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WTF I’m in Paris

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01 Apr 2018 09:20 - 01 Apr 2018 09:35 #266788 by Josh Look
Replied by Josh Look on topic WTF I’m in Paris
Was going to be snarky, figured I’d just leave it alone.
Last edit: 01 Apr 2018 09:35 by Josh Look.

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01 Apr 2018 10:21 #266790 by Black Barney
Replied by Black Barney on topic WTF I’m in Paris
Going to the greatest food city in the world and complaining about the pizza!! I recommend trying the French food and don’t try to recreate an American culinary experience, you won’t regret it I promise.
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01 Apr 2018 12:10 - 01 Apr 2018 12:11 #266820 by Frohike
Replied by Frohike on topic WTF I’m in Paris

Black Barney wrote: Going to the greatest food city in the world and complaining about the pizza!! I recommend trying the French food and don’t try to recreate an American culinary experience, you won’t regret it I promise.


I'm guessing the kids wanted a slice. My daughter ordered a hotdog and got something surprisingly more delicious, served in a baguette (I think the frank had cheese in it).

Re: prices, while the toys and groceries can be pricey, I'm actually amazed at how low the museum prices are. Cross the channel to the UK and you'll be asked for 30 to 40 GBP for entrance to some pretty lackluster stuff. For the Louvre? 15 Euros.

Re: Versailles. It's a trek out there on the train, which often makes people want to "make a day of it" and explore the grounds and do the full interior tour. You'll probably do this anyway, but steel yourself for some severe boredom indoors. In hindsight, I would have just gone straight to the Palais Des Glaces and spent the rest of the time exploring the amazing gardens, then headed back to Paris a little earlier.

Re: foreigner etiquette, the French, at least in Paris, are very kind, patient, and accommodating. It was definitely a culture shift compared to the Paris I remember as a kid in the 80's.

Re: vegetarianism. That can be rough. Jambon, jambon everywhere. In fact the French equivalent to pizza is their Croque Monsieur which is basically grilled cheese with ham.
Last edit: 01 Apr 2018 12:11 by Frohike.
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01 Apr 2018 13:22 #266826 by SuperflyPete
Replied by SuperflyPete on topic WTF I’m in Paris

Black Barney wrote: Going to the greatest food city in the world and complaining about the pizza!! I recommend trying the French food and don’t try to recreate an American culinary experience, you won’t regret it I promise.


There’s great pizza in New York, the greatest food city in the world.
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01 Apr 2018 14:27 - 01 Apr 2018 15:47 #266829 by Frohike
Replied by Frohike on topic WTF I’m in Paris

SuperflyTNT wrote:

Black Barney wrote: Going to the greatest food city in the world and complaining about the pizza!! I recommend trying the French food and don’t try to recreate an American culinary experience, you won’t regret it I promise.


There’s great pizza in New York, the greatest food city in the world.


The life I should be living would involve splitting my work year between Paris and NYC, taking summers off in Aix-en-Provence, and wintering in Geneva or Chamonix.

Hey, a bourgeois consumerist asshole can dream.

@Michael if you’re still on a museum kick & have the time, Musee D’Orsay and Centre Georges Pompidou are great, especially the latter if you want to see more modern material. If anyone in your group are into Impressionism, Orsay is the way to go. They also have some impressive Rodin pieces, including The Gates of Hell.
Last edit: 01 Apr 2018 15:47 by Frohike.
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01 Apr 2018 16:34 - 01 Apr 2018 16:36 #266834 by Colorcrayons
Replied by Colorcrayons on topic WTF I’m in Paris

repoman wrote: Wow, had to wait until the bottom of page 2 before we got to the America bashing. This site is loosing its edge.


Here, I hope this photo counteracts the offense you've decided to accommodate over a valid opionion about how citizens of the United States generally portray themselves abroad.

Last edit: 01 Apr 2018 16:36 by Colorcrayons.
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01 Apr 2018 17:30 #266837 by southernman
Replied by southernman on topic WTF I’m in Paris

Frohike wrote: Re: prices, while the toys and groceries can be pricey, I'm actually amazed at how low the museum prices are. Cross the channel to the UK and you'll be asked for 30 to 40 GBP for entrance to some pretty lackluster stuff. For the Louvre? 15 Euros.
.


Pretty sure most proper museums in the UK are free www.visitlondon.com/things-to-do/sightse...ee-museums-in-london
And eve ones that aren't the £30 price is no where near it - now tourist attractions are a different thing but even then no where near £30.

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01 Apr 2018 18:06 #266839 by Josh Look
Replied by Josh Look on topic WTF I’m in Paris

Colorcrayons wrote:

repoman wrote: Wow, had to wait until the bottom of page 2 before we got to the America bashing. This site is loosing its edge.


