Last Day in Paris: Day-5 in France

How time flies when you’re having fun! The last day of our vacation arrives, and we still have not seen some sights in Paris. We plan to see the Luxembourg gardens and Pantheon. So once again, after breakfast at our hotel, we set off to the nearby Metro station. It happens to be a Sunday, so the metro is not too crowded. However, we have to change the Metro line at Gare du Nord to RER-B, since that’s the only line that goes to Luxembourg gardens.
We get off at the metro station, and it’s one of the dirtiest and most dilapidated ones that I have seen in Paris so far! But, once out of the station, the garden is quite beautiful. It’s about 9:30AM in the morning, and there are joggers and dog-walkers all over the park. There is a lovely mansion house at one end of the gardens, which I later found is the French senate.

Jardin du Luxembourg, with the palace on the right.

Admiring the gardens

Exploring Mont St. Michel: Day-4 in France

Day-4 in France my wife and I have checked into the Mercure hotel near Le Mont-St-Michel Abbey. I wake up in the morning to see dark grey skies and continuous drizzle of rain. Bad weather to walk down the 2.5 km long stretch from the hotel to the Abbey, but I have no choice, as we’re here for one day only. After a hearty breakfast at "Le Pre Sale" restaurant, out come the umbrellas, and we begin our walk to the Abbey. Soon the rain starts coming in gusts, and I turn back to see a Peugeot sedan approaching. I’m pretty sure no one would give a lift to a foreign couple on a dark and rainy day like this, but I still make the universally accepted sign with my thumb asking for a lift. We’re in luck, the car stops, and a French couple, who cant speak a word of English, give us a lift. We were really grateful to this helpful couple; without their help, we would have been walking in the rain for at least 20 minutes. We thanked the couple with heartfelt "merci beaucoup’s", when we reached the Abbey.

Destination Mont St. Michel: Day-3 in France

My third day in France, I leave Paris, the city I could not yet explore to my heart’s content, and head off to rural France. My destination is Mont St. Michel, a church which has a history dating back to the 8th century A.D. The church is dedicated to St. Michael, the arch-angel. The unique thing about this church is that it’s built on a finger of land jutting out into the Atlantic ocean. But before I leave, I have some time so a visit to the Sacre Coeur Basilica, which was a short walk from the hotel. As we walked, we crossed a very charming part of Paris. Nice little restaurants like the one below, markets selling oysters, clams, mushrooms and different kinds of hams and cheese. 

Le Basilic restaurant.

Montmartre, on the way to Sacre Cour

 
Sacre Coeur
The Sacre Coeur Basilica is a slightly steep climb up the Montmartre hill. Once up, there is a beautiful view of Paris, and you can even see the Eiffel Tower from here. The Basilica itself is quite awe-inspiring. It’s a towering structure.

Sacre Cour

 
It is said that during a siege of Paris, the Montmartre hill was used to bombard
the city using cannons. There is a plaque on the wall, but since it’s in French,
I could not understand it completely, except for the fact that during a siege,
this particular point was used for cannon artillery.

View from the hill.

Paris: Day-2 in France

On today’s itinerary was the Eiffel Tower and Church of Notre Dame. We had plans of seeing as many of the sights as possible, but time was short, and sights worth seeing many, in Paris. We took a L’Open Tour bus, which is a hop-on-hop-off double decker tourist bus. These buses have different circuit routes which take you to pretty much every tourist attraction in the city, but with a catch (that we later realized)... the last bus is at 6:30PM, and this does not give enough time to see everything. While we wanted to visit the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Pantheon, Napoleon’s Tomb, Luxemburg gardens and Sacre Cour, we could manage just the first two. After day-2 in Paris, I realize that it’s a place that you cannot do justice to if you have only two days.

Church of Notre Dame

The first stop was at Notre Dame, the 12th century church.

Carvings on the facade, Notre Dame

The church is both a tourist attraction and a religious place, so tourists are asked to maintain silence while inside. Mass is still held in this church, as we went in, the mass started.

Interiors of the church.

You may enter the church for free, but if you want to ascend the towers, it costs 8 euros per head. It is a bit funny to have to pay 8 euros to climb up what seemed like a thousand steps, but when you reach the top, this is the view you get!

A Gargoyle looks at the Eiffel Tower.

View from the top of Notre Dame

Paris : Day 1

So I’m in Paris today, starting a week-long vacation with my wife. We make a good team while travelling in France. While she had previously lived in Nice & Toulouse for a short while, I learned to speak a wee-bit of French during my MBA. It’s just been half a day, and I’m already liking the city of Paris. We landed in Charles De Gaulle airport, and took the RER (Rural-Express-Rail?) to Gare Du Nord. On the way we were accosted by girls pretending to be deaf & dumb, asking for charity. My wife asked one of them where the train station was, and she replied quite helpfully, momentarily forgetting the charade! Train station located, and tickets bought (approx. 9 euros per person), we then waited at the station for the train to arrive.

Waiting at the RER station at Charles De Gaulle

On the train, the journey to Gare du Nord was faster than expected. It took, I guess, about 20 minutes (expected time was 30 minutes). From Gare du Nord, we took a taxi to the hotel. While looking for the taxi stand, we were again accosted by a group of girls, who asked me "Do you speak English?". I was quite aware that this is always the starting point of some sort of scam or request for fake charity. I just replied "No" and moved on. We, we had to wait in a line for a good 15 minutes, but the ride cost only 10 euros, and was quicker than taking the Metro. We’ll go out exploring in a while, most likely the Louvre. Before that we had an early lunch at a cafeteria-style restaurant. The place was called "Flunch", and was a chain that my wife remembered from her Nice days.

