PARISIAN DAYS

Taranaki Daily News, 9 August 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

PARISIAN DAYS

A TARANAKIAN’S VISIT

(By

Senex.)

June 24—Back in London again from the Continent, where my sojourn and. my cash were both too short. Had a wonderfully better crossing back than For one thing I brazenly went to sleep in a first class cabin on a third class ’ ticket, and no one turned me out. I forgot all about the second class, as there are only first 'and third on the railways, and of course you' buy your ticket at a railway station. Our third class on the ship’going was not enjoyable. . ■ ■ - . ■ ■ .

.“Waal,. buddy, this lil Paris [is sure some berg,” as one of my American aequaintahees put it at the hotel the other day. “But it’s bin vary hart,” as he also said,'referring to the warmth, zk party of Cook’s tourists were ,at the hotel last week; and it was laughable to'sec them trying to see (!) Paris in a week. Someone told us the: markets were a great sight ,at about : six in the morning 'when the retailers were buying. We' could not start the day'at that early " hour, so we finished- it then instead. And it was a great sight, and smell too. .Phcww! You could stick your elbow out and lean against - it if you felt tired, as we did, ./f ’ I saw the Folios Bergere from the inside and the famous Moulin Rojug-e from the outside, but the best fun of the lot’ is to sit at a cafe the inner boulevards and take about an hour and a half to consume" a 21d beer. " It strikes me that’s-the way Paris really lives.

The Louvre U a wonderful place. Every time I go I seem to find another set of rooms I had not seen before. I never could get past the Mona Lisa myself. It’s on the main route to the majority of the galleries, and to get to anything I had not seen I always had to try to pass it, but I had. to have another* look at it. It seems to make one want to just sit and gape and is apparently the meet popular picture in the palace. It is in a part of the Great Gallery with five others, and though those on'each side of it are two fine Correggios, no one ever looks at them. All eves are 011 the da Vinci from ’ the moment people see the picture, and it xs interesting to watch their faces. No one ever looks disappointed, as if he was expecting more than he found. It must always come u.p to the highest expectations.

But the Louvre is too stupendous to talk about. It took ,me half a day to walk around a part of the first floor, and though. I must have spent about 25 hours there altogether I haven’t seen anything at all of the greater part ai the ground floor. To go through and have a proper look at things would take until Christmas.

The two Americans and I got together in the second week in Paris and did things much more cheaply. One trip cost people 16s, but we went in a hard French train and then a funny old tram for a sum total of 5s 6d, including taxi to the station. That. was to Fontainebleau, where Napoleon used to live before he abdicated. We obtained a lot more fun out of these cheaply taken trips, anyhow. At Fontainebleau the tram conductress did not pull the bell to start the tram. She blew a squeaker, just like the ones they give to the children in New Plymouth on Christmas Eve, and it nearly sent us into hysterics. Paris is a lovely place with its boulevards and avenues. So mftny of them are so contrived that at the end of them a big building faces down the roadway. The’Opera and the Madeleine;.are well set off like that. They tell me that in some cases they build the building where it/would show to best and in others cut the street whersit : Would bast benefit the building. MAv' London would not be London.' without its narrow higgledy-piggledy-streets and ditto Paris without its wide:stee-plast-ed boulevard.? and avenues. 5.4 £ f I shall never forget ; of the splendid panoramas to be obtained so easily from the Eiffel To[w'4r —Notre Dame, Church of Sacre Coeurp ’and the Arch of Triumph. It was the-view from the last I liked best of all. Wis nothing like the height of. the Eiffel "Tower. But the twelve famous aveiluiA radiate from it, one the justly famous Champs Elvsees. Opposite it the avenue de la Grande Armee stretches as .-.far as the eye can see, disappearing finally over the top of a slight rise. If I-thad only another day I should-have gone - 'down it by tram to see where it wiiiib)' sp intriguing was it.

I had a tremendous amount of fun sitting at cafes —there is one about overy° ten. yards. How inadequate the London hotels seemed after them i For about 2d or 3d for as long ds you like, with a beer thrown in, you see the everchanging entertainment of seeing what seems like half the world going, by. If there is any race except Eskiipos and Patagonians which has no .'representatives in Paris I should know what it is. London is doubtless just as cosmopolitan as Paris, but it."does .'lot flaunt it so. The cafes were my greatest delight in Paris and I miss them m London. I should think France would just shrivel up like a squeezed lemon and fade right away if >t icpuld not lounge at its favourite epfe' all the night. I say France because it-was the same in one or two other little places we visited outside. ' '

There were so many things—the Seine with its bridges, the rose windows and facade of Notre Dame. the. illuminated wings of the Moulin Rouge einema. and cabaret turning slowly, the plain tomb of Napoleon in such, a contrast with so many other garish, gilt trappings, the smell and bus-tie of the markets at G a.m., the staircase .of the Opera House, the cobbled 'streets and flagged garden paths, the Place de la Concorde with the Madeleine before you in the distance, and the Invalides behind, the thoroughly suburban, tranquil suburbs, the dashing taxi drivers who sneak through spaces big enough- only for a bicycle, all for a. fare of Bd, the museum of the Louvre with its art treasures, tho foot-long be.ft.riU,of some of the. artistic young men—l;rpould go on-for .weeks,'but' I have toj lire down to earth, again.