FROM PARIS, WITH LOVE

Last time I went to Paris I was a little kid; I don't remember much about the trip. I remember looking at a stall selling Eiffel Tower key rings, but I don't remember looking at the Eiffel Tower itself. Strange what you find important as a child. Since we'd made it all the way across the Atlantic it seemed a shame not to do some more adventurous sightseeing, and I was beyond excited to spend a few days discovering the City of Lights, as an adult this time. Armed with what little I remembered of my high school French, and a little guide book, my Mum, Charlotte, and I boarded the Eurostar in London and disembarked at Gare Du Nord, right in the heart of Paris.

The Train Station (and, as it turned out, Paris as a whole) was neither children, nor Push Chair friendly, so we got a work out as we made our way to our hotel, climbing and descending flight after flight of stairs in the Parisian Underground with suitcases, push chair, nappy bag, and baby in tow. We were relieved when the metro doors opened and we saw the words 'Porte Doree' printed on the wall in front of us. We climbed one last flight of stairs and emerged from the underground to see the tree lined streets of the south east corner of Paris. We only walked in the wrong direction a couple of times before navigating our hotel, which for my Mum and I is not bad at all.

It was a lovely little hotel, very quaint and 'French', but we didn't stay long. We had the whole afternoon ahead of us, so we dropped off our luggage and headed out into the city once again to see what we could find. We had our destination in mind. We planned to make Place de la Concorde our first stop, and from there stroll the Champs-Elysees until we came to the Arc de Triomphe, then, onward to the Eiffel Tower. Yes, we had our plan- we just weren't entirely sure which stop we needed on the Metro. We made our best guess, and since we didn't want to haul Charlotte's push chair up the stairs if we'd wound up in the wrong place, my Mum climbed the steps out of the underground to take a peek at where we'd arrived. I watched her take a look around and then she came back down to where we were waiting and told me she'd watch Charlotte while I went to have a look.

"What am I looking at?"
"Just go and have a look."

I climbed the stairs worrying that we'd already managed to get ourselves lost after only a couple of hours by ourselves, but then I emerged at street level and all thinking ceased and was replaced by awe and amazement. I couldn't help but smile to myself as I took in my surroundings. To my right, the enormous Hotel De Crillon, which I'm sure looks more like a Palace than a Hotel. Out in front of me, Place de la Concorde, with its enormous octagonal traffic hub. Beyond the busy cars, the Egyptian Obelisk that I was most interested to see, then, an enormous fountain of turquoise and gold, and further still, Golden Gates that lead your eyes down a narrow road to a palace in the distance. Everywhere I looked there was something stunning, it was more than you could take in. While we made our way across the traffic to see the Obelisk I just kept turning around in circles trying to take everything in. So much history in one small square, and as it surrounded us, Charlotte fell asleep.



(The fountain, with Hotel De Crillon in the background.)



The Obelisk in the background was given as a gift to France from the Egyptians. The oldest Manmade object in Paris, it has stood there since 1300 B.C, which blows my mind. It isn't weathered, it isn't tarnished, if anything it looks like the most modern edition to the square. It's incredible to me that it is so ancient and yet time seems to have had no effect on it. It was eerie, as we stood close up to it, to remember that we were standing in the square where the Guillotine was erected, during the French Revolution, to claim thousands of lives. History, and that Obelisk has seen it all.

After taking in the view, we turned our minds to the next stop on our agenda, the Champs -Elysees. I knew it was somewhere nearby, but it dawned on me that I had no idea what direction to go in. I don't know how we missed it. As we turned around to make our way back across the traffic that surrounded the square, the Champs-Elysees stretched out in front of us, the 'highway of French grandeur', leading all the way to the Arc de Triomphe. Charlotte continued to sleep as we embarked on the grandest walk in Paris.