Our first trip abroad without Amma and Appa. We missed them terribly at times, but their framed photograph on the table smiled at us from every hotel room we occupied and that made things better. Their absence was compensated by the presence of my brother, his wife and son, who travelled with us through France and Greece and made the trip memorable. And that was where we went this time: from the fashionable streets of Paris boasting art, architecture and engineering marvels to the incomparable ruins of the great Greek civilisation.
Our first stop however, was Hilversum in The Netherlands. We stayed with close family over the weekend in the second week of May and the nine of us had a wonderful Sunday visiting Volendam, a picturesque fishing village and Zaanse Schans, known for traditional windmills and a famous cheese factory. We ended the evening with dinner in Amsterdam, and after affectionate farewells, took the early morning train the next day from Amsterdam Centraal station to Paris Gare du Nord.
The Eurostar arrived on time and the five of us enjoyed a relaxing 3-hour 24-minute ride to the French capital. We rode in two cabs to the hotel, moving from the 10th arrondisement neighbourhood to the pleasant one in the 6th arrondisement where the Best Western Aramis Saint Germain stood on Rue de Rennes. The hotel was centrally located with two metro stations, St Placide and Rennes, and bus stops just across the road. There were also numerous restaurants and cafes to choose from and a fabulous boulangerie, Thevenin, soon to become our favourite breakfast haunt, at skipping distance.
We left our luggage at the hotel (rooms would be ready only at 2pm) and went for lunch at Judy’s, a lovely vegan restaurant suggested by the hotel reception, before a long, winding walk to the bridge across the Seine river and via the Jardin des Tuileries to the Louvre, our destination for the day. As always, we had booked all air, rail, accommodation, site and museum tickets in advance, so we joined the queue with online tickets holders and walked in through the entrance of the largest museum on earth, where it takes 9 months to even glance at all the pieces within.
What can I say? Just grateful to be there, I suppose. Even though the museum was crowded and people jostled for selfies with popular exhibits, one could not escape the breadth and depth of the collections and feel utter reverence for the artists whose prodigious works were on display. There was a continuity in what we saw here from the paintings of Italian masters in the Vatican museum a few years ago. Appa was terribly missed. He would have lingered for hours and we with him, but the family was tired and after close to 2 hours, we tread our steps back to the hotel for early dinner and bed.
Our second day in Paris and we stepped lively, refreshed with good sleep and delicious breads and coffee, with a city map in hand. We walked under a light drizzle to the Rodin museum on Rue de Varenne, a 30-minute walk from our hotel. The beautiful rooms contained the drawings, sculptures, photographs and art of the French sculptor, Auguste Rodin. His collection of paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir were also on display. There was also a room dedicated to the works of Camille Claudel, his student and muse, and we were astonished to see a work of hers titled ‘Sakountala’, named after the main protagonist of the play Abhijñānaśākuntalam, by India’s greatest classical Sanskrit poet Kālidāsa, inspired by the moment when she is reunited with her husband Dushyanta after a long separation.
We walked another 30 minutes to Champs De Mars, to reach the Eiffel Tower for our scheduled 1:30pm appointment and took the lift to the top of the 300-metre-tall tower. What an engineering feat! It was thrilling to watch our ascent in metres on the tiny dashboard in the lift and the city below diminishing by the second. We climbed a few more steps to the summit after the elevator stopped and went round, looking down at the city from all directions. Paris looked so lovely with the Seine winding its way through the beautiful city. We all loved it!
We had late lunch and took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe at the western end of the Champs-Élysées. The Arc de Triomphe honoured those who fought and died during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. It had names of all victories and generals inscribed on its inner and outer walls. Beneath its vault lay the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I. As we walked down the length of the broad and beautiful Champs-Élysées – with premier branded stores on either side of the road – the tall obelisk exalting Pharaoh Ramses II came into view. It was one of the two gifted to France by Egypt and stood in the centre of the Place de la Concorde, the largest square in the French capital. The square was the site of public executions, including those of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and Robespierre during the French Revolution. Exhausted by the long day, we took the metro back to our hotel and crashed after an early dinner.
It was a 6:18am train we had to catch from Gare de Lyon to Geneva in Switzerland, the next morning. After a quick cup of coffee at the hotel we took the metro from Saint Placide to Chatelet and then to the train station at Lyon and boarded our double-decker SNCF to Geneva Cornavin, after following complicated directions to our platform. We reached Geneva after 3 hours, dozing enroute after a warm breakfast; though my nephew was wide awake, super-excited to be travelling in a TGV! The sky was overcast when we stepped out of the station and we walked quickly to the pier to enquire about a boat ride on Lake Geneva. It however, never materialised as there were intermittent showers throughout the day. We walked around the city, studded with names of great watchmakers. The lovely St Pierre cathedral was atop a small hill with a winding path leading to the square in front. Lunch of warm fondue in an open restaurant followed and as we wound our way back to the station, we hopped on to a toy train that took us on a ride on the left bank of the lake. A bit disappointed at the weather having played spoilt sport, we stopped at a mall to refresh ourselves then took the evening train back to Paris.
