Friday, May 05, 2006
A Weekend in Paris
Left for Heathrow at 10:45am Saturday. Arrived at the Airport, awesome self check in service, typed in ref number and it spat out boarding passes, took 1 min. Anyway arrived in Paris and had to find our way to the city. Caught a couple of trains and then walked to find our way to our Hostel which was in a great location. Checked in by 5pm and then we were straight to the Eiffel Tower. It's amazing, very surreal standing there looking at it, couldn't believe I was actually there. Took a heap of pics then went to get dinner at a resta
urant with a partial view of the Tower. Can you actually believe it was ME who suggested snails as an entree and ME who convinced Kate to have some. I knocked back 4 and Kate had 2, and to be honest, they were beautiful! Straight from the shell and topped with garlic sauce. Quality.We then went to the River Seine, and had a 1 hour cruise around the city, that was pretty good. Got back at 10pm in time to see the Eiffel Tower at it's best, not only lit up, but flashing as it does every hour on the hour for 5 mins. Got some great shots of it!! It was awesome, never seen anything so good, and don't know if I ever will. Huge fan! Called it a night after that and went back to our hostel.
Sunday morning we went straight to the Louvre. I was really looking forward to this place, especially after the Da Vinci Code. Seriously impressive place, MASSIVE. Were there for over 2 hours and only saw probably a quarter of it. Apparently if you look at each piece of art for about 30 secs you would be there
for over 5 months or something like that! Got some pics of the Mona Li
sa which is strictly prohibited, but managed to sneak in 3 shots! We then walked through the gardens to the Concorde (Obelisk), then up the Champs Elysees, Kate's paradise, to the Arc De Triomphe! So many great things to see there. It then started raining so we walked to the Notre Dame to meet Scott and Jade who drove down from Lille that day. We took some pics then found a dry place for a beer and basically just to warm up. We then went back to our hostel to get out of our wet clothes. We went back out at 7:30pm and met Scott and Jade at the Panthenon. We then walked to the Latin Quarter for a nice pizza and pasta dinner and of course, a few beers! After that we went back to the Eiffel Tower to see it at night again, it's honestly amazing! Got home around 1am.Monday morning we were up nice and early again, straight to... you guessed it, the Eiffel Tower. Got the lift to the 2nd Floor then right to the top for some spectacular views of the city. Spent a good hour up there then came down and got walking. We visited the Madeliene, Moulin Rouge, Sacre Coere (very impressive and sacred church), and then back to the Louvre for a coffee. Saw everything we possibly could!!! Got back to London around 10:30pm and back home by midnight!
Awesome weekend, amazing city, a place I would love to go back to and spend more time there. The Eiffel Tower is something else, and after everything I had heard about the locals being rude, they were all pretty nice to us. The language barrier was ok, luckily we new the basics, and the restaurants all spoke some English, but there was a hell of a lot of Merci and Bonjour's over the 3 days! The funniest thing about the city, in my opinion anyway, is that people park where ever they want, literally, I saw a heap of cars parked in the middle of the road, and I'm not kidding.
Anyway, that was my weekend, a very memorable one that's for sure, just an amazing place!!! Pretty damn tired though, need to re-energise over the next few days then got a big weekend in Manchester coming up!!
(On reading this email, Tyson's big brother, Brenton says, "Whoever this is, can you please let my brother know I want to speak to him.
It's a dead give-away that this is isn't Tyson speaking when I hear words like 'surreal' being used. And the thought of Tyson appreciating art, going somewhere for a coffee and enjoying snails is just ludicrous.")
# posted by Barb @ 1:45 pm 
