Paris, 19th of May

After a strenuous day’s sitting the day before, Gemma and I woke understandably late on the Wednesday. We packed up our small bags and headed back into Central Paris on the RER to see the museums. We strolled up to one of the doors to the Louvre and smiled at the attendant blocking our path.

"I am sorry," he said, in accentless English, "but you cannot enter today. We are on strike."
"What, I mean, pourquoi?"
"All of us. It is a Ministry of Culture strike. All the museums are closed. We feel that as custodians of the treasures of France, we should get the same pay rise as other government workers."

Gemma and I were a little put out by this, but we wished him good luck in our best French and wandered off to regroup. According to rumour (we bumped into another group of displaced art lovers milling around next the huge glass pyramid in the main courtyard of the Louvre) the only museum that was unaffected by the strike was the Museum of Eroticism in Pigalle...so we cut our plans to do museums and headed for the Eiffel Tower instead. The tower is not culture, apparently.


Despite the Hollywood legend of each bedroom in Paris having a view of the tower being widely dismissed by even the most romantic visitors, it was hugely visible above the city, appearing down wide streets and boulevards, and helping us find our way around the city. With a river and a bloody great tower to judge with, Paris is quite easy to blunder around in a vague sense of surety of direction. It’s reassuring that you know that with those few points of reference, it is difficult to get lost.

The tower was just across the river from the Louvre, so we walked across the bridge with the golden winged horses and watched the tour boats and barges chugging along the Seine underneath our feet. There were gardens surrounding the base of the tower with trees and ponds with koi carp, and there wasn’t a queue. We wandered, necks craning back, underneath the foursquare legs and took photographs of the tower at weird and wonderful angles. After we’d got concept photography out of our systems we slipped through the turnstiles and strode enthusiastically for the stairs.

There was a lift, but we were in the strange frame of mind in which people climb mountains by foot rather than taking a train/car/bus, on the unspoken basis that a view you’ve had to work for is better than a view seen after stepping off a train/car/bus. The view got steadily better with each mezzanine as the pale buildings of the city spread out and unfolded through the brown metal struts, but by the time we reached the first stage of the tower, we had progressed to the frame of mind in which people sit down for quite a long time and then head for the lifts.

In fact, rather than just being a glorified viewpoint, there was some really interesting stuff in the tower. There was the museum of the Eiffel Tower, which seemed to be unaffected by any strikes, a restaurant and a cafe, and, best of all, a remote-controlled camera on one side of the tower, which relayed its pictures to a big screen in a room behind the café. This was a fantastic toy, and Gemma and I played with it for ages, zooming in on different bits of the city, watching people sunbathe on the ledge next to the river, eat lunch in their flats and generally nosing in on the life of Paris. No one else who has been to the Eiffel Tower in the past few years that I have spoken to has ever even heard of this, and I can only come to the conclusion that we found it purely because we spent so long on the tower because all the museums were shut.

We took the lift to the second and third stages, staying at the top and taking huge numbers of photographs for about two hours. The sky had greyed, but there was sunlight creeping under the clouds. The sky was dark, but the buildings lining the Seine were shining cream, and the city looked gorgeous. A rainbow appeared briefly in the distance, and forty Japanese tourists and myself attempted to catch the moment on film. I like to think that, just like me, they all got home to forty slightly blurred pictures of a grey cloud, lending the moment a touch of camaraderie.

On the way down the tower later on that afternoon, we Sat on a bench on the first stage, and watched the sun go down over the crest of the buildings across the river, an earphone of Gemma’s personal stereo each, listening to Air’s ‘All I Need’. It was a good day.

Many people tell you about the attitude of Parisians towards tourists, how they are seen as cash-bearing cattle that can be afforded courtesy, but never quite seem to. People will tell of snotty concierges, snooty waiters and shockingly rude taxi drivers. Waiters, concierges and even taxi drivers were well out of our price range, but I was left astounded by someone who sold me baguettes.

Our first day in Paris, on a trip away from the bags and chairs in the Tuileries, I tried out my best French buying a couple of baguettes from a little shop on a subway under one of the main streets.

Me: Ah, Bonjour. Doo Baggit, Sill voo play.

Baguette Seller,(with scorn): Of course. What filling would you like in those?

Me: Oh right, sorry. One cheese....etc.

I felt a bit of a tit, but then you do when your best efforts at anything are scornfully rejected and bettered by anyone, especially when you’re meant to be the one doing the buying. The next day, I wandered up, and the same chap was behind the counter. I’d swear it was him because I don’t think there was another moustache of such quality anywhere in Paris, whereas I was just another tourist in an extravagant hat.

Me: Hello! Two baguettes please, one chee-

Baguette Seller (interrupting, with scorn): Monsieur! Je ne parle pas Anglais! En Francais, s’il vous plait!

Me (stunned): But, but...(recovering)...ok, oon baggit avek fromarj, et....etc etc...

I was still shaking my head at this hours later. Speaking English to make you feel stupid was ok, but if you assumed he spoke English, then he would be as monolingual as he bloody could, just to show you, you arrogant foreign tourist! Now, I’m not one to point a finger at the whole of France and say, 'They’re a load of buggers!', because they’re not. But there are an awful lot of stories like this, aren’t there? Stereotypes don’t spring up overnight, right?
That’s all I’m saying.