Travel to the top

Saint-Roch train station, Montpellier

"I forgot the aspirin!" was my last thought before taking the train with my talkative 3-years old son last Friday. I survived 2 days long, but am now on an alka-seltzer diet. Not his fault... either I awkwardly subscribed to "gastro-weekendis", either heavy mousse au chocolat + cab + train with a seat in the wrong direction = nausea ad nauseam, or my stomachal neurons vividly protest against stress, bad anticipations, and Paris.

I lived 6 or 7 years in Paris. I discovered great movies, museums, books, wines and meals, I fell in love, met nice people... but I quickly hated Paris. Grey from roads to sky - including roofs, faces and trees (they have no leaves more than 6 months a year). No animals but pigeons and mosquitos. Cars tides, bus rushes, human tsunamis. Gaz smells outside, chemical smells inside. Following some experts, chimney fires pollute as much Paris as car gas; this is why Ségolène Royal planned to forbid them. It just isn't the same proportion of gas, unless dry wood is full of chemicals. Good restaurants, shops, museums & co. are merely a compensation, though emphazized by medias: it is pleasant to investigate it, it attracts tourists, sponsors, advizers, it keeps the people artificially content and busy. Proud of masterpieces they don't produce, united into a common way of thinking (dictated by Telerama, the Inrockuptibles, some blogs, some thinkers), competing to see everything they are told to see without learning anything. Paris, amongst many other capitals, is a cultural Walmart/Carrefour. It centralizes culture for lazy/avaricious/manic consummers.

Waiting for a lift under the Eiffel Tower

My eyes might not be good enough to enjoy the 50 000 shades of grey of Paris. The fact those grey shades are mostly made of human dirt is especially repellent. I might not be interested enough in my human fellows, or not enough involved in virtual worlds and screens, to avoid disgust and a deep boredom. All this space stolen to the earth, unshared with co-living species (out of rats and viruses)... Human history and ghosts contribute to this splendid or not isolation.

In the lift of the Tower...

Despite this all, Paris is interesting, from time to time.

1) A long stay in Paris will help you enjoy fully your organic market, the sound of a river, frogs or cicadas songs, the primitive colors of the Salagou Lake, a breadmaking demonstration showing how bread must sing when taken out of the oven...

2) Paintings, movies, concerts & co., are still unspoilt. They bring you away and possibly higher.

3) Paris is full of small miracles. It remains the court of miracles, with sparkles of fantasy, creativity and luxury made more remarkable by their ugly neighbourhood.

Miracles or not, Paris is an ode to a mankind full of itself or desperate, as a few sunrays reveal it...

Seine River (from the 2nd floor)

Seine River (from the top)

Front de Seine

Watching toward Boulogne

The Louis Vuitton Fondation and La Défense

Trocadéro and Iéna bridge (from the second floor)

Iéna, Trocadéro... from the top of the tower

A graveyard I didn't know: the cimetière de Passy

Paris Modern Art Museum

Guimet Museum (Asian arts)

The Triumph Arch... and some giant blue advertizing poster.

View with Grand-Palais and Sacré-Coeur

The Quai Branly and its Museum (from the second flood)

Musée Branly, from the top

Grand Palais and Petit Palais

3 museums: Orsay, Louvre, Beaubourg

Notre-Dame

Invalides (from the 2nd floor)

Invalides (from the top)

Esplanade des Invalides

Eiffel Tower, second floor...

Sport...

Classical parisian buildings

Champagne at the top.
It should be freely offered to the tourists waiting hours in the lines for tickets,
lifts to the second floor, to the top, to the feet...
But of course it might interact with their medecines...