Day Fifty One – Niko Got Messy

July 24th; today we visit Paris in the day. It start early morning, with breakfast and preparation as it shall do for the many days to come.

The city is quite beautiful, and the French make sure they remain so; gutters that flood and clean themselves, well pruned trees and an unseen mass of cleaners, canals clean enough to breath near (a long way from the foul muck of the Thames and Liffey), and as many parks and gardens as I remember of any city. The occasional cobbled street, wandering alleys and old, flowered buildings remind me of what I rememered London to be as a younger boy, albeit altogether more beautiful and, to a point, romantic.

Versailles and its grand palace, built by Louis XIV and of a scale rarely matched in the world. The town itself seems to have flourished through recent tourism and no doubt ever since the palace was built, should I care to look through the annals of history. Most of the history of the palace that I knew is bloodthirsty and dire. It was a surreal experience approaching the front gates; I had seen them countless times, in a way – sketched upon the pages of my history books. It was here that Louis XVI had lingered in the last days of the Bourbons and whittled away whatever sympathy the French had for kings and monarchy. It was here that the shots rang out which started a revolution. The golden gilt of the gates has worn off to the black iron below, and the dust and gravel courtyards outside do not run with so much blood. Crowds still form here, lining for tickets and not for bread – it is also unlikely that you would be offered a segway tour a century ago.

The Palace itself is grand. I have looked upon what palaces they have cared to build in Ireland and London and have seen nothing but bad taste and tacky gold paint and curtains in abundance. They no doubt draw their inspiration from Versailles or similar, though their treasury would not quite compare. Versaille is room after room of increasing grandeur. Pillars and marble, countless statues and figures and silk of all colours and make, increasing not in number but in quality as you walk from room to room. Portraits adorn each wall, old faces staring down as each tourist walks through. They begin in armour and with rather fine features, but gradually progress to more and more ornamented cloaks and bigger chins – the kings of France grew fat. Privacy is the perhaps the only part of the palace which is not laid on excessively. Without electric lighting the corridors run through each room and bedroom with no or few doors between any. Great windows flank every room, and every room is flanked by another. Your quarters were not quartered. The gardens are huge in scale but not, to me, in appeal. What plants grow beyond the lawns and concrete are trimmed and hedged, and all the ground is set with white dust and gravel; unpleasant to walk upon for the sound and glare. The fountains are nice, though. There are several, of which my favourite is the one in the central pond, a great chariot and mad-eyed horses rising from the water.

The Arc d’Triumphe was our second stop, a great four sided arch with the French and European flag flying within, and under them the tomb of the unknown soldier, of which there are many in the world. It was there I saw what was to become of my day and those next few to come; full of stairs and climbing. For the first time I was thankful to have lived on the fourth floor of nearly all buildings since I had started travelling. Without the aid of an elevator your legs soon become used to the rising and falling of steps. Napoleon’s Triumph is quite a building; adorned with fine statues and of a great stature itself. The night before, as the setting sun had its light caught beneath the Arc and melted on the road in front I was overcome by the perfect nature of the moment; it led me to sorrow that we had driven past it in such a haste.

The top of the Arc, many stairs up, provides a fine view of the surrounding city. Paris is an attractive city from above, something which many others cannot claim. It is a hodge podge of terracotta coloured roofs, put together and stuck to walls like great jigsaw pieces in places. We descended the stairs after a somewhat lengthy stay and began the trek down the Champ d’Elysee, our final goal of the Louvre being straight down the line but not visible. It is a huge road and took nigh under an hour to reach the end. On the way you must brave several large intersections and roundabouts, though it is largely a walk on more of the white dust and gravel with trees abounding upon either side. The pedestrian lights are perhaps as bad as Dublin and maybe more dangerous. They do not have to stop if they are not going to hit you, and most Parisians fill with courage in their haste. I walked in front of a car and watched it screech to a halt. The great needle and guillotine square received a longer stay for me, if just to drink in a bit of history. It does not smell so bad as it would have once.

The Louvre is quite a sight – once the palace of kings before Louis XIV dubbed it too small to live in, it has since been converted into a museum and gallery; the second biggest in the world, and the most visited. It is perhaps most recognisable for its great glass pyramids that sit in the front square, though the building itself is lined with countless statues and other fine works of craftsmanship upon its parapets and gutters. As with any tourist attraction in France you are soon flooded by a crowd of Nigerian workers selling keyrings and post cards. At every attraction they have been the same amount for the same price – it is hard to imagine why they would produce so many of the same eiffel tower keyring, and how many people buy them.

We had less than an hour in the Louvre. We rushed through and spotted the Venus de Milo and Mona Lisa and then promptly walked to the car park to meet the group. I got changed on the bus. We went to a cabaret club in the red light district – I think it was called Nouvelles, though I may be mistaken. We were the only ones in there for quite a while. I had some pate and steak – it was not bad. It seems most of our fee went into the alcohol though. I was on a table with Kate, Tiesh (pronounced Teesh – I do not know how to spell it) and Nicky, two teachers from Melbourne and New Zealand respectively. The dancers were quite good – yelps and yells rattled off the stage as they Can Canned or leapt their way across and around. Some comedy and acrobatic acts filled the gaps when they were catching their breath. It was very entertaining. Teesh or Tiesh cannot drink wine, Kate was not drinking too much and swapped seats with Ben for a better view when the show started in any case, and Ben does not drink. Nicky had a glass and a half. I felt it was up to me to finish the bottles. So I did.

My next memory is taking my shirt off in front of the Moulin Rouge and getting lots of pictures taken as I stood on the hot-wind vent and it flattered about me in the hot wind.

I hear that later, as we stood under the Eiffel Tower, Niko the Californian was so drunk as to ask, ‘Where the hell are we?’