Sunday, July 5
The portion of our vacation with AHI Travel came to a close with the drive back to Paris. They dropped us off at CDG airport, where Rainer made sure we got on the correct train to get to our hotel. We’re staying in St. Denis, rather than downtown. I probably could have picked a better location, but this one met my two requirements: I could pay part of the cost with reward points, and it’s close to a Metro station.
Google said that when we got off the train, we should catch a bus. Rainer suggested we catch a taxi instead. Unfortunately, no taxis were to be found. And, through a lack of preparation, I didn’t have the Uber app installed on my phone. So we legged it. The weather wasn’t too hot, and we didn’t have to drag our suitcases very far, so it wasn’t bad.
After an early check-in at the hotel, we went in search of food. Google let us down again – we picked a place to eat a couple of blocks away, but when we got there, we saw it was under renovation. A few doors down, we spotted a little neighborhood pizza place where nobody spoke English. Pizza is a universal language, or close enough that we can manage without difficulty.
We were hoping to be able to find a place to relax and watch the F1 race. Last year in Brussels, I had no difficulty finding a sports bar that had the race on multiple screens. F1 is big in Europe, so how hard can it be? We couldn’t get it in our hotel room – F1 is on a premium channel, which we didn’t get. And the hotel bar wasn’t open yet. So much for Plan A. After a few minutes of thought, Genae suggested we visit the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre.
We headed off on our adventure – the first task was to figure out how the Metro works. We were too stupid to figure out how to recharge the Navigo cards we used on the train from the airport. Luckily, the agent at the service desk spoke enough English to do the task for us. That was nice, but it meant we still didn’t grasp how to do this on the kiosk. Yes, you can change the language on the kiosk to English, but there’s one little thing I couldn’t figure out without seeing it done. Navigating the subway itself wasn’t any different than BART or the DC Metro, except it’s all in French.
The Basilica sits atop the summit of the butte of Montmartre. It is the second most popular attraction in Paris behind the Eiffel Tower, so getting there was just a matter of following the giant crowd. Admission is free, but there was a long queue, surprise, surprise. I had a bit of a flashback to my Brussels trip last year. I was expecting to visit an ancient building, but it’s only about a century old, like the Basilica of the Sacred Heart there. Construction for the Paris one began about twenty years prior to the Brussels one, and they were both consecrated between the World Wars.
After touring the church, I spotted signs directing visitors to see the panoramic view from the dome. The one in Brussels had an elevator, so I told Genae they probably had one here. We bought our tickets to the top only to quickly discover that instead of an elevator, we’d be climbing a series of spiral staircases totaling 292 stairs. I could imagine Genae later telling the French gendarmes, “Honestly, officer, he slipped.” She was a good sport, though, and (I think) we both enjoyed the view.
Anyone who knows me well knows I’m a collector. I collect alpine lakes and race tracks, coins and currency, books and music. Having now visited two Basilicas of the Sacred Heart, one might wonder if I’ve just started another collection. There are, it seems, about twenty churches in the world called the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Surprisingly, six of them are in the US. But, no, as beautiful and interesting as these buildings are, I don’t think I need to collect them all.
Back in St. Denis for dinner, Genae spotted a Chinese restaurant that looked good to her. It’s called Le Panda Express. No, not the American fast food chain. When she was in Paris as a teenager, she ate Chinese, so it was natural that we maintain that tradition. Who doesn’t eat Chinese food in Paris?
