Pedestrian in Paris...

I LOVE walking around cities. Or riding bikes. Rollerblading I’m not so keen on, although that has everything to do with a complete lack of coordination on my part.

The reason I enjoy walking/riding is the random things you find when you’re not crammed under someone’s smelly armpit on the metro. You can come across some markets, a hidden gem of a church – or even a gift from Canada to France. You’ll never guess what that one is…

It was with this in mind that I decided to spend my last day in Paris walking from St Christopher’s hostel down to the Seine before turning right and heading towards the Hôtel des Invalides. The sun was out so there were even plans to pop into Sainte Chappelle, the church built to house the crown of thorns worn by Jesus when he was crucified. The church contains stained glass windows that tell Biblical stories, and on a sunny day is supposed to be quite the sight.

Unfortunately it seemed like half of Paris had the same idea, so I went over the Île de la Cité and instead lined up for the Musée d’Orsay. The building itself is an old train station that fell into disuse after electric trains kept getting longer and longer; as an introduction to Paris it would have been quite the sight!

Inside the museum contains many works from Impressionist artists like Van Gogh, Renoir, Cézanne; check out Van Gogh’s self-portrait for an insight into a troubled man. I was also quite taken by Jean-Léon Gérôme’s La Réception de Condé à Versailles showing King Louis XIV and his rather impressive court. Also interesting but for less historical reasons was Thomas Couture’s Les Romains de la Décadence. I’ll leave that one to your imagination…

Having had my fill of culture, it was off to the Hôtel des Invalides where Napoleon awaited. As expected his tomb was very grand – legend has it that because Napoleon was so paranoid about his height, he wanted his tomb set up so that you either had to look up or bow down to see him. Also impressive was the Armouries Museum in the main building itself; but for me the best part was something I had no idea about.

Contained within the Hôtel des Invalides is an excellent exhibition on World War I and World War II. When you first walk in there’s a small amount on the Franco-Prussian War before getting into the two World Wars. I was particularly intrigued as to how they would deal with World War II, given the English-speaking view that the French were on the wrong side of useless (or cheese-eating surrender monkeys if you prefer) during that particular time. As expected it does go quite a lot into Charles de Gaulle and the Resistance movement, but also looks a little at the war in the Pacific.

So that was it for Paris then. I walked back to the hostel, muttering and cursing that perhaps the metro would have been a better idea instead of tramping through the wind and cold, only to remember the afore-mentioned gift from Canada resides in a small park just below the statue of Louis IV on the Île de la Cité. I went in, had a look… it’s a rock!