Day 4 – A passing look at Paris

After an early breakfast this morning, we were herded onto a couple of enormous coaches, and prepared for a “panoramic” look at the sights of Paris. The meaning of this word would become clearer later, and turned out to be the perfect day for me, given the underlying, and most important, purpose of my journey to France.
We made our way over the Seine and headed south-west towards Versailles. There’s no doubting the magnificence and opulence of the palace and its gardens, but even the tour guide complained that the whole thing had become over-commercialised, and “touristy”. The organisation of the troops outside the gates was lamentable and drew “under-the-breath” criticism from many of the individuals standing in line. Comparisons to various hooved and horned animals produced several suppressed snickers from the ranks. Eventually, after splitting the contents of our 4 buses into smaller groups by means barely more organised than by raffle, we were led to the entrance only to be confronted, jostled and bumped by other conga lines, similarly loosely convened and similarly past their allotted entry time. The administrative folks inside were just as ineffective, and also unhappy, but eventually we made our way to the security screener, dispatched our bags etc through the metal detector, and proceeded to chase after our tour guide, who had darted to a position up a flight of stairs, preparing to launch into her first trivia-filled delivery. Despite her best efforts, we were only able to catch every third or fourth word, the rest being drowned out by competing tour group leaders, speaking in different languages, and equally keen to inform their followers. To say it was organised chaos would be too kind. It was a shemozzle, but in reality did not disappoint me. This short day tour of Paris was meant just to give us a taste, an entree, if you like, before the real meat of the tour. It was pointless even taking photos inside the palace, simply because there were 200 heads, and 70 arms with cameras contaminating the view in any direction. I just took in whatever I could see, and resolved to come back again one day.
We were treated to a very nice lunch at a nearby restaurant, Taverne de Maitre Kanter, and whiled away the next hour and a half. Apparently, nobody mentioned our group was from Australia, so the beers ran out in 10 minutes, and they hastily tried to keep up with some jugs of draught called Kanterbrau, which also ran out, and then some dark brown stuff. Points for preparation: NIL. During the tour inside the palace, I had been tapped on the shoulder by a distant cousin, who was on the same tour to Fromelles to commemorate his wife’s soldier relative. I knew he was coming to France, but did not know he was with the same tour company, and even more randomly, that he and his wife would be sequestered into the same little walking group as me. We enjoyed lunch and a natter together.
After lunch, we climbed aboard the coaches again, and headed back to take in some of the other major Paris icons, the Louvre, Notre Dame, Houses of Parliament, Museums, Theatres and many other historic sites. We didn’t stop at all, or even many, of them. For this tour, just having passed by would fit the bill. We arrived back at the hotel at 5:00pm, where the next day’s orders were posted. Early breakfast, check-out and embarkation tomorrow, as we head north towards Lille. But there will still be a few niceties on the way.
Type soon.