Paris, Montparnasse

We came back from Paris yesterday.  Whenever we go there now we stay in the Montparnasse quarter near the Gare Montparnasse shown in the photo above.  We got in the habit of staying there because that's where our trains arrive from the Southwest, where we have lived for the last 30 years.  From time to time we have tried other parts of town, but they just don't have the same charm - at least not for us.

So, what's so great about Montparnasse?  We'd be embarrassed to find a short answer because there are no special tourist attractions, unless you count the Montparnasse Cemetery.  We spent most of a morning there the day before yesterday, and found it particularly beautiful with all the fresh flowers that had been placed on the graves over the All Saints' Day (Halloween) holiday, which is the time the French honor those who have gone before them.  We don't have any close relatives there, but we paid our respects to Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, as well as Guy de Maupassant, Charles Baudelaire, Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Dreyfus, Serge Gainsbourg and others.  See my Picasa page for photos.

I suppose it's the convenience of the area which draws us back.  There's our favorite hotel, the Hotel des Bains, with air conditioned suites on an interior court at 105 Euros for two persons. It's on rue Delambre, which runs between boulevard Edgar Quinet and boulevard Montparnasse, just a short walk from the station.  

Transportation couldn't be better.  The airport bus stops right behind the Gare Montparnasse, and you have quick access to four metro lines.  Line 6 goes to the Etoile and the Champs Elysées, line 4 to the Latin Quarter and the Porte St. Martin theatres, line 12 to the Musée d'Orsay and Place de la Concorde, and line 13 to the Grand Palais and Montmartre.  We used all four lines on this trip because we were doing the museums.  We did have to change once to get to the Louvre.

And there is a concentration of good restaurants, most reasonably priced.  We like the Bistro du Dôme for fish at the end of rue Delambre (reserve your table), and Chez Clément, and La Coupole on the boulevard Montparnasse (reservations not necessary).  The latter is crowded and noisy, but the art deco interior alone is worth the price of a meal.  Across the boulevard is La Sieste for hearty cuisine bourgeoise, and the Hippopotamus, always reliable for a good steak (preferably rare).  The Hippo offers 30% off on main dishes on weekday mid-afternoons.  For light lunches, try Oh Poivrier or the Café Odessa where you can enjoy the bustling street market along boulevard Edgar Quinet. There are photos of most of these restaurants on my Picasa page.

The nearby cinemas have the latest French and American films (if your French is rusty, make sure the latter are in v.o. - version originale), and there is usually a  good play running at one of the theatres on the rue de la Gaité.

In short, Montparnasse is an ideal base of operations for your Paris stay. Enjoy!

Athens and Some Cycladic Islands

This is what we thought we should do to get ready for Greece

1. Learn, or relearn the Greek alphabet

I'd been to Greece before, 40 and 50 years ago, so I knew how important it was to know the Greek alphabet. Mireille and I don't care much for guided tours, and in order to get by on our own we had to read street signs, road signs, names of shops, hotels, restaurants, etc. And since we were going to do several islands, we had to be able to read enough of our ferry tickets to find the right boat.

2. If hotel reservations are necessary, make them by telephone.

We soon found that the Internet is unsatisfactory for making hotel reservations in Greece. Only the higher priced hotels are willing to give away part of their room rates to Internet reservation systems. So, if you reserve by Internet you will wind up staying at the higher priced hotels. Or the hotel will add the Internet fee to its regular rate. We decided we should telephone instead. We never met a desk clerk who didn't speak English.

If you travel in the busy Summer season, you had best make reservations, at least in the most popular areas. We weren't sure about availabilities for the first two weeks of September, so we reserved for most destinations. As it turned out we didn't need to. Even if you don't reserve by Internet, TripAdvisor.com is useful for finding hotels.