After breakfast at our favourite bakery the next morning, we took the metro and train to Versailles to visit the wonderfully opulent royal residence of French Kings Louis XIV, Louis XV and the last king Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, both of whom were later guillotined during the French revolution at the Place de Concorde in Paris. Before we reached the palace from Versailles station however, we rushed into a bus that we were told would take us near the palace. We climbed in along with other passengers and before we could figure out how to pay for our tickets, 2 police personnel jumped in through both doors at the first stop and asked us to produce our tickets. Obviously, we hadn’t bought them yet. We were asked to get off and pay a fine of 72 euros each for the lapse. Being honest and law-abiding and generous spenders to boot, we felt outraged by this injustice. They finally settled for 144 euros (a lot of money for us!), which we hoped would go towards the maintenance of the palace! That left us with a very bad taste in the mouth and one livid teenager to pacify. We continued with our visit to the palace however, home to kings and cardinals, wives and mistresses; recreating scenes from The Three Musketeers in our heads.
Our last day in Paris! We walked 30 minutes to the Pantheon after breakfast through the beautiful Jardin du Luxembourg. It was a bright morning and we could see children playing in the park, cyclists, joggers, athletes, sight-seers and families relaxing under trees, ponds and fountains with ducks waddling and loads of green all around. It was just lovely. We reached the Pantheon on the other side, a monument dedicated to French greats. It was almost like a church within (which was what it was originally intended to be), but more modern. From the massive central dome dropped a 67-metre pendulum that physicist Léon Foucault constructed to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. We climbed over 200 steep steps through a winding staircase to the top of the dome. A wonderful sight of Paris from the top, including the under-repair Notre Dame cathedral! We then descended to the beautifully organised crypt beneath the monument to view the tombs of French greats including Voltaire, Rousseau, Pierre and Marie Curie, Alexandre Dumas, Braille and many more. It was a fantastic experience.
And then for the final stop after a metro ride, the D’Orsay museum. We lunched at the fifth-floor restaurant behind the clock tower and then began our wondrous journey into the world of Van Gogh and Renoir, Monet and Manet, Degas and Cezanne, Seurat and Gaugin and many more. It was awe inspiring that one floor could hold so many masterpieces. That top floor was truly close to heaven. We dragged ourselves out and after some souvenir shopping, left for our hotel. We took a river cruise after dinner in the evening in the chilly weather, closing on five memorable days in Paris.
The next morning, we took a taxi to the Paris Orly airport for our 6:45am Transavia flight to Athens, Greece. The flight unfortunately was delayed by almost 3 hours because of air conditioning malfunction. Finally, we were asked to board another flight and reached Athens late afternoon. Our lovely hotel Hermes was located centrally in Athens, in Plaka and it was walking distance from all the major sites in the city. We had a late lunch and walked around to get a feel of the city. We were to have visited the National Archaeological Museum that afternoon, but because of the flight delay, we couldn’t make it before closing time.
It was a supremely beautiful day 2 in Greece. Our Mercedes luxury mini van arrived at 6:30am to take us on a day trip to the North of Athens. I had arranged with Thanasis Prepoudis, owner of Transferinathens- https://transferinathens.com/ – for three day-trips in advance of our visit to the city. They have a great team and gave professional service with a personal touch. Our driver Lefteris first drove us to Thermopylae where 300 Spartans lead by King Leonidas stopped the massive Persian army lead by Xerxes at a pass for 3 days before being betrayed by treachery by a mole from within. We saw the bronze statue of King Leonidas erected at Thermopylae with a sign that read simply: “ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ” (“Come and get them”), which was Leonidas’ laconic reply when Xerxes asked them to give up their weapons in return for sparing Spartan lives.
