Okeefereport: Travel tales 5

the impression I came away from Paris with can only be explained as magic. It seemed to me with its broad boulevards and open squares that it was stretched on a huge sphere or globe so that wherever I wandered was always down a gentle slope. Day two saw us set out for Montmartre to try to disprove this theory at this 130 meters high hill but the illusion is still firm in my imagination. We were fortunate to approach this objective by metro and without any tourist advice arriving at Lamarck Caulaincourt or maybe Abesses (if you want to see how communications should be in a city look up the Paris Subway map and be sure to check the scale) instead of Anvers (probably I should have kept notes). Anyway we came from the back via a delightful brunch in a local Cafe with a perfect wine and excellent price. After exploring the local, I would call it North African, community for a while we set out to find the cathedral on the knoll which we have come to expect in any Christian town. We knew the direction was up so no compasses were needed and when we arrived we were well rewarded by this vista of Paris.

With enough snaps and reverence for what we saw we retreated through tourist stalls and subway to the Arch De Triumph, quite impossible to approach at ground level due to the innumerable lanes of whizzing traffic though I believe there was a tunnel. We never sought it though or if we did we were distracted then when Alice bumped into five of her primary school friends going in the opposite direction and there ensued one of those “well wow… wow… wow” conversations. This was quite beneficial in that it distracted us from a pile of old concrete and set us on our true quest, a stroll on the Champs-Elysees. Down past Dunhill, Dior, Tiffany’s whatever we were soon distracted by somewhat lower brow Zara where Alice found the Buccaneer boots she was sure her gran intended her to buy with the money she’d given her for something nice.

Chuffed with the purchase which I also liked and that were never to be regretted, even when the heels began to fall off, we were again distracted and set off at a tangent taking us past gold plated impossible statues of four horse charioteers who if brought down from their ivory tower, um stone plinth thingy, would in reality be a terrible accident. Past all manner of sculpture, art and beautifully engineered bridges across the Seine with not a single opportunity for creativity ignored. Back toward our left bank lodgings, we hoped, through wide boulevards of the most gracious accommodations I had ever witnessed for then I was still to get my first glimpse of Rome and Barcelona.

Then, emerging from a grocery store with a long neck in hand and about to give up the bluff that I knew where we were going the scales fell from my eyes and I recognised our very own backyard as I had witnessed it that morning. Much relieved we settled on a park bench among housewives, school children and men playing boule to sink our longneck like real Parisians before returning to pack up our pension and set out for the night train to Venice.

A nearby pad i may put a bid on