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Our Hotel: First Steps

Bar at Le Bristol Paris,
Courtesy of Hotel-bristol.com

When we arrived from the airport, our room was not ready, but we could hardly make complaints. It was only 9:30 in the morning, and it would be unreasonable to expect even that previous guests had already checked out to say nothing about cleaning and preparing the room. But since we were promised that it would be ready in 30 - 40 minutes, we decided to spend time in the hotel bar. We loved this bar ever since this moment. May be we had some strange ideas about Paris, but that bar was for us an epitome of what we expected to find in this city - elegance, class and outstanding service. Often late at night, completely exhausted after another day on feet and full of impressions, we, nevertheless, did not want to go to bed, and instead kept sitting and enjoying delicious pastries and tea and espresso and mach, and we did not want this to end.

Superior room, Le Brsitol Paris
Courtesy of Hotel-bristol.com.
These rooms are about
30 sq.m or 350 sq.f and cost
€710 (2007)

Probably, you are wondering now where is this magic place? It's inside the Hotel Le Bristol (112 rue du Faubourg Saint Honore, Paris 75008, France) - one of the best hotels in Paris - expensive and worth every penny. If you use sites like Tripadvisor.com (by the way, an excellent resource on traveling and hotels in particular) to research hotels and read reviews, I am sure you will find a couple or more with something like "Nice hotel, but..." or "...our rooms looked onto a small courtyard so there was no chance for fresh air." Well, someone can argue what is better: an almost absolute tranquility of the inner court in the very heart of the city where life (and traffic noise) never stops, or the view to the rue du Faubourg Saint Honore (quite dull actually). But I am really sceptical that the air is fresher on this narrow street with car emmisions rising right into the hotel windows - but that's not the point.

The point is that there is always something that can be improved, that someone can always feel that the service or food is not worth the money you pay. Nevertheless, Le Bristol is a hotel which by many accounts is in a different dimension than most of other hotels not only in Paris, but in many other countries. It gives a true five start experience with outstanding service and desire to excel. We felt almost at home in this hotel - when we needed something we had this and what was important for us, this service was coming in a relaxed, undemanding way - it was just there when we needed it.

One of the services we used quite extensively at the hotel was various reservations. Although we did not expect this at all, but on several occasions we noticed that with Le Bristol phone calls, we were treated differently - specifically, better places, faster service, more attention. Very often it was just a bit of useful information or recommendations what to do and where to go.

Seine River

Île de la Cité 1609

What else I can tell you about this hotel? Well, rooms at the hotel are quite spacious (by Paris standards) and at least our room was cleaned to perfection twice a day. But what was really nice is a huge (probably as big as the room itself) and bright bathroom with big bathtub and everything else that you will need in this place including a big marble shower.

But getting back to where I started - our room was ready as promised, and after unpacking and taking some rest, early afternoon we were ready to take on the city. Our first excursion on feet was not planned at all. Since Le Bristol is very close to the center of the city, and, in particular, to the Place de la Concorde and Jardin des Tuileries, we decided to have a walk and visit all these places and make a big circle returning back through Avenue des Champs-Élysées. If you have ever been to various European cities, but not to Paris, you will be surprised by vast spaces especially in the center of the city and wide streets - something that you will not find in most cities in Europe which emerged in Middle Ages and have been influenced by urban developments throughout various historic periods.

With broad streets and open spaces Paris strikes imagination. A lot of changes to the city planning and architecture were performed in the second half of 19th century, in particular as a project commissioned by Napoleon III and led by the Seine prefect, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, It included all aspects of urban planning, both in the center of Paris and in the surrounding districts: streets and boulevards, regulations imposed on facades of buildings, public parks, sewers and water works, city facilities and public monuments. As a result, the old Paris with dense and irregular medieval alleyways was transformed into a modern city with wide avenues and open spaces.

Pont Alexandre III

Barge Home on the
Seine River in Paris

Many of well-known architectural marvels in Paris were created for several world's fairs (Exposition Universelle in France), in particular, those held in 1867, 1889 and in 1900. For example, Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 exposition - we'll get to it later). During our first excursion though we enjoyed a wonderful arch bridge Pont Alexandre III and Grand Palais both built in Art Nouveau style for the 1900 Expo. The bridge was constructed by using a single steel arch to span the Seine. A lot of lamp poles, cherubs and nymphs decorate the bridge. But what make this bridge really beautiful are four gold covered bronze statues of winged horses on top of 50-foot columns.

