The last time I saw Paris
The trees were dressed for Spring
And Lovers walked beneath those Trees
And Birds found songs to sing.

All fair enough you may say (and this comes from a self confessed Francoholic) but last week was really the first time either Sile or I had spent more than a brief overnight stay in Paris.
We have avoided Paris carefully during the last 30 years of our travelling to and from France.
Probably this is because we have travelled mainly by car, and, been so terrified of the reputation of the Parisian Motor-Boulevardier that we have even attempted U turns on the auto-route when misreading of the road signs have taken us towards Paris.

On the one occasion when we had to travel around the Peripherique we had got hopelessly lost but the day had been miraculously rescued when we had found ourselves, still lost, outside our first Ikea.
We had immediately abandoned all hope of reaching our destination and had spent the next several hours and also several (hundred)euro inside.

This Easter Paris seemed the obvious place to go.
Stuffed to the beam ends with Air France vouchers (cf “What we did on our Holidays”) we could manage a cheap holiday only by flying somewhere where a car would be non-essential.
In Paris a car is not just non-essential, it is to be avoided at all costs.
We found Jacques and Nathalie Seguin on the internet. They had some small apartments to rent in central Paris, these had fairly basic cooking facilities, and one, a ten minute metro from the centre, in Vincennes, which seemed perfect.
Hotels are only used for emergencies in the Dwyer Travel Experience.

This flat also had a convertible sofa in the living room, (cue daughter Eileen and her friend Joanne to come too.) a little hotel next door (cue friends Isabel and Paul to come up from Annecy for the week end)as well as the obligatory (for me) kitchen with cooker etc.

It did turn out to be a little stunner, (you can see it if you click here) Beautiful polished wood floors, nice antique touches and truly all complete and beautifully planned.
It was, as French Franglais would have it, “cosy”.
The direct “Anglish “ translation might be “bijou”.
Cats, as they say, should not be swung.

For those of you who suffer, like I do, from etymologitis , the cat in question, in the origin of that phrase, was not our dear Felix –why on earth would we want to swing him- but the “cat-o-nine-tails” with which the royal navy used to impose discipline.
Apparently you needed some space to achieve the requisite back swing.

I may not have mentioned already that first daughter Caitriona with Aonghus, the recently affianced, were lucky enough to have been given a present of a weekend in Paris by Aonghus’s uncle and had decided to make Easter in Paris their theme too.
The significance of the cat swinging may be coming apparent.

Jacques scored very high marks by being there in the flat to greet us when we arrived, by having a bowl of fresh flowers on the table, and by having basics like olive oil and vinegar, salt and pepper installed.
Vincennes is a fine suburb, has a super Donjon, and a plentiful supply of small Jewish food shops which are therefore open on Sundays.

The weather for the first few days was also a credit to Jacques.
We wandered along the Isle de la Cite and through the Tuileries in beautiful sunshine.
The buildings of Paris are things of great beauty and all seemed lived in. Search any floor, even in the very centre, and each window will have a well maintained window box. Glance at the windows of the Immobiliers and you will see that behind many of these renaissance facades there exist sumptuous apartments of Grande Luxe some having interior gardens and even swimming pools.

The town was crowded. Not so much with Americans, although they were present, (quieter than they had been pre-Iran)but with Italians, Spanish and (one guessed) provincial French.
The Louvre was out of the question, unless one was prepared to queue for several hours, ditto Notre Dame, ditto (and this both surprised and disappointed) the Impressionists in the Quay d’ Orsay.

Exterior Paris is not to be sniffed at however,and it must be the most marvellous town to window shop in. From the galleries and boutiques around Boulevard St. Germain to the department stores on Boulevard Haussman you can visually shop until you drop.
Window shopping is also not such a bad idea if you want to remain solvent as Paris is expensive, the restaurants and bars, the cafes and the boutiques are certainly no cheaper than, and often a lot dearer than they would be in Dublin, mind you the quality of design is also often superb.

You can eat cheaply, even if not terribly well, at Asian take aways, and food in shops is cheaper, and in some cases of much better quality than it is at home so self catering like we did does save money.

If you have done your sums you will by now have realised that it was as a sometime party of 8 that we crocodiled around the city. Not often though. We tended to meet up in groups and managed to feed most of us in the apartment most of the time, and, even more importantly, managed to do a fair amount of our social drinking there. The difference of the cost of wine in a supermarket and a bar is quite a lot and if you tend to drink wine at the rate we do, drinking, chez nous is a huge saving of money.

Six of the eight of us in the flat in Vincennes

The one place into which we managed to get without queuing (and that that on Easter Monday morning) was the spectacular La Defense.
This is the newest landmark building in Paris and is built like two Arc de Triomphes’ one inverted on top of the other leaving a hole in the middle .It is on a direct visual line with the Arc itself and has an avenue of some quite spectacular buildings leading to it along the Esplanade de la Defense.
You climb to the top by lift which looks as if it is casually slung into the middle of the hole with some scaffolding.
After a terrifying rise you arrive into a strangely ad hoc and casual area on top. It has an art exhibition going on, some toilets, indicated by some casual paper directions, some extremely inaccurate directions to viewing points , a very down market restaurant where the head waiter (or was he the chef?) hugged me as he was asking me how I enjoyed the food, (thereby depriving me of all my French.)
I loved it all, even the tatty souvenir shop where I should have bought the Eiffel Tower pencil parer but didn’t.
It did have an aerial view of the whole of Paris from the top which was well worth the terrors of the lift trip and the €7.50 entrance ( if not the hug.)

Another highlight of Paris was going down an escalator somewhere in the metro and seeing a familiar red head ascend another escalator just by us. What exactly are the chances of bumping into ones daughter in the centre of Paris at Easter ?

Next time we go, and we will, we will go back to one of Jacques’ flats and we will go on such an off season moment that we will stroll into all the galleries and museums we could desire without queuing.

Best city ever was my judgment, but still a city.