Paris for beginners

Despite an inauspicious start, Gillian Vine fell in love with Paris.

I’D never travelled on the Paris Metro and it started badly: I got stuck in a turnstile. My daughter Bettina was mortified, muttering that if we had to pay again, I’d have to hand over the money as she wasn’t paying for me twice.

Then she smiled at the attendant and explained the situation in French, which I don’t understand, but obviously something along the lines of her mother being a dithery old duck who couldn’t work a simple system. The sympathetic attendant let me through without paying extra and we whizzed along to our apartmentstyle accommodation in the Marais.

Despite the inauspicious start, I fell in love with Paris. True, summer is the peak tourist season when all the major attractions are crowded. For instance, in July or August, to ascend the Eiffel Tower queuing for an hour is considered a brief wait, hardly surprising as late one morning I counted 27 tourist coaches parked nearby, while at Notre Dame cathedral it is impossible for the faithful to spend any time in quiet contemplation.

The crowd outside the main entrance to the Louvre, with its distinctive glass pyramid, can be daunting. To me, it looked as if most of the annual tally of 10 million visitors were there on the same day to see some of the 35,000 art works on display. There are quieter entrances via Carousel du Louvre shopping centre, the Passage Richelieu and the Porte des Lions but it pays to check their opening times. Visiting after 3pm helps avoid the worst crush.

Paris’ lesserknown museums are relatively quiet. I liked the Petit Palais for its Baccarat crystal and paintings, including a small selection of Impressionists on the lower level.

Uncrowded until lunchtime was the wellregarded Picasso museum, where some 5000 of the Spanishborn artist’s works are on show, as well as items from his own collection, while an unexpected delight was the Rodin museum. Just around the corner from Dome des Invalides, which houses Napoleon’s tomb, it is in the mansion where the sculptor worked. We opted for the ¤5.50 ($NZ8.75) gardenonly ticket which enabled us to see Rodin’s most famous work, The Thinker. OK, I confess it was the only one I’d heard of but I was delighted that the garden contained dozens of others, including the chilling Ugolino and his Children.

After all that culture, a bit of shopping seemed in order. Seeing the swarms of young Chinese — many of whom come to the city to have their prewedding photos staged — staggering out of major store Galeries Lafayette, each woman juggling at least five carrier bags, I decided to skip this icon of Parisian retail experience.

Instead, thanks to Bettina’s local knowledge, we went to an intriguing secondhand clothes outlet, Kilo Shop Kawai. This chain does not price items individually but sells by weight. Silk blouses barely registered on the scales but those in colours I liked were too big or too small and I reluctantly passed, although Bettina scored a lovely blue cardigan for about $NZ8.

Paris is surprisingly green. The Tuileries and Jardin du Luxembourg are well known and busy at weekends with activities ranging from pony rides and toy yacht sailing to spinning around on the big wheel at the Tuileries amusement park.

A quieter green space is Promenade Plantee, an elevated garden that runs almost 5km but is just a few metres wide because this park was originally a railway viaduct.

However, the city’s most intriguing outdoor space has to be ParisPlages, an artificial beach alongside the River Seine. Operating only from mid-July to midAugust, ParisPlages was devised for those who can’t get out of town in the month when most Parisians take their summer holidays.

You can’t go to France without eating cheese and sipping wine. We got a different take on these two pleasures by joining lively American Meg Zimbeck, food writer and founder of Paris by Mouth, to learn how different wines enhance or detract from a cheese.

There was no need for lunch after that, so we ambled back to our hotel to pick up our bags and go to Gare du Nord to catch the Eurostar train to London. We used the Metro and I negotiated the turnstile, this time without a hitch — whew!

PHOTOS: GILLIAN VINE From the bus . . . Snapping the Arc d’Triomphe is easy from an opentopped bus.

Paris icon . . . The 320m Eiffel Tower has been a landmark since 1889.

Use your loaf . . . Bread on sale at the market opposite our apartmentstyle accommodation.

Landmark . . . Moulin Rouge was opened in Montmartre the same year as the Eiffel Tower was completed.

River cruise . . . Travel the Seine by boat; the Louvre is in the background.

Kiwi in Paris . . . Among the toy boats in the Jardin du Luxembourg was one with NZ on the sail.

Wine and cheese . . . Meg Zimbeck, food writer and founder of Paris by Mouth, makes a point.

The sculptor’s garden . . . Count Ugolino and his Children, a chilling depiction of a scene from Dante’s Divine Comedy, at the Rodin Museum.