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Falling in Love with Paris
by Stephanie Siaw features@theborneopost.com. Posted on July 10, 2011, Sunday
IT may be cliche to call Paris the city of love, but it really is. Not that I fell in love with anyone in the French capital, but the city has a way of making you fall in love with it.
When Malaysia Airlines (MAS) organised a Media Familiarisation Trip to Paris and Toulouse last month, it was an opportunity of a lifetime. Despite the extremely tight schedule, there was one free day in Paris.
Having a ‘kiasu’ streak meant I was determined to pack in as much as I could in those 24 hours. Well, almost 16 out of the 24 were spent walking around the city or travelling on its trains, with a slight detour to Disneyland Paris. This was made easier by the fact that it did not get dark until 10pm.
As we were staying at Roissy-en-France, near Charles De Gaulle (CDG) International Airport, the journey proper for Malaysia-Asia editor David Hogan and I began at around 8am on the RoissyBus which takes passengers from CDG to the Paris Opera – right in the heart of the city.
This opulent building, completed in 1875 to the design of Charles Garnier, was indeed an apt introduction to Paris’ flamboyant architecture.
GILDED GLORY: L’Harmonie at the Paris Opera glitters in the sunlight.
The baroque-style building, which famously inspired Gaston Leroux’s “Phantom of the Opera”, has gold gilded figural groups – L’Harmonie and La Poesie – by Charles Gumery crowning its end pavilions and is topped off with three statues by Aime Millet depicting Apollo, Poetry and Music. Gumery and Millet’s creations were but a taste of the grandeur of Paris architecture that I would get to feast my eyes on.
From there, we made our way towards Place de la Concorde, going down side streets to try to cut down on walking time.
We, unintentionally, came across La Madeleine, a Roman temple-like building surrounded by Corinthian columns over 60 feet tall. Originally built by Napoleon in honour of his army, the building was later consecrated as a church and is named after St Mary Magdalene.
Dashing down Rue Royale, we came across the Laduree pastry shop, established in 1862 by Louis Ernest Laduree. Its most famous creation is the Laduree macaroon, invented when Pierre Desfontaines – Laduree’s second cousin – first decided to join two macaroon shells together with a ganache filling.
Today, Laduree macaroons come in a variety of flavours ranging from coffee to orange blossom, pistachio and – the flavour for this summer – strawberry. Needless to say the queue for macaroons and Laduree’s other tempting creations was rather long with both locals and foreign visitors.
It was at Place de la Concorde — the largest square in Paris – that the guillotine was installed during the French Revolution when it was known as Place de la Revolution. Among those executed here were King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette and Madame du Barry.
Today, the square’s most significant feature is, rather strangely, a giant Egyptian obelisk topped by a gold-leafed pyramid cap. The obelisk, which once stood at the entrance of the Luxor Temple, was a gift from the Egyptian government and was erected in the square in 1836.
Elaborate fountains
There are also two very elaborate fountains in what looked like a shade of dark aquamarine and gold. The same colours can be found on the streetlamps all along the square which all sport embellishments that are just as elaborate.
Such ostentatiousness is normally off-putting but somehow in Paris, it works.
In fact I found the excessiveness of it all incredibly beautiful. Even along the quieter side streets, where intricately decorated doors and doorknockers never failed to fascinate, I had a silly grin on my face and took an excessive number of photographs.
As we made our way up Avenue des Champs-Elysees towards the Arc de Triomphe, we passed the Grand Palais (Great Palace) where a queue to get in circled the building. The world’s largest ironwork and glass structure is an exhibition hall and museum complex. At that time, it featured sculptor Anish Kapoor’s “Leviathan” – a huge installation that reportedly filled half the building.
Located opposite is the Petit Palais (no prizes for guessing the translation) which houses the Paris Fine Arts Museum. As we got closer to the heart of the Champs-Elysees, it dawned on me that there really is something quite special about this road with an official website of its own. Like the lyrics of the song “Les Champs-Elysees” say: “In the sun, under the rain, at noon or at midnight, there is everything you want at the Champs-Elysees.”
From designer stores like Louis Vuitton and Chanel to perfume house Guerlain and international chains like H&M and Zara, as well as cinemas and endless cafes, there’s a mind-boggling array of options.
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