The walk on the right bank of the Seine from the bridge to the Place de la Concorde is not very interesting. But if you haven't seen them, it's worth taking a look at numerous anchored barges (péniche in French) - homes. We have heard that some of them are actually real homes. Others are vacation homes or barges used for canal and river cruises becoming very popular. If you are interested in something like this, here is a Web site that can help you book one - Barges in France. A number of these boats have been transformed into bars and restaurants, some of them can be rented for different events like receptions and marriages (check this site if you want to have a better idea). And if you want a piece of this exotic real estate there are specialized services like SeinePlus.com

Our improvised tour continued through the Place de la Concorde with its magnificent fountain and nothing reminded us about the grim past of the Place where many people were guillotined. Today, the guillotine former place is occupied by a huge obelisk, a gift from Egypt dating back to 19th century. The square is filled with wonderful statutes, columns, and lampposts. Don't miss the statutes representing eight French cities of Bordeaux, Brest, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nantes, Rouen and Strasbourg at each corner of the octagon formed by the Place.

Tuileries Garden

From the Place de la Concorde we entered Jardin des Tuileries that long ago was part of the Tuileries Palace destroyed by the Commune supporters who set it on fire. The gardens are beautiful and well maintained although there is certainly some room for improvement, but we would not call garden lawns manicured. On the other hand, it might have been a matter of perception - what could be acceptable somewhere else, in the center of Paris, in Jardin des Tuileries was not. Our expectations had suddenly grown to very high standards.

Louvre Museum today

Crowds of people pass through the Jardin des Tuileries; undoubtedly, most of them are tourist - some exhausted and some still thirsty for new experiences and taking pictures. Tourists in Paris are from every place in the world. You can tell this by how they are dressed, behave and look and what languages they speak. By our absolutely unscientific observations most represented countries are the United Sates and Japan.

We also noticed several groups which I would call gypsies. Most of them were women showing cards asking in English for money. Since they looked remarkably like scam artists described on many Internet discussion boards we had been scanning in our preparation for trip to Paris, we just kept holding to our wallets trying to avoid any direct contact with these suspicious beggars. This was the only place in Paris where we had such experience, and even if it showed to us that Paris is not immune from some personal dangers, at the end we concluded that the city was safe.

Louvre castle in 15th
century as depicted in
the manuscript of Très
Riches Heures du Duc
de Berry.

Louvre is very close to Tuileries, and although we had reserved another day for visiting the museum, we could not resist the temptation of taking a brief look at its courtyard and surrounding buildings. Well, if the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World was a gift from the people of France to the people of the United States, can we say that the Louvre Pyramid is a gift to France from the United States? Certainly not, since the work was commissioned by the French president François Mitterrand. Still, the glass pyramid in the center of the complex's court was designed by the Chinese-born American architect I. M. Pei, the master of the modernist architecture.

Joan of Arc statue at
Place des Pyramides

During our stay in Paris while talking with locals, not once we asked the question of whether they like the Pyramid or not. Surprisingly for us, most said they do - it's a kind of recurring theme with Parisians: first they are shocked and hate something (like they hated the Eiffel tower and Centre Georges Pompidou) but later on they love it, and whatever it is, it becomes almost a symbol of Paris. As far as we are concerned? Perhaps, one day we'll say that this Pyramid is a masterpiece, but today we say that we feel sorry that the the Châteaux du Louvre that emerged in its current shape in 1535 with several kings and generations to complete has now to get on with this abortion of glass.

It was getting already late, and we were heading back to our hotel. We passed the Equestrian statue of Jeanne d' Arc located on the spot where she was wounded at the time of her unsuccessful attempt to return to Paris. The monument was glimmering in the light of the setting sun and that was another image of this city that we will preserve in our memories.

The rest of our first tour was not as impressive as its first part but nonetheless very interesting as well. We took rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore to get back - a long street filled with nice shops and fashion boutiques with names like Christian La Croix, Chloe, Hermes, Yves St. Laurent, Collette, Escada, Versace to name a few. Actually, number 55 on this street is the Élysée Palace, the residence of the President of the French Republic, but most you can see is a very serious, tall and massive stone fence with several guards patrolling the area and gates.

Part I - Coming to Paris
Part 2 - Our Hotel: First Steps
Part 3 - Day Two: Musée du Louvre, Notre Dame de Paris and La Conciergerie
Part 4 - Day Three: Versailles and Musée d'Orsay
Part 5 - Day Four: City of Paris - Right Bank
Part 6 - Day Five: City of Paris - Left Bank