"PARIS - IT'S GOT A TOWER" a Paris Travel Page by JohnnySpangles

There should be a lot to say about Paris. I’ve been there enough times so I should have enough tourist anecdotes to fill these pages. Unfortunately I can’t think of any of them. The problem might be that Paris doesn’t seem to have that faraway allure that it once had. Maybe I’ve been there too often, or maybe Paris has always really been London with a silly accent and I just haven’t noticed it before. Then again it might all have changed since Eurodisney opened, as my recent excursions to Paris have been somewhat blighted by Mickey and his cute little friends.

The first time I went to Paris I seem to remember being smitten by the romance of standing on a bridge near Notre Dame, whilst the sun went down and the strangulated chords of an accordion filled the evening air. Right then, for me, that was Paris at its peak. It’s been downhill ever since. As I’ve done more and more in Paris the less and less I seem to like it. Maybe I’ve started at the top of the tourist list and worked my way down to the scrapings at the bottom of the barrel. So having done most of these things here’s my comments on the top tourist attractions in Paris:

Notre Dame – It’s a big cathedral. There’s no hunchback swinging off the bells, so don’t go expecting one. Try the zoo for hunchbacks.

La Pere De La Chaise – It’s a cemetery for Christ’s sake. You’ll probably find that your home town has one, so save the air fare and go take pictures round there instead. See how long it takes before you get funny looks.

The Louvre – It’s far too big. To do it justice you need a whole day, which is way too much art for anybody. Although it is so big, and covers a few square miles, you will find that ninety-nine per cent of the visitors are packed together in one room in front of the Mona Lisa. You can only console yourself with the fact that they are going to be mightily disappointed when their photos come back from the drug store and all they can see is the reflection of their flash in the bullet-proof glass.

The Eifel Tower – Big tower, go up, come down.

If you’re going to the Paris for the first time then you’ll probably enjoy all of the above, so don’t let me influence in cancelling those air-tickets. When you’ve seen them a few times you’ll start to crave something a little more exotic, a little less cultural and hopefully a lot more trashy. That’s where either the red-light area of St. Denis, or Eurodisney, come in. Of Eurodisney I can speak from bitter experience. Of St Denis, I’m not allowed to talk about it any more, not after the rash anyway.

If you stay at Eurodisney you’ll more than likely end up staying in a themed hotel, like the western one in which I stayed. It was so authentic that it featured neither room service, nor a mini-bar, but it did have a cowboy boot for a bedside lamp. Feeding was only possible at set times and breakfast was issued on a rota system that usually involved fighting the Spanish for the last of the croissants. However children love the place and we spent many hours chasing their best loved characters around the theme park. The characters actually sign autographs and you can buy an un-cynically marketed autograph book for ten quid to collect them in. Of course you have to corner the characters first. You might catch a glimpse of Tigger Orange or Pooh Yellow from afar, but by the time you’ve organised the posse Tigger and Pooh have long since disappeared into a concealed entrance for their cigarette break.

Things were pretty bad on our last visit. There had been long queues at the most popular characters and all we managed were a couple of C-list celebrity autographs. The best we did was the ‘Third Soldier From The Left In Robin Hood’, that’s how he signed his name anyway. Of course the Spanish did considerably better by pushing their way to the front of all the queues. Didn’t anybody explain to this lot when we let them into the EEC that there might be a bit of organised queuing involved in being part of Europe? Wasn’t it also explained to them that you don’t fill your pockets full of croissants at breakfast time, thus depriving other nations of their rightful allocation, in order to have something for your free lunch in the park? Fortunately Mr Disney has come up with something to thwart our Spanish queue-jumping friends, God bless his cryogenically-frozen cotton socks. They now have a system where you can book your go on a particular ride in advance. You then turn up at your allocated time, go through a special gate and you thus go to the front of the queue. The rules for this new system are explained in all languages, except Spanish. This is so that everyone can have a good laugh at the still queuing Spanish as their unrighteous indignation causes them to choke on their stolen croissants.