After a couple of trips to Paris some years ago and a visit to Lyon last fall, we wanted to try France again, this time in a new direction: northeast, to be exact, to Lille, near the Belgian border, and then Amiens followed by several days in Paris.
(The Flickr photo album of the trip is here: France / Spring 2016.)
We began easily enough by catching a bus at CDG airport. I would have liked to try the TGV, the high speed train, but the large difference in price (€9 for the bus versus €50 or more for the train) was not worth the small difference in travel time (an hour versus two hours). Besides, the bus was nice: comfortable plush seats, wifi, and a WC.
For some reason, Lille is not much mentioned in guidebooks. It's the fourth largest city in France (after Paris, Marseilles, and Lyon) and has the second largest museum (after the Louvre in Paris). We bought the city pass, which got us a walking tour of the old town, a ride on the tourist bus past all the important sites, a transport pass for buses and the subway, and admission into more museums than we could possibly visit. For five days and four nights we found plenty to do and see. And to eat.
Click on the image for a larger view on Flickr and more details.
After Lille we took a regional train to Amiens. Mostly we wanted to see the cathedral -- which is stunning -- but were surprised at how pretty and pleasant the town was. Not much to do, mind you, but I was very happy to simply walk about and enjoy the atmosphere, with an occasional stop for refreshment.
Another short train ride took us to Paris, where we had booked a hotel near the Place de la République. The location was perfect, with easy access to trains and lots of Metro lines. Our room on the first night was ridiculously small, even for Paris, but the next morning we were able to move to a much larger room, with a much larger shower, and life was again beautiful.
We had already done the most obvious tourist things in Paris -- Eiffel Tower, Louvre, d'Orsay, l'Orangerie -- and wanted to stray from those well-beaten paths to know Paris a little better. Most importantly, we got new Navigo Découverte cards and unlimited Metro passes.
(A note about the Paris Metro: I love it so much that sometimes I think I would visit Paris just to ride the subway. The network design is awe-inspiring and beautiful. The only problem that I can see is that the system is at or beyond capacity. The trains cannot get any bigger, due to the size of the stations, nor can they get more frequent, since they are running only 3-4 minutes apart. Most of the trains we rode were jammed unpleasantly full.)
We went to museums (Jacquemart-André, Marmottan Monet, Bourdelle, Quai Branly) and walked around neighborhoods (Marais, Montparnasse, St.-Denis). With our Metro cards we were able to change our mind on a whim and head off to a different place whenever we liked. And I indulged myself more than once at Léon de Bruxelles, a prominent mid-range restaurant chain specializing in moules et frites, steamed mussels with french fries. My first meal at Leon's was way back in 2004 on our first trip to Paris.
There was one bad day, and it was very, very bad. We went to the Palace of Versailles for no reason other than that it is very famous and we had never been there. The badness of Versailles has two parts. Part one, it is hideously and ostentatiously ugly, and I am not one whit surprised that the French peasantry revolted and chopped off a bunch of heads. Part two, the mobs of tourists were rude and obsessed with taking selfies. We were continually pushed back or aside so that some yokel could grin into her/his phone, snapping their visage against a backdrop of 18th century French decadence. To visit Versailles in the summer heat, when the crowds are far larger, must be a special kind of hell.
Fortunately we quickly recovered, our Metro passes whisking us back to the sanity of Paris proper.
We understand France much better now, I think, and are already considering what regions to visit next. Alsace? Normandy? France is a large country of many cuisines and almost endless possibilities.
