Kim & Phillipa’s Blog

Our first trip out of the UK since Ireland and boy were we excited! It was our last weekend without our passports for up to 6 months, so I was on a mission to find us some cheap train tickets anywhere outside the UK. And once I had them in my hot little hands, we were brimming with excitement! And not just ‘how cool’ excitement, ‘jump-up-n-down-n-squeal’ excitement! ‘Cause we were off to PARIS!

Ok, so to get cheap tickets, you have to travel at dodgy times, so we got up at 3.30am, left the house at 4.15am to be on the international train at 5.30am. As bad as that sounds, we completed our sleeping cycle in the 2hrs, 45mins it took to get to central Paris. How awesome it was to wake up in another country! We were amazed at the thought of it! Once again, sheer excitement overcame us!

After having a few issues with public transport, we made our way to probably the most famous landmark in all of Europe… the Eiffel Tower. We were so amazed at just how big the thing was! We took about a zillion photos from a trillion angles. Overall, we weren’t overly impressed with the actual lump of steel that was the Eiffel Tower, but we were definitely impressed with the fact that it IS the Eiffel Tower and we were there

Next we made our way to the Arc de Triomphe and along the way we attempted to order some lunch. With Kim’s French non existent and mine reaching back too many years for me to want to share, it was up to me to try and get us both by. At first all that was coming to mind was my Spanish, so I had to keep practicing to get it right in my head! I managed to understand cheese, bacon, rocket salad in a fresh French baguette and that was good enough for us - given the chick wouldn’t even attempt to help us out with her supposedly bad English - though she understood every word I said. Anyway, we made it to the Arc de Triomphe and were amazed by the detail of it. Everything in this place was so grande, old and with the most amazing detail! Napoleon sure knew what he wanted!

After this, we made our way down the Champs Élysées which was an experience in itself. Louis Vuitton was a palace and the Mont Blanc shop was the biggest we’d ever seen. We bought some specialty chocolates that were good, but not great and stopped by the Nike store, just cos we have in every other country we have visited. And on the way to the Obelisque and the Louvre we stopped by the Grand Palais and Petit Palais (large and small palaces). Once we figured we couldn’t read the Obelisque and found the massive cracks in it which we figured happened when they accidentally dropped it on installation, we made our way to the Louvre.

Now, we’d read that the French love their green lush lawns. And that they love them to look at, not sit on. We didn’t really think it was true until we saw the lawns fenced off with clear signs that said, in French, Keep Off. It was quite amusing really, to take some photos of us on any French lawn and we tried wherever possible

We got to the Louvre and once again we were amazed at the sheer size and detail of the place! You would need a lifetime to go through this place, so instead, we made a beeline for the Mona Lisa and saw a headless angel statue (that was quite big) on the way. We figured it was worth mentioning because there were heaps of people hanging around it and taking photos. So we figured it was famous.

After everyone telling us how small the Mona Lisa is, we actually thought it was big! Funny how impressions can get distorted! Luckily October is a good time to go to Paris because we didn’t have to wait long to be at the front to get a good look at the gal.

By this time, our 3.30am start was starting to catch up with us. We walked along the Seine to the Isle de la Cite. What an amazing little island it was! Everything packed onto this tiny little island and once again, so grand and magnificent! We saw the Notre Dame (gargoyles and all) and admired the huge beautiful stained glass windows. We then walked along to the smaller of the two islands and found THE most yummy coffee eclairs of our lives. Never to be forgotten. We also tried some crepes and bought some pigs ears and some other pastry thing to try later at home.

From here, we walked (which was getting slower and slower) to Jardin du Luxembourg, had a rest and soaked up the last of the Paris atmosphere. We had dinner at a pub due to lack of energy to find a nearby French restaurant and made our way back to the train station for our trip home. As wrecked as we were, we certainly had a fantastic day!!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 7th, 2007 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.