Lost

When I was four years old, my father bought my mother ticket to the Brisbane production of the Phantom of the Opera. When she came home she brought with her the cassette recording of the London Cast production. I still have that tape. For 10 years I listened to that tape almost continuously. My little yellow walkman never had the chance to meet another tape. there are even video tapes of me attempting to sing along (totally cringe inducing by the way). So when I walked into the Opera Garnier, the opera house which figures in the famous musical, I was once again walking into a building I had been dreaming about my whole life. This place does not disappoint. From the gloomy entrance, you walk up stairs into the main hall, and it is absolutely beautiful. If you only had a day in Paris, I would still recommend you visit the Opera Garnier. Gold statues hold candelabras, everything is gilt and ornate. It even has a hall of mirrors, an imitation of the one in the Palace of Versailles. I was pleased to learn that even the underground moat and the tunnels underneath the Opera house are real. I could imagine the Phantom growing up there. While he may be painted as the villain of the story, I can understand how your morals would be a little confused, learning about life from plays and growing alone in that place could give anyone delusions of grandeur. 


From the Opera, we caught the hop-on-hop-off bus. This convenient little service took us around Paris, complete with commentary and classical music and stopped at the Arc de Triomphe. The Arc is huge. As with most things in Paris, it was so much bigger than I was expecting. And it is just one of the many things that Napoleon commissioned to build. As I've said before, no matter what you think of his policies, you cannot deny that the man had style. When he marched into Berlin, the Brandenburg Quadrega caught his eye. So naturally, he carted it off back to Paris. It doesn't matter where you look in Paris, his mark is everywhere. In fact, much of Europe has his mark. There are few men in history who can be said to have had that much of an effect. So Tyrant or emperor, he demands respect. 


One interesting thing I should mention, is that my mother has the worst sense of direction of anyone I have ever met (except maybe one of my best friends who can't even work out where she lives.) My mother still has to look at the signs in the shopping centre to work out where she is, and she's been shopping there since it opened 12 years ago. Whilst we were travelling I was the one in charge of the map, and working out where we needed to go. Another thing I should mention is that she loves taking photos. I don't know what she did before they invented digital, because she will take a photo of everything. She took pictures of every sheep in New Zealand (thats a lot of sheep). She even took a picture of a rock on the side of the road. An actual rock. Not even a pretty one, just a hunk of granite the size of a football, in the middle of nowhere.  


This bad habit got her in trouble a few times, but at the Arc was probably the worst. After we had climbed up the inside, admired the view from the top (and recovered from the 248 stairs up) and climbed back down, we were heading back to the underpass to the Champs Elysees where we had come from (and which I might add, we had taken plenty of photos from). I'm not sure at which point she stopped following me, or at which point it struck her fancy to stop for another photo, but at some point amongst the crowd I lost her. I wasn't too panicked, I decided I'd just wait at the top of the stairs, knowing she'd have to pass that point eventually to get off what was literally an island surrounded by cars. I had not factored in my mothers prodigious talent for getting lost. It turns out she found the only other way off the Island and after a long while of waiting I got was a text saying 'I'm on the street side'. I was confused how she had walked past me without me noticing, but crossed to the street side, which was even more crowded and tried to find her. After another 20 mins, I tried calling her, but my phone refused to co-operate. I even got desperate enough to ask another poor tourist, who probably thought I was trying to pull a scam, where a pay phone was. After having lost her for about an hour, I decided to try walking back through the tunnel....and met her coming the other way. It turns out my poor, directionally challenged mother had been standing on the street on the OTHER side of the Arc, not noticing that she was no longer surrounded by tourists, no noticing the absence of shops and cafes which dominate the Champs Elysees, not even noticing whereas before she had been facing the Arc head on, she was now looking at it from the side. Apparently, as she was taking pictures of this fascinating new angle, it never occurred to her that this meant she was standing somewhere different to where she was before. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. But in the end I settled for shaking my head, and finding somewhere to have lunch. And that is when I stumbled across the greatest discovery I have ever made.....Laduree