As Oscar Wilde said its either him or the wall paper one of them has to go. Unfortunately Oscar died, and M and I will simply be leaving but it will be a pity as there is so much to see and unless you manage to stay for months there is little chance of seeing everything. However we have made a decent attempt to see what we could in the time we had.

Yesterday i went to Versaille having gotten lost for hours underground in the metro and then got drenched like i had gone swimming in my clothes, before arriving at the palace to see the line for tickets was 5 rows deep and long as the train itself. Upon discovering that a lot was under wraps for restorative reasons i decided not to get pneumonia in the rain queing to get a ticket, and just scooted around the palace grounds before going home again. A bit disappointing but i think that i made the right decision. Self taken drowned rat photos will be available for viewing shortly!

Today we went to the catacombs which were spooky and interesting. they contained the bones of several graveyards that were transported there in the mid 19th century to prevent a continuation of disease that was originating from there. The ossuries are located in a series of converted former limestone quarries beneath the streets of Paris, only one is open to the public for viewing.

After that we went back to the Pompidou Centre to see some exhibitions that we had had not been able to get into with our museum card earlier in the week. Yves Klein was very french and slightly wanky. Rauschenberg was interesting but also a bit wanky to be fair.

When I went to Versailles yesterday M went to see the cathederal at Chartres with its medeival stained glass and mismatched towers.  One gothic, one romanesque. He reports that it was very interesting and he didn’t manage to come home looking like a drowned rat.

The day before we had been out to Monmartre and after nearly expiring climbing the hill had a wander through the big white Bascilica of Sacre Coeur   follwed by an amble through part of the Monmartre cemetery. We didn’t manage to find any graves of famous residents such as Adolph Sax, Oscar Wilde or Jim Morrison (not that we looked to hard for that last one), but did see some rather ostentatious sepulchres and a collection of cats who looked very much at home.  On the way back we passed Moulin Rouge but after finding out that the cheapest tickets were 87 euro we decided not to bother going in.

Now we just pack up and go back to Mannheim. and the good news we got from the travel agency/booking people is that they are going to do an investigation into our complaint re the first hotel. Hopefully we are one step closer to getting our money back!

Accomadation dramas aside we have seen a lot of amazing stuff here. A quick round up includes:

* the Louvre – quite astounding building (the Grand Hall certainly lives up to its name) and the architecture is just one part of the experience of course with so much important art housed here it is a must see. Just be prepared for all the other tourists to annoy the hell out of you (or maybe thats just me). In addition to the art J reports that the Napoleonic apartments were really interesting and completely over the top; giant chandeliers, gold on the walls etc etc (i missed that bit as i was wandering around looking at thousands of French paintings in another wing). We returned on another day to check out some more and saw the Mona Lisa which frankly was not very exciting, so much of the surrounding art was more appealing and didnt have a thousand tourists taking photos with their mobile phones. 

* Notre Dame – for some reason i expected this to be much bigger, dont get me wrong it is pretty huge and impressive just that i had visions of something far larger (same goes for the Eiffel Tower but i’ll come back to that). At Notre Dame we also went into the underground archeological site which was impressive in size and presentation chronicalling centuries of history on that site.

* The Arc de Triumph is suitably impressive but the traffic takes away from the spectacle somewhat as do poxy Italian tourists trying to get their wives to pose in areas beyond the barrier to take photos with thier phone (a prevelant trend that i just fail to understand) but still taking ages to get just the right pose and getting in the way of everyone elses view. Champs Elysee just looks like a big shopping mall with very high prices and yet more tourists (yeah i know we are also tourists but at least we dont stand around taking photos of store windows or in the fake snow and xmas trees that were erected on the side of the street).

* my personal highlight so far has been the visit to the Centre Pompidou with its fantastic post modern building  and incredible collection of contemporary art (i was so excited apparently i kept grinning and making exclamations of amazement according to J). There was a special exhibition on film in art in addition to the likes of Warhol, Du Champ, Raushenberg, Longo etc etc etc etc you get the idea. Am going to go back another day to see bits we didnt get to so far.

* the Eifell Tower looks kind of impressive from a distance on the skyline but up close is rather underwhelming and smaller than i thought it would be.

* went to the Sewers of Paris ‘museum’ which is situated in part of the actual working sewer system (and smells it too, you can see the waste water running past…) this was really interesting and had a quite informative display of the history of the sewerage systems development from the Roman era, definately worth putting up with the odour. Although am glad that didn’t experience the ‘1 metre diameter methane bubbles’ of the open sewers of the 1800s…

* Saint Chapelle – stunning stained glass windows in this historic gothic church from the 13th century.

next part – observations re tourists, parisian waiters and sweets, marketing and other miscelania