Here, I hope this photo counteracts the offense you've decided to accommodate over a valid opionion about how citizens of the United States generally portray themselves abroad.


Look. I know Repo really well, I get together with him at least once a week.

I’ve done some math and the conclusion is, well, startling to say none the least.

Jeff thinks the majority of people are stupid. The majority of people that Jeff interacts with and observes are Americans, or at least those that he really has any right to criticize based on what he sees and observes FIRST HAND.

Therefore, logically, Jeff thinks Americans are stupid.

He’s not wrong!

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01 Apr 2018 18:18 - 01 Apr 2018 19:01 #266840 by Frohike
Replied by Frohike on topic WTF I’m in Paris

Southernman wrote:

Frohike wrote: Re: prices, while the toys and groceries can be pricey, I'm actually amazed at how low the museum prices are. Cross the channel to the UK and you'll be asked for 30 to 40 GBP for entrance to some pretty lackluster stuff. For the Louvre? 15 Euros.
.


Pretty sure most proper museums in the UK are free www.visitlondon.com/things-to-do/sightse...ee-museums-in-london
And eve ones that aren't the £30 price is no where near it - now tourist attractions are a different thing but even then no where near £30.


I just remember briefly waiting in line at Windsor Castle, seeing the price (I think about $95-100 for the family), remembering the $30 we paid for the Louvre, and turning right back around for some free sightseeing. It felt different to pay that amount for what would probably be 2-3 hours of gawking at architecture vs an entire day in the massiveness of the Louvre. But yeah, I would have checked out more London museums if I’d had an extra day or two there.

Warwick wasn’t cheap either, but that felt more like a touristy amusement park with stuff to do for half a day. Nice bird show there too.
Last edit: 01 Apr 2018 19:01 by Frohike.

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01 Apr 2018 19:24 - 01 Apr 2018 19:25 #266841 by southernman
Replied by southernman on topic WTF I’m in Paris

Frohike wrote:

Southernman wrote:

Frohike wrote: Re: prices, while the toys and groceries can be pricey, I'm actually amazed at how low the museum prices are. Cross the channel to the UK and you'll be asked for 30 to 40 GBP for entrance to some pretty lackluster stuff. For the Louvre? 15 Euros.
.


Pretty sure most proper museums in the UK are free www.visitlondon.com/things-to-do/sightse...ee-museums-in-london
And eve ones that aren't the £30 price is no where near it - now tourist attractions are a different thing but even then no where near £30.


I just remember briefly waiting in line at Windsor Castle, seeing the price (I think about $95-100 for the family), remembering the $30 we paid for the Louvre, and turning right back around for some free sightseeing. It felt different to pay that amount for what would probably be 2-3 hours of gawking at architecture vs an entire day in the massiveness of the Louvre. But yeah, I would have checked out more London museums if I’d had an extra day or two there.

Warwick wasn’t cheap either, but that felt more like a touristy amusement park with stuff to do for half a day. Nice bird show there too.


Windsor Castle is not a museum, it's a tourist attraction - just checked it's website, £21 for and adult, £55 for a family of five - that's comparing apples to oranges, you say the Louvre is $30 so compare that to all the big London museums which are free.
Last edit: 01 Apr 2018 19:25 by southernman.

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02 Apr 2018 23:05 - 02 Apr 2018 23:05 #266894 by Cranberries
Replied by Cranberries on topic WTF I’m in Paris
I'm a little disappointed that nobody noticed the first picture I posted was of the Las Vegas eiffel tower. #fail



Students are free at the Louvre, something I wish I had known before ordering tickets online.
Last edit: 02 Apr 2018 23:05 by Cranberries.
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07 Apr 2018 00:33 #267085 by ThirstyMan
Replied by ThirstyMan on topic WTF I’m in Paris
I quite like Paris even though my wife was refused entry at Notre Dame for having uncovered shoulders.

I found beer super expensive in Paris and no little bolt holes, like in Central London, which you can go down and find beer at reasonable prices outside the main tourist drag. Also the entirety of Paris seemed to be closed in August (some conglomeration of public holidays and schools going back).

Prague is fun, though but a bit further east.

On US tourists, 100% agree, luckily the French can tell the difference between bad French spoken with a British accent and bad French spoken with a US accent so I was generally OK. Also UK people tend to be generally quieter (on the whole). Staying away from ubiquitous Irish Pubs is a good idea if you wish to avoid loud tourists of all nationalities.
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09 Apr 2018 15:21 #267158 by Michael Barnes
Replied by Michael Barnes on topic WTF I’m in Paris
Well I'm back. Here is the travelouge.

