DESTINATION PARIS
Paris is a laurel and brickbat magnet. However cavalier some of the descriptions, travellers through the centuries are in agreement that it is one of the most stimulating capitals in the world. Paris assaults all your senses, demanding that it be seen, heard, touched, tasted and smelt. From luminescent landmarks to fresh dog crap on the streets, the city is everything it should be - the very essence of all things French. Paris was founded on the Île de la Cité towards the end of the 3rd century BC. The city prospered in typical Roman style despite being menaced and pillaged, and by the Middle Ages had colonised both banks of the Seine. Paris acquired much of its present look in the 19th century when Napoleon commissioned Neoclassical edifices such as the Arc de Triomphe, and numerous bridges and fountains; domestic architecture evinced the substantial wealth created by rapid industrial progress. As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, Parisian endeavour granted the city its Métro, civic boasting threw up an eyeful of tower, and the city kept growing. During the 1980s, Mitterand initiated the futuristic grands projets - a series of costly building projects that garnered widespread approval even when they were patent failures. Responses to glass pyramids in the Louvre and the like have ranged from appalled 'mon Dieux', to stoic Gallic shrugs, to absolute rapture, but if nothing else, the projets have invigorated dialogue about the Parisian aesthetic. The Seine River bisects central Paris. To the north of the Seine is the Right Bank, which includes the tree-lined Avenue des Champs-Élysées running west to the Arc de Triomphe. Just east of the avenue is the massive Musée du Louvre. It's 1km further east to the Centre Georges Pompidou, a lively arrondissement (district) of museums, shops, markets and restaurants, while immediately south of here - on the Île de la Cité, the city's ancient royal and ecclesiastical centre - is the magnificent Notre Dame. South of the river is the Left Bank, where the city's most prominent landmark, the Eiffel Tower, stands imperiously. To the east, in the Saint Germain de Prés and Montparnasse districts, Paris's famous academic, artistic and intellectual milieus waft in and out of focus through a haze of Gitanes smoke. Although Paris is not for the skint, if you resign yourself to shared bathrooms and drinking the dregs from others wine glasses, you should be able to rent a pretty neat cardboard box under Pont Neuf for yourself. Other accommodation gesturing toward affordability can be sainted, knighted and generally lauded in the districts east of the Louvre or facing south on the Left Bank. Unless you've made other arrangements for your stomach, you will have to eat in Paris. Your mantra is 'Expensive food does not taste better'. Pretend you're the only person aware of a salmonella outbreak along Boulevard de Montparnasse and head for the Marais area or the Asian cafés on the Left Bank just south of the Île de la Cité. |