw. Most buildings were a shade of gray, and the streets were wide and regular. To be sure, there were many open cafes and small grocery stores, but, of all the areas I saw that day only Montmartre appeared to have a distinctive feel.

Going up to Sacre Coeur was literally and figuravely the high point of my journey. As I reached the hill of Montmartre the streets became narrower, windier and more lively. There was a lot of artwork on display in this traditionally artistic and bohemian neighborhood. Large tour buses were everywhere, and it seemed there was more than enough of them to cart away every person in the neighborhood, along with the artwork.

The church of Sacre Coeur is one of the world's most beautiful buildings, and I have dreamed of visiting it ever since I first saw pictures of it in French class at school. It did not disappoint me, even though it turned out to be a lot less white than the photos I've seen, and even had one of its domes covered in red paint from a probable vandalist action.

I paid 5 EUR to go up a winding staircase to the top, and the ascent was more than worth it. I was alone on the narrow stairs, which rose steeply ahead of me, and suddenly felt thrown back in time to the middle ages. Some parts of the way were pitch black, with the lights apparently gone out. At other points the stairs emerged into the open, and zig-zagged around the lower domes and ledges. Finally, I was at the top and enjoyed a spectacular view of Paris, extending in every direction below. The Eiffel tower in the distance looked tiny, and the modern Defense area skyscrapers loomed darkly beyond.

I went down reluctantly and made my way through Montmartre again, and then past the Moulin Rouge and yet another red-light district, which didn't seem particularly interesting after Amsterdam's, and where the merchants were much more obnoxiously pushy.

I returned to the hostel via metro and soon was on my way out again to explore the Latin Quarter with Charles, my roommate, who was a 27-year-old Korean American from LA who was just getting started on a five-week Europe trek. The Latin quarter, or at least the part we saw, was small, with a few nice pedestrian streets and a lot of nice-looking bars and cafes. This area is historically a university-related part of town, and we saw quite a few students around. It was there that I found a nice hostel, into which I plan to move on Saturday for one or two nights.