3. Transportation

Ferries to and between Greek islands

We printed out schedules from the above site. They were usually accurate, but not always, so check with the ticket agencies ahead of time. In high season, you should probably reserve several days in advance, but otherwise, the same day is OK. It is difficult and expensive to reserve tickets by Internet. You would have to reserve well in advance to allow time for mailing the tickets to you. Your travel agent may be able to help with this.

4. Travel light, particularly for island hopping.

We probably overdid it by taking only backpacks. But we couldn't help smiling smugly when we saw fashionable but frail ladies struggling with outsize suitcases along the steep cliff side stairways that led to their hotels. (My muscles are too old to permit heavy chivalry.)

Photos

Below is our itinerary for the first half of September 2008. Since it is very cumbersome for an inexperienced blogger to post a lot of photos using the Blogger interface, please click over to Picasa for the pictures, many of which will be accompanied by further information. Picasa should open in a separate window, so that you can coordinate with this page. Click on the thumbnails to enlarge the photo and read any comments.

Itinerary:

2/9 Tuesday Bordeaux-Athens. A great Air France flight via Paris. a nice lunch with wine - no surcharge.

The easiest, fastest and cheapest way from the Athens airport to town is by Metro - a short walk from the airport.

2/9 Tuesday Arrive Hotel Metropolis, Athens, 80 Euros, tel 30 2103217469 - see photo and comments

During these two days in Athens, we walked around a lot and visited the Acropolis, the Agora, and several museums, especially the Archaeological Museum. See our photos for more details using the link above.

If I put too many links in this entry, Blogger management will think I'm a spam blogger and block me - it's already happened. (I can't complain, it's free.)

I suggest that travelers avoid the high priced restaurants near the foot of the Acropolis, and prefer those near the flea market, near the end of Metropolis Street.

4/9 Thursday, Leave Hotel Metropolis. Take the Metro to Piraeus - only 80 cents. There's no tourist office at the station in Piraeus. Strange for a country that has so many tourists.

4/9 Thursday Arrive Hotel Ideal, Piraeus, 65 Euros, tel 30 2104294050. The hotel is near Pier 10, a rather long walk from the Metro station. We should've taken a taxi. A nice little hotel with helpful staff. The clerk advised us to buy our ferry tickets the day before, which we did at a nearby travel agency.

5/9 Friday Leave Hotel Ideal - a 15 minute walk to Pier 7

5/9 Friday Boat to Folegandros 7:05 A.M. See photos at Picasa.

5/9 Friday Arrive Hotel Kallisti tel 30 2286041555 - 70 Euros per night plus breakfast. A recently built comfortable hotel, which we chose because it's at the edge of town, and more likely to be quiet. Mr Skifas, the owner would have picked us up at the ferry landing if he had known which boat we were on. Instead, we took the municipal bus for a 20 minute ride up hill to the Chora, or principal village. See our numerous photos with more info in the comments.

7/9 Monday Leave Hotel Kallisti. The owner took us to the ferry. Actually we had planned to leave on Monday, but the Monday boat was cancelled. This is more likely to happen at the end of the season. Fortunately, we had checked with the travel agent on Saturday. The main regret was that we missed seeing the lovely beach.

7/9 Monday Boat to Santorini (Thira) This was a smelly, dirty old boat, the Arsinoë. Avoid it if you can. We arrived at the port of Athinea, looking for lodging, and headed for one of the many stalls which offered "Tourist Information". These are actually agencies, working for one or more hotel chains and car rental firms. Anyway, they took us to a nice hotel for one night, since the hotel we had reserved was not expecting us until the next day. This was in the suburbs of Fira, the principal town. Hotel Olympia, 50 Euros including breakfast.

8/9 Monday Arrive Hotel Nissos tel 30 2286023252. This hotel is on the main road near the bus station in Fira. It is older but quite comfortable. We had a private terrace overlooking the pool (but not too close). The rate was 65 Euros including a generous buffet breakfast.

We've posted a lot of pictures with comments about Santorini, a spectacularly beautiful island.

