We were in Paris for seven days; we had to stay an extra day as there was a five day train strike (it actually seems to be a continuous strike with select trains running when they feel like it). Luckily we booked our train ticket to the south of France a few days before the Iceland volcano eruption as train tickets became highly sought after when the European air space was closed. It was amazing we got on the train to Arles considering the chaos at the train station caused by both the train strike and volcanos.
Some observations on Paris:
- You can take your dog almost anywhere; on a train in first class for example
- The funniest thing we saw was lining up for the Eifel tower. All around the Eifel tower are illegal salesmen selling Eifel tower key rings or souvenir Eifel towers laid out on the ground on a cloth. They were harassing passers by as usual when all of a sudden there was a yell and all of (about 15 of them) them all at once – in what looked like a very practiced move – picked up their cloth by some strings without losing any of the things on it so that it became a sack then started sprinting across the square towards the river. About 20 seconds later two policemen on bicycles came slowly riding across the square.
- Almost every bicycle in Paris (except the ones you hire) looks like it’s from the 1970’s.
- Chairs in cafe’s face the street and not the people you are with.
- You can’t walk 200m in some places without passing a pharmacy – they are everywhere.