We got off to a TERRIBLE start. Thursday, we got word that our flight was cancelled due to this stupid transportation strike that is going on in France. For about 2 hours, we didn't even know if we were going to be able to actually go. They rebooked us on a flight that would have had us travelling for over 24 hours with two layovers so we called and said that wasn't going to work. The thing is, the next flight they could get us on was leaving like 3 hours earlier- so we had a mad rush to go get the kids from school and leave like right after we got confirmation on that booking. This strike would hit us again in France- we had plans to fly down to Marseille for three days, but that flight was cancelled too, and I couldn't rebook it. Which worked out OK because there was PLENTY to do in Paris.

We hit pretty much all of the major stuff:

- The Eiffel Tower is MUCH bigger than you think. The line to go up was way too long and advance tickets sell out like 3 months in advance so we just went under it. It is SUPER touristy around there. You can buy keychains 5 for 1 Euro. At least until the police come and all of the street vendors suddenly disappear. My daughter wanted this barking/walking puppy one of the street vendors was selling, we told her it was illegal.

- The Louvre is overwhelming- the building is just extraordinary. We went there the first day not long after we deplaned, and there was a rainbow over it which was kind of great. Their collection is vast, but it is heavily weighted to Greco-Roman sculpture, which can get a little samey even with some art history knowledge. Winged Victory is amazing. The Venus De Milo is there. And of course, The Mona Lisa. You have to wait in a mob of people to get within 10 feet of it, and it is behind glass. It is pretty small, but I have to say that seeing it in person it is a much more impressive piece than in photos- the depth of the lighting is extraordinary. I got to see The Raft of the Medusa, one of my favorite paintings, and several Caravaggio works. Lots of stuff you've seen before. We actually went twice and still didn't see it all.

- Les Catacombes are incredible, well worth the 2+ hour wait to get in. These are underground vaults where in the 18th century they dug up all the overcrowded medieval graveyards (mostly plague victims) and stored the remains WAY deep in these old mines. Stacks and stacks and stacks of skulls and bones. Funny story- Leigh Ann took the kids to walk around while I waited. A horrible rainstorm happened. So I stood in the rain in this line waiting. They come back and Leigh Ann is like "we just had the most amazing experience". They happened to run into this well-known artist, Claude Courtecuisse, and he invited them to go into his studio and hang out with him for a while. He gave them signed lithographs and later we saw some of his pieces at Les Centres de Georges Pompidou, the big modern art museum in Paris. All I got out of it was wet shoes.

- The Palais Garnier is the opera house where Phantom of the Opera is set. It is pretty amazing, but as much as I like Marc Chagall, I feel like his ceiling painting there is incongruous. It's an opulent building, and they still have shows in it.

- Versailles is...kind of meh? The thing is, after you see all of the elaborate carvings, baroque filligree, and massive ceiling paintings at the Louvre and the Palais Garnier, you kind of think "where does this kind of extravagance end?" It's almost exhausting. The Hall of Mirrors (Place de Glaces) is extraordinary and the grounds are amazing, but I found myself sort of nonplussed by Louis XIV's bedroom and all of that. We got macarons at Laduree there, they are the patisserie that created them. They were not empirically better than others we had elsewhere, but they were definitely more expensive.


- The Museum of Natural History was also kind of meh. The one in New York is much better. It's a much more modern museum, and I do really like their taxidermy displays- they are mostly right on the floor and within arm's length. But I like the hand-painted backgrounds and dioramas of the displays in NY much better. The complex the museum is on is really neat though.

- Notre Dame and Sacre Couer are both beautiful and I would regard them as must-sees. We went in Sacre Couer during Easter Mass, it was kind of like a Catholic version of a megachurch. We did not go up the tower at Notre Dame as it was closed, so I didn't get the obligatory gargoyle photos.

- We skipped going into some of the historical monuments- the Pantheon, Les Invalides, the Arc D'Triomphe...but we saw everything on a bus tour so that was fine. We didn't go down Champs Elysee either. I didn't feel like we were missing anything by not going into the Champs Elysee Foot Locker.

- In Montmartre, which is mostly tourist nonsense these days, I happened to notice a poster advertising an exhibit featuring props, art and production things from the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro (Amelie, City of Lost Children, Delicatessen, A Very Long Engagement, Alien: Resurrection). So we went into that, and it was one of the best things we did the whole time. Sometimes it's just the random stuff you find exploring that's the best.