11/9 Thursday - Boat to Naxos. We hadn't reserved a hotel in Naxos, but we found a surplus of offers. In fact, the agents and owners of smaller hotels were all over us when we reached the end of the pier. We chose the Rea Sun Studios (40 Euros, tel 30 2285023340), near the beach. These units have kitchenettes, which could be useful for a long stay. One of the best beaches in the Cycladic islands. We regretted not having chosen one of the beach front hotels, which are not expensive at this time of year.

On the Agios Giorgos beach we found the best restaurant of our entire fortnight: Gialos Taverna. Not expensive. Try the local red wine, Naxia Gi.

13/9 Saturday, boat to Paros - an agreeable island, but nothing outstanding. Some nice restaurants. See the comments to our photos for details.

15/9 Monday Boat to Mykonos. We were not too keen about Mykonos. We thought it was more for the dance all night jet set crowd. Actually we found it quite agreeable. Most of the restaurants are reasonably priced, although the hotels are expensive.

15/9 Monday Arrive Hotel Adonis, Mykonos tel 30 2289022434. This was our classiest hotel so far, 140 Euros including breakfast.

16/9 Tuesday Leave Hotel Adonis. We checked out early and left our baggage at the desk.

16/9 Tuesday Delos. This was a day tour to the Sacred Isle - a great spot for amateur archaeologists. In fact this was the main reason we went to nearby Mykonos. Tourists cannot stay overnight at Delos. After reserving at Mykonos, however, we found that there are also day tours to Delos from Naxos and Paros.

16/9 Tuesday 18:00 Return to the mainland by fast boat from Mykonos to Rafina on the east side of Athens. Actually, we had planned to return via Piraeus, but discovered there was no evening boat to Piraeus. (Error in the schedule.)
Without reservations, we found a pretty good room at the Akti Hotel, 40 Euros. Buses leave hourly for the Athens airport

17/9 Wednesday, Arrive Hotel Sofitel, Athens Airport, 210 Euros, tel (+30)210/3544000. This was a budget-breaker, but it's the only hotel at the airport, and our flight was at 7:00 the next morning.

We had all afternoon unscheduled, and decided to see Athens one more time. Imagine our surprise to find the Metro immobilized by a 24 hour strike. so we tried a new adventure - the bus. One long hour later, we reached the center of Athens. Or almost, because the bus broke down shortly before the terminus at Syntagma Square. Thanks to a curious stroke of luck, we had reached the Kolonaki quarter, only one block from the street which leads to Lycabettus Hill, our destination. On that street, shortly after the British Embassy on the left, we found the Oikeio Restaurant, which became our Athens favorite. Their house red wine from the Peliponnesus is excellent. In fact most of the "barrel" wine throughout this trip was good.

18/9 Thursday, Athens-Paris-Bordeaux. A good flight including a big breakfast, but a long wait at CDG Paris, pointing up the foolishness of choosing such an early flight to save a hundred Euros or so. Taxi from the airport - 30 Euros, including tip.

Good to be home, as usual.

After thoughts

Which islands did we like best?

Santorini, of course, is a must. It is the most spectacularly beautiful island. But I don't think we will return. It is overwhelmed with tourists. All the locals are friendly and courteous, but there just seems to be less time for simple enjoyment. Younger folk might feel differently, thanks to the active night life. The beaches are far from the main towns, and rather strange with their black or red sand.

We may go back to Folegandros. The island is too small to receive many tourists. Everyone is so informal and friendly that one feels right at home. Although the island is very dry, the scenery is spectacular. The only negative was a North wind in September, which sometimes made it difficult to dine outside in the evening.

Or Naxos. Especially for that good restaurant. And Naxos is an island that has a normal economy, more dependent on agriculture than tourism. and the St George (Agios Giorgos) Beach is one of the best in the Cyclades..

Perhaps the next trip will be Crete plus Naxos.