The Long Way Up

After having done my business with Notre-Dame de Paris -- my feet tired from the four-hour walking tour that started at the bus station at Porte Maillot -- I was now looking to set my sights on the grand Avenue des Champs-Élysées : the penultimate stop on this seven-and-a-hour Parisian tour. Champs-Élysées, according to Wikipedia, is  "widely regarded to be one of the most recognizable avenues in the world." When I arrived at the eastern tip of the busy boulevard, I was surprised at how wide, how busy and how colorful it was. It reminded me a little bit of Cebu City's own  Osmeña Boulevard,  albeit much more expansive and -- from the looks of it -- much more expensive. I remember -- as I was strolling on the northern side of the avenue -- being amazed at all the lights that emanated from all the night signs from the shops, restaurants and theaters. I think, somewhere deep inside, I felt a little bit like Ewan McGregor's wide-eyed character,  Christia...

Somewhere and sometime during my movie and TV series viewing life, I heard someone say that memory changes over time . In the middle of writing all these entries about my short tour of Paris, I began thinking that my recollection of those experiences there might have been (slightly? greatly?) altered because of the two-and-a-half-year gap. Still, I know I experienced them... perhaps the chronology and some minor details may just have been shuffled around... a bit... Ooops! :) Nevertheless, moving on with this mini-series! I was making my way to the eastern-most stop of my night visit to Paris: the Notre-Dame Cathedral ! This would be the tip of my almost seven kilometer tour route (one way) and where I would make a U-turn and walk all the way back to the bus station (another seven kilometers). En route to Noter-Dame, I kept checking my watch for the time because I needed to be back at Porte Maillot by ten o'clock to catch the 11 p.m. FlixBus to Frankfurt. The excitement to...

The rest of my seven-and-a-half hour tour of Paris was like a whirlwind trip to wonderland with a little bit of a suspense-horror vibe going on. Why, you might ask? Well, I arrived from Maastricht at around four in the afternoon. The sun was getting low and the darkness of the cold mid-winter night in the French capital was slowly creeping in. So, after about 30 to 45 minutes of just being mesmerized by the Eiffel Tower and its peripherals, I proceeded with my self-made itinerary, using the river Seine as my main point of reference. On my list of spots to briefly visit and take pictures of (and with) were the Louvre , Cathedrale Notre-Dame , Champ Elysees , and the Arc de Triomphe ... all of which I crammed into my walking tour. I make it first to the Louvre after Tour Eiffel. The museum was already closed, but I wasn't really there to see its interiors; I was after its very interesting external architecture. Perhaps I came at the right time of the day because both of th...

The chase between May Day and James Bond in A View to a Kill. Lois Lane hiding under the elevator in Superman II. The premiere target of the nanobots in the first G.I. Joe movie. All these transpired in one of France's best-known landmarks: the Eiffel Tower. Over the years, the motion picture industry has utilized this iconic structure in various ways and in different genres, yielding distinct results. There's just something about this tower that brings filmmakers back to its beauty and grandeur. Having said that -- and having seen Gustave Eiffel's masterpiece in person -- I can conclusively say that there is an awe-inspiring, enticing and captivating quality to this Parisian landmark that even the most artful depictions could never convey. As I made my way down the stairs of the Palais de Chaillot and onto the greens of the Trocadéro Gardens, the physical and figurative enormity of the Eiffel Tower became more and more obvious. All the years of wishing, hoping...

Expectancy was escalating as I was nearing the Eiffel Tower (the Holy Grail of this crusade). It may have been the years of seeing this world-famous landmark on the silver screen that fueled it; or it could quite possibly have been the factual and fictional stories that were perpendicularly, adjacently or tangentially related to this architectural and engineering wonder; or perhaps it might have been the months-long preparation for this Europe trip; or the combination of all these that raised my adrenalin levels to the maximum. It was supremely phenomenal. After leaving the convenience store, I headed further up Avenue Poincaré and landed on the six-way roundabout of Place du Trocadéro, where my first sighting of the Tour Eiffel occurred. I had to stop for a few minutes to take some pictures (of course) and to just take in the view and the 'dream-come-true' moment of seeing the landmark with my own eyes. Everything from then on became a series of one breathtaking expe...

On my way up to the main tour stop on this dream trip, I got momentarily caught under a light, mid-winter rain. It didn't dampen the whole experience, though. In fact, it enhanced the mood of my tour: "a rainy Monday afternoon in Paris" sounds like an idyllic and romantic turn of phrase that you might read in a Nicholas Sparks book; the experience of it, however, is something not even my four-decade worth of vocabulary can succinctly describe. So, as I stood under the canopy of the bus stop on the corner of Avenue Raymond Poincaré and Avenue Poch, waiting for the drizzle to die down, I took a moment to absorb the reality of me finally being in Paris: walking its streets, seeing its sights, and showered by its rains. I felt a mixture of incredulity and gratitude flooding my senses. I remember a bus stopping to pick up a local girl. I remember looking up at the sky to see patches of grey clouds floating against the blue Parisian sky. I remember  thankfully and ...

There's not that many moments in my life that I can categorize as " dream-come-true " moments. It's not that I haven't experienced great things in my life; it's just that I've only ever wished for a few great things to happen to me... and not all of them ever came to pass... except this one! On February 8 of 2016, I got to experience the lengthiest walking tour I've ever been on in my entire life in the city that I have always wanted to see since I was a teenager: PARIS ! Lengthy because I've spent most of my stay in Paris on foot: a total of seven and a half hours of walking around to see the major landmarks that I wanted to see. (Now I'm regretting why I didn't decide to spend a night or two there when I had the time and the money to do so... 2020?) Anyway, this short tour of the City of Lights and Love was one of the most anticipated stops in my European trip, which lasted three months. Right from the moment I boarded the ...