La defense
 

In defense of la defense

We just returned from france , I have been lucky to have visited Paris over a dozen times

Usually statpy at hotel du Danube, but we had a snafu with the train strike and were in Paris longer than expected with no reservations .

We stayed at la citidines inl Le defense , I have to say themetro connections were great. The modern high perishes were beautiful and unexpected art.

I was please lye surprised

Pleasantly. Lol

But apparently not great enough for you to give up your more usual hotel, correct?

I'm glad you enjoyed La Défense. I know a few people who make a point of staying there when they come to Paris, an idea that raises hackles on the majority.

For those who do not really know anything about La Défense, here is my photo report about it: http://tinyurl.com/qex2zuo

Can you explain what modern high perishes are?

I assume that they are an auto-correct abomination.

Thank you Kerouac

Modern high rises , darn auto correct

I would have loved to stay at hotel Danube, but they were already booked. We were not planning , on staying in Paris so we didn't have the privelrdge of booking ahead

Anyway , we really liked Le defense area , and I a wanted to give the area a thumbs up

I stayed at La Defense a few years ago on Amex points, it wasn't actualt as inconvenient as i thought it would be and it was FREE!!! So no issue at all!

If hotel Danube is booked tight again, I would go back. I was surprised , I thought it would've more inconvenient

Thanks to PKE for defending La Defense and Kerouac for reminding us of his photo log, which I missed the first time.
I went on a Sunday, pretty quiet and pretty grey, and flashed back to the architectural styles of Expo 67 in Montreal. It was a very influential workshop for new designs, and the vision remains strong because most of it was torn down so lingers in memory without the tests of time. Defense must endure, glistening and intricate and cold, no matter what chain stores open and close (open on a Sunday, if you need it.)
What remains on Montreal’s islands are one pavilion housing a gambling casino, a Grand Prix track, and a very retro (both now and then) amusement park which still hauls in the cash. Such messy opportunities for mindless squalor is what I miss at La Defense.
One question: Is this area within the central area for Metro tickets or does it require a higher fare from the middle of Paris?

Considered the same metro ticket for Paris, not higher fare

If you take metro line 1, it is just an ordinary ticket. If you take the RER, it costs extra.

Would stay there if cheap enough but not a fan.

Like the other grand projects of the Mitterand years, it is despotic architecture: the Top Dogs and Theorists telling the rest of us how to live and work. Glass and aluminum and steel and vast windy spaces and a few amenities thrown in to tell us whether we are in Warsaw or Montreal or Paris.

Whether the architects are communists or fascists, the results turn out the same. Messy people confined in rational spaces.

"Like the other grand projects of the Mitterand years,"
The first towers were built in the 60's. Hardly during the Mitterrand years. :-)

When the Austrian writer Peter Handke visited La Défense on a rainy, foggy day in February 1974, he made black-white-photos which showed empty plateaus and darkish high rises in an ghoulish atmosphere. Shocked by this concentration of technocracy and capitalism, he wrote that he was standing for a full hour motionless on the plaza.

And now it has become a refuge for homesick Americans in Paris!

Traveler not sure when you were last there?..

The architecture even though it is modern is very interesting. I loved the sculptures and the open areas with the fountains and reflecting pools. I loved the vineyard that is planted there.
The contradictions of the old and new were interesting.

Seeing the Eiffel Tower and arc de triomphe in the distance, the seine river was outside our balcony.

Anyway very pleasantly surprised, and we only rode on line 1 metro .

I have to say , I didn't see a lot of homesick Americans lol

TTT

Akislander, it was a project by De Gaulle, not Mitterrand!

It should be mentioned, though, that except for the CNIT, the oldest buildings like the Esso Building have long since been torn down and replaced by newer structures. Amusingly enough, the Tour Esso was replaced by Coeur Défense which was built for Lehmann Brothers, and we all know what happened to them. It is the largest office building in Europe after the parliament building in Bucharest.

DeGaulle, another defender of the little man against the State! Tho' I didn't get my facts straight, the danger of indignation! Apologies!

My reaction when I visited was like Peter Handke's, though I had a bright sunny day. Lone people, lost souls in a sea of paving.

I remember learning about "anomie" in a sociology class at university. I took pictures of anomie at La Defense, like Handke in B&W.