[The following post is from the archives of my In Search Of Incredible blog, originally published on 22 August 2015]
6 November 2014, Thursday
It’s the second last day of the trip, and I had planned to cover all the key sights in Paris today, so that we could have a relaxing day tomorrow with no agenda. The first stop: The Centre Pompidou, located 1.3km and a 16-minute walk away from our apartment.
The Centre Pompidou is an art gallery and cultural hub built in 1977. It houses a public library, a centre for music and acoustic research, and the Musée National d’Art Moderne, which constitutes the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe. The glass and steel building was considered an architectural anomaly at the time, as most of the buildings in Paris were constructed of concrete. Its unique “inside out” design, where the escalators, air-conditioning and pipes were put outside instead of inside the building, also made it unique.
After that, we walked another 900m (11 minutes) to our next destination: Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris, also known as Notre-Dame Cathedral. Completed in 1345, it is one of the most well known church buildings in the world. It is also the subject of Victor Hugo’s famous novel, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, published in 1831. I remember it because of the 1996 Walt Disney animated film. I also remember it because I performed the film’s music score during a school band concert.
Design wise, Notre-Dame has a classic feel to it. Compared to the Il Duomo in Florence, Notre-Dame is 89 years older so its design is understandably simpler and more clean-cut. The amount of detail in the stone statues at the three entrance archways is amazing.
When we arrived at about 10:15am, the square in front of Notre-Dame was packed with tourists. I was engrossed with finding the best spot to take a photo and as I jostled through the throng of people, I separated from mum and dad without realising it. I climbed onto a stone bench and had barely snapped four pictures when mum suddenly came up to me. She looked lost and flustered, and I immediately knew that something was wrong.
She said that her wallet had been stolen. When I asked her what happened, she said a gypsy woman had come up to her and spoke to her in a language she didn’t understand. Mum tried to shoo her away but the woman was very persistent and kept shoving a piece of paper towards her body. When she finally left, mum looked at her sling bag (which was slung in front of her) and realised that her wallet was gone.
Mum said that she had unzipped her sling bag to take out her handphone and had left it unzipped while she was taking pictures. Just then, the gypsy woman approached her. The gypsy woman must have stolen the wallet while she shoved the paper towards mum, talking to her and distracting her. The whole incident happened so quickly. By the time I managed to get the information out of mum, I looked around but there was no sign of any gypsy woman. Besides, there were many people so it was hard to spot her among the crowd.
Resigned to losing the wallet for good, we sought out the next option, which was to make a police report so that we can make an insurance claim back home. We spotted some police officers patrolling around the area and told them what happened. They were sympathetic, but also said that unfortunately, such things were very common here at Notre-Dame. They made it sound like an everyday occurrence. We asked for directions to the nearest police station, and they directed us to the one at 27 Boulevard Bourdon, near Bastille. It was about 1.6km and 20 minutes walk away.
We walked in silence as our morning was ruined by the incident. Dad was angry with mum for being careless, but I was just glad that it was a simple theft and not a robbery, which would have been much more traumatising. Mum lost a few hundred Euros and Singapore dollars, and a few credit cards and her driving licence, but there was nothing in the wallet that cannot be replaced. The most important thing was her safety.
We got a little lost along the way and went into a flower shop for help, and the lady was kind enough to point us in the right direction. I have always felt that Parisians have an undeserved reputation for being snobbish and unhelpful, and I can say that after visiting Paris twice, this is totally not true. I believe that humans are good-natured deep inside, and if you treat each other with kindness and respect, they will reciprocate.
Anyway, we managed to find our way to the police station eventually. The lobby was quite big and there were a few other people before us, but it wasn’t crowded. Mum filled up a form with her personal information and all the details about the incident. We then waited for about half an hour before it was our turn to be served.
Mum and I entered a small room and handed the form to a female police officer. She asked mum a few questions but she mostly kept to herself while chewing gum and typing furiously on the computer keyboard. About ten minutes later, she produced two copies of the police report and got mum to sign them. She then passed mum one copy and that was the end of the session.