First taste of French food. Verdict: main course was OK, dessert was great.

I always had heard that in Paris hotels are noisy, and walls are thin so you can hear what the other guests are up-to. Believe it or not, as I write this, I hear some idiot in the floor above with an electric drill! The rest of this post, after the sigh-seeing trip!

Louvre
After lunch we decided to take the Metro and see the Louvre museum and Eiffel tower. The Metro is a good and convinrent way to move around in Paris, although at first, we didn’t realize that there was something called a "day ticket" which is valid for the whole day. The Paris Metros have different numbered "lines", and with a Metro map, it’s easy to figure out (even for tourists like us). We had to change the line once to reach the Louvre.

Entrance to the Louvre

A Little Tibet in South India

Bylakuppe is a small Tibetan settlement in Karnataka, about 200kms from Bangalore. The settlement houses Tibetan refugees who were driven out of their homeland due to Chinese invasions in the 1960’s. The refugees have now settled down here, and made the place a mirror image of their Himalayan homeland. I visited this place on a grey rainy day, and for a while you would think that you’ve actually reached the Tibetan plateau in the distant Himalayas! The Buddhist monasteries outlined against the dark cloudy skies makes you forget that you’re actually in Southern India.

Entry to the main hall of the Namdroling Monastery

The most famous monastery here is the Namdroling Monastery, which is also known as "Golden Temple". The name probably comes from the gold-plated statues of Buddha’s inside.

Statues of Buddha (center), Guru Rimpoche (left), Buddha Amitabha (right)

A lion guards the entrance to the main hall

This place is wonderful, and quite worth a visit. Outside the temple complex on the narrow road leading up to the temple, there are small restaurants selling traditional Tibetan food.

Tibetan food

Rock Concert in Whitefield

Yesterday I attended a live concert by Parikrama in Whitefield. Here’s a video I shot using my N8.

 

These guys are good with their music, although the mixing was a tad off in the concert. It was all going fine, until a Bollywood-Pop singer called "KK" came in and spoiled the show!

Fatehpur-Sikri

The twin sites of Fatehpur-Sikri lie just on the outskirts of Agra, and while visiting Agra to see the Taj Mahal, most tourists stop here to see Akbar's palace and Salim Chisti's tomb. Akbar, as the 16th century emperor of the Indian subcontinent, needs no introduction. Salim Chisti was a sufi saint, who lived as a hermit in the hills of Sikri. 
Before 1569, Akbar had no heir to his throne. Akbar's first three children - a daughter Fatima, and twin sons, Hussain and Hassan - died in infancy. Akbar, a very worried and heir-less emperor then approached Salim Chisti, in the hope that divine intervention could help him with his heir troubles. It is said that he even moved his pregnant wife to Sikri, so that she would be in blessed surroundings when the child came. 
All this paid off, and a son was born to Akbar in 1569, and named "Salim" after the saint. Salim would later become famous as Jahangir, but that's a different story.
Akbar now started considering Sikri a lucky place for him. He decided to move his capital from Agra to Sikri, and started building a royal city around Salim Chisti's hermitage. This new city was named Fatehpur or "victory city". Two years later, in 1571, Akbar moved to this new city with his family and courtiers. Red sandstone was the building material that was available at that time, and you can see the entire complex in Fatehpur is made of this material. 

Wonders of the World : Great Wall of China

Back in November 2004, I was posted on-site in Beijing working for a telecommunications company. Since I was assigned at the Beijing office for a good three months, I had a lot of weekends to explore Beijing. While I visited places like "Forbidden City" and "Temple of Heaven" on my own, I opted for a guided tour for the Great Wall. The Hotel (China World Hotel) could organize a English-speaking guide. The tour took us first to the Ming Tombs, and then the Badaling section of the Great Wall.

Bactrian camel at the Great Wall

View of the Wall.

A French co-tourist volunteered to take my picture. Merci, Monsieur !

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Wonders of the World - The Taj on a foggy winter morning

    I visited Agra in January of 2009. The only thing on our to-do list was to visit the Taj Mahal, but we drove down from Jaipur and reached Agra after 5PM, and by that time the Taj premises were closed. So we settled for a quick visit of Agra fort. Interestingly, from the ramparts of this fort, the Taj can be seen across the dry bed of the Yamuna river. So my first ever view of the Taj was from Agra fort's Diwan'e'khaas!


    The next morning, I was off to see the Taj. Apparently, you cannot just drive in, park your car and see the Taj. The UP Govt. has made sure that tourists have a tough time, while the local transportation business can fleece us. The car park is about 3 kms from the Taj gates, and you have the option of riding a horse drawn "tonga" or a auto-rickshaw down to the gate. Whichever mode of transport you choose, you will land up paying a ridiculously high amount to the tonga or auto driver! Then you are greeted with a long queue, with an impatient hawildar trying to manage the queue. Only after passing through these ordeals are you deemed worthy of a glimpse of the Taj. And here is what the first glimpse is... a kind of little "Buland Darwaza" leading to the Taj Mahal proper.

    Enter through these gates, and you are greeted by a Tourism department counter that asks you to hand over any video cameras that you may have. Apparently, the Taj Mahal is allergic to video cameras, so you cannot take them close to the monument! So after completing the formalities of depositing your camcorder for safe-keeping, you are finally allowed to gaze upon Shah Jahan's famous creation.

After spending a while marvelling at the structure, I was  greeted with the remarkable phenomenon of the sun rising over the Taj. Once you see this, all the trouble of haggling with the auto driver & standing in the queue is forgotten. It's a site worth seeing. Check out these pics below!