- By far the greatest thing we did was on the last day. We took a 90 minute train ride out of Paris to this little town called Provins. It has been there since the 9th century, founded under Charlemagne. During the middle ages it became a major trading and commerce hub. Much of the medieval city is still intact, including the city walls, ramparts and a huge watchtower. It was just amazing. They also have medieval shows along the actual medieval walls there, so we went to one. It was insane. It starts out (all in French) as a pretty normal historical thing about the Dukes of Champagne that oversaw the city in the middle ages, but then Orcs attack and there's a bunch of fighting including a real functioning trebuchet. Then this elf comes floating out and saves the town with magic. All set to the theme from "Pirates of the Caribbean." It was all kind of surreal, and it felt like a Simpsons spoof come to life...but actually kind of awesome and Roses are the big thing there, so we bought a bunch of rose stuff. I would rate the day there as one of the best 10 or so days of my life. They also had this adorable little Jules Verne carousel in the town square, my son rode in the Nostromo.

As for the food- HA! So much for French cuisine. That town loves hamburgers, hot dogs, and french fries. I have never seen so many restaurants offering hot dogs. And some atrocity called Ouef l'mayonnaise- that's an egg with mayonnaise. That should be illegal. We had a pretty tough time eating because they love meat so much, although we found a great all-vegan hamburger place. We ate at one of the top 25 vegetarian restaurants in the world and it was terrible. Of course we ate a TON of sweets. Everywhere you go, there are candies and cakes and pastries and they are ALL good. Strangely, there are almost no overweight Parisians. Maybe it's because none of their food has the chemical garbage that the US industrial food complex pumps into what Americans eat. My daughter ate a minimum of 2 Nutella crepes a day- she had never had them, now it's like her favorite thing. My son had a grilled cheese sandwich at this place that had macaroni in cheese on it. I think he regards it as the best meal he has ever had.

Food is INSANELY expensive- a lot of things aren't any more than in the US, but man, food...meals that would be $35 for us here were $70+ there. I went into an Illy coffee shop and got two cappuccinos, two hot chocolates and a tomate et mozzarella sandwich and it was almost $30. Oh, and the coffee...what a joke. When we got back, I got a cappuccino from Starbucks and I think it had more caffeine in it than all the coffee I drank in France.

The best thing we ate was this rose ice cream in Provins. Holy shit. It was the best ice cream I've ever eaten.

Clothes are also ridiculously priced. We went into this HUGE department store, Galerie Layfatte, and it was just constant sticker shock. Granted, a lot of what they had was super high end stuff- Lagerfeld, Chloe, Dior, YSL, etc...but a $700 t-shirt is a $700 t-shirt. The more accessible brands were still a lot- at Monoprix, which is kind of equivalent to Target, a pretty standard men's sweater was around $60-$70.

I loved the Metro. I hear people complain about it all of the time, that it's impossible and so forth. I can only surmise that the complainers just can't read signs. I found it very easy to navigate, the trains were ALWAYS on time, and you can get to anywhere from anywhere. We only had one questionable incident in the Metro- this group of hoodlums tried to get us in a trap going up these stairs into a tunnel but we saw right through it and avoided it. Pickpocketing and petty crime is a big thing there. I felt safer there than I do in the US, I guess because there are no creepy white guys with access to military-grade weapons. At all of the major tourist spots, there are fully armed soldiers with assault rifles. Not cops. Like, special forces dudes.

As for the gaming scene...I thought we would try to find a copy of Jack and the Beanstalk, the latest Tales & Games release, since it is not coming out in the US. Most of the comics and game shops were close when we walked by. I went into one game shop, L'Ouef Cube. My wife remarked that the gamers there look just like gamers in the US. They didn't have it. I did see one Games Workshop store out by Versailles, but didn't go in. Most of the places that sold games that I saw had about the same stuff that Target would have. More depressing, the toy departments were pretty much just all US stuff.

In the final ranking, it turns out the US tourists weren't the most boorish, rude, and aggressively impolite. That honor goes to the Russians.

I didn't want to leave- I would go back and live in Provins and start a farm in a heartbeat, you wouldn't have to ask twice.

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09 Apr 2018 19:03 #267182 by Michael Barnes
Replied by Michael Barnes on topic WTF I’m in Paris
Oh, I feel like I should warn you all. There is something that no travel guide mentions. Apparently, when you arrive at the airport, you are secretly assigned a French man to stand outside of where you are staying and talk loudly until about 12:30am. We stayed at 3 Air BNBs and our man followed us everywhere.

Also, the French apparently like moving furniture and vacuuming after 11pm.
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09 Apr 2018 19:16 #267184 by Gary Sax
Replied by Gary Sax on topic WTF I’m in Paris
^Try going to Spain

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