Having settled the police report, we felt that we should have lunch to break the gloom, so we walked around the Bastille neighbourhood and picked a random café for lunch. I ordered a ham and cheese omelette and a cup of coffee. There is nothing like food to cheer one up.
After lunch, we took the Metro to Champs-Élysées, with the hope that some shopping would make us feel better. Champs-Élysées is the main shopping boulevard in Paris and it houses all the top brands. It is arguably the most glamorous shopping street in the world, with its perfectly straight road lined by pretty trees and flanked by beautiful buildings on both sides. Being tourists, we didn’t feel shy about walking into the boutiques just to browse. It is not something that we normally do in Singapore, but we did it just because we could. It was a cheap thrill, no doubt, but it felt good. That’s what you go on holidays for! We also spent some time in the Louis Vuitton store, and Mum ended up buying a handbag because it is much cheaper than in Singapore. Going to Paris and leaving without buying an LV bag just seems wrong!
As we walked to the end of Champs-Élysées, we saw the beautiful Arc De Triomphe. During my last visit in 2009, I had climbed the 284 steps up to the roof and I was rewarded with a splendid panoramic view of Paris. It was quite stunning to see how the main streets all radiated out with Arc De Triomphe as the central point, and how all the buildings in Paris are of uniform height, only with the Eiffel Tower sticking out.
If you are not scaling the Eiffel Tower, I would highly recommend climbing up Arc De Triomphe for the view of Paris. A ticket costs 8 Euros and it is well worth it. However, do note that the staircase up to the top is completely enclosed and very narrow, so claustrophobics may have some problems with it. On this day, we did not climb up the stairs because I thought it would be quite taxing for mum and dad, so we just took photos from across the street.
After that, we continued our shopping spree, and we went to find the Longchamp boutique next. Unfortunately, the main boutique at Champs-Élysées was undergoing renovation, so the nearest outlet was at 404 Rue Saint Honoré. It was about 2.7km from Arc De Triomphe, and we strolled there, taking us about 40 minutes. As we walked along the avenue, we could see that preparations were already underway for Christmas, with pushcart stalls and decorations being put up. Another mini spree at Longchamp followed, and mum emerged a happy customer.
The last agenda for the day was to see the Eiffel Tower. During my last visit in 2009, I was at the grass lawns in front of the Eiffel Tower and I had already gone up to the top of the tower. Mum and dad weren’t interested to go up this time, so I decided to go to Trocadéro to get a different view of the Eiffel Tower. I remembered that the winners of the French Open tennis tournament would pose for photos at Trocadéro and the photos looked great, so I wanted to see the view from there.
We took the Metro and alighted at Trocadéro station, and took a short walk to Place du Trocadéro, which was a big marble open space with an unobstructed view of the Eiffel Tower. However, there was some renovation works at the time so part of it was hoarded up. The sun was already setting by the time we arrived, so it was a little dark. It was a cloudy day and there happened to be a huge, flat span of clouds across the sky, so we got to see the Eiffel Tower set against a unique, two-toned, pink and blue sky backdrop. It made for a pretty picture in the end.
I thought of spending more time to admire the night view of Eiffel Tower with the lights on, and maybe even going closer to see it up close. However, we had walked a lot since morning and we were tired, so we decided to head back for dinner and to rest. We went back to our trusty Rue Montorgueil street to find food, and found a shop selling roasted potatoes and chicken that smelled really good. So we bought some back to our apartment and I had a cup of 3-in-1 coffee from Singapore to go with it.
It had been an eventful day for sure, with the gypsy woman encounter souring our moods for most part of the day. But it served as a timely reminder that we were in a foreign land and we should not let our guards down and assume that everywhere is as safe as Singapore. Anything can happen, and I was just glad that it was nothing more serious. Lesson learnt!