The long drive to Meteora, in Thessaly, northwestern Greece, was next. The monasteries atop the rock cliffs formed by millions of years of sedimentation were magnificent to behold, to say the least. The rocks were composed of a mixture of sandstone and conglomerate. A series of earth movements pushed the seabed upward, creating a high plateau and causing many vertical fault lines in the thick layer of sandstone. The huge rock pillars were then formed by weathering by water, wind, and extremes of temperature on the vertical faults. Of the 6 functioning holy monasteries, we visited the three main ones: the largest, The Grand Meteoron, the most remote Triados or The Holy Trinity and the superbly maintained (by nuns) Roussanou. Our vehicle took us up to a point, and we then undertook steep climbs and descents under the warm sun, sweating profusely and panting as we reached the top, each time promising this would be our last. But once at the summit, the cool air and peace and loveliness overtook us and the breathtaking views banished all tiredness from our bodies, readying them for the next ascent. The monasteries had strict dress codes for men and women. We visited the library of the Grand Meteoron and to my astonishment, I saw a hand-written book by the great Greek philosopher Plato (428 -348 BC). I was dumbstruck with awe. Socrates was his teacher and Aristotle, his student. We bought tiny bottles of jam and honey prepared by the nuns at Roussanou. It was a great privilege to have had this experience.
We stopped for a quick meal of Greek salad and souvlaki at Kalabaka town and drove on to Delphi, 3 hours away.The Delphi museum was close to shutting for the day when we ran in after purchasing our tickets. The artefacts from the site were stunning to behold. The site itself was in ruins. The temple of Apollo, built in 4th century BCE, was completely destroyed except for a few columns and the stone floor laid out behind. The mountains in the background were magnificent. One could imagine an impatient Alexander the Great dragging the Oracle by her hair, demanding her prophecy and she admitting “You are unbeatable”. We reached Athens by 10:30pm, tired but happy.
Our road trip on day 3 in Greece took us to Olympia, a small town in Elis on the Peloponnese peninsula, 3½ hours away from Athens and the birthplace of the greatest sporting event in the world. After an hour’s drive, we stopped at the Corinth canal that linked the Aegean to the Ionian sea. It was extremely narrow and now used mainly for tourist purposes as many modern ships could not pass through. The engineering feat was a joint effort by Greece and other nations and we caught a large ship guided by a tug sailing under. We continued our journey to Olympia, the site of the first Olympic games about 1100 years ago. It was in a state of ruin. The mammoth ivory and gold statue of Zeus at the entrance and those of Hera and other gods worshipped before the commencement of the games were either destroyed or missing. The gymnasium, living quarters, winner’s podium, temples built by Phillip II (Alexander the Great’s father) housing gold statues of his family, Nero’s villa, the place where the eternal flame burned and others were all razed to rubble.
Only the museum nearby gave an indication of what might have been. A sad state of affairs at the original site of a great idea that even today unites the world in healthy competition based solely on merit.
The lovely rectangular track surrounded by grass, seating 45,000 spectators on mud seats, however remained. The starting and ending lines of the track still had original lines of stone and so great was the temptation that my daughter, nephew and I ran the full length and back in the afternoon heat, running, walking, hobbling. What a feeling! An experience of a lifetime!
Our 4th day in Greece and we left at 7am to the port of Pireaus to board our ship ‘Cosmos’ for a day long cruise to the nearby islands of Hydra, Poros and Aegina, in that order. It was a pleasant trip, the sail on the stunning blue waters of the Mediterranean interspersed with brief stops at the islands. We spent them walking through the village and shopping for souvenirs. Lunch was served aboard the ship followed by entertainment, Greek dances by professionals and of course, a group dance for the famous Zorba the Greek number. Our family participated wholeheartedly and it was good fun. We were also rewarded by the appearance of a school of 6 dolphins which frolicked near our ship.
The penultimate day found us walking early morning for our 8am appointment with the Acropolis and slopes. The magnificent amphitheatre of Herodium, also known as the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, built at the foothills of the Acropolis and the stunning pillars of the Parthenon looming upwards were a sight to behold. We lingered for more than an hour and wound our way back to the city. My daughter and I continued to the Acropolis museum and the National Archaeological museum to get a grasp of the Acropolis site and ancient Hellenic history. A tall order for one day, but we came back to the hotel exhausted and fulfilled. The family roamed the lively streets for the last time that evening, happily gorging on Greek frozen yogurt and collecting souvenirs. We would leave early next morning for our home in Mumbai.
This was a great trip, the highlight being able to visit and view the remains of one of the greatest civilisations in the world. We walked miles each day, especially in Paris: exhausting, but that enabled us to know the city better. There was great food, great atmosphere, great history, great art and above all, great people to know. Our children were a delight. My nephew’s eye for cars and ear for music kept us in good spirits throughout. My daughter’s calm and sweet temperament kept us in balance. We were indeed fortunate!
As always at the end of a trip, following on Appa’s footsteps, my daughter and I broke a coconut at our Ganesha temple in gratitude for his blessings.
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