Hi everyone!! For those of you who have just moved back to Dunedin this week ready for another exciting year of Otago Uni life, I hope that flatting/hostels/courses are all sorting themselves out well. As promised, here is my resume of last weekend that I spent in Paris with my friend Melissa from Tennessee ; probably the best weekend trip I’ve ever made in my life! It’s always extra-wonderful when things that you anticipate and really look forward to don’t disappoint, and Paris was one such climax!!! We left Lyon on the 8am TGV (fast-speed train) which brought us to Paris by 10am. It was just getting light when we left Lyon so we were able to get a lovely look “close up” as Melissa put it, at French countryside and villages under the pinks and purples of a lovely sunrise. We passed time on the train reading aloud the entire section on Paris from the Lonely Planet Europe guide and trying to decide what we would do and in what order, till a lovely businessman came and told us he was from Paris and could he make some recommendations? Hooray for friendly locals! We’d tried to book the youth hostel on Thursday afternoon, but found it was too late to make a reservation and just had to turn up and hope for the best – which we did straight after arriving in Paris, only to find it was already full! So we went to another place just down the road for the first night, then back to the original hostel for the last two nights, which was great because we had a lockable room all for the two of us and had no concerns about the security of our gear. So … being all settled in and being thrilled to see Paris for the first time ever not in the rain, we decided it was time to hit the sights at midday. And between then and 11pm that night, except for half an hour sit-down in a café (‘Angelina’ no 226 Rue de Rivoli with seriously the BEST RICHES DARKEST hot chocolate in the WORLD = ‘Chocolat Africain’; expensive, but a MUST HAVE if you’re ever in Paris), we didn’t stop walking! In order, we negotiated our way around the streets of Paris (with the help of the trusty 500m-apart Metro maps) to find the Bastille, Place de la Republique, many Parisian shops with SALES (yes, we succumbed and each found a bargain skirt), Montmartre, the Sacre Coeur, Opera, the Madeleine, the outside of the Louvre, Tuilerie gardens, the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde, the Champs-Elysees with l’Ard de Triomphe at the end, the Eiffel Tower all lit up at night under a full moon, the Seine and our way back home. Not bad! We felt quite orientated!! And yes, we did the extremely touristy ‘skipping down the Champs-Elysees singing Edith Piaf thing. We also almost ran into some conflict of opinion with a traffic officer near the Arc de Triomphe, as we had a sneaky suspicion that he wouldn’t be too keen on my swinging from the lamppost for the sake of a photo! After our huge walk, we were well ready for bed at 11pm.
On Saturday our first move after breakfast was to the new hostel where we left our stuff, and then headed across the other side of the Seine to the Latin Quarter for the morning. The ‘Non-Rain” persisted a bit, but inbetween we were thrilled to see blue sky, shadows, and the need for sunglasses a lot of the time!! Hooray ! In the Latin Quarter we saw the Jardin des Pantes, the Pantheon, the Law Uni where Melissa wants to go study, the Jardin de Luxembourg, the Montparnasse tower, Hotel des Invalides where Napoleon is buried, Ecole Militaire with the big Champ de Mars park leading up to the Eiffel Tower (postcard pictures!!). We bought baguette sandwiches under the Eiffel Tower’s feet, and then headed for a one hour cruise on the Bateau Mouche down and around the Seine before CLIMBING (no lifts for us if you please) the Eiffel Tower. We got the amazing view just in time as the ‘non-rain’ came back with a vengeance as we were climbing down and we got quite soaked, frozen and windblown, so we opted to take the metro (for the one and only time) back to the hostel instead of the two hour walk ! The day finished with a climax – we strolled back to the Place de la Bastille in search of a typical Parisian café/bistro where we could sit at a window table under the red terrace canopy for dinner – and hooray for us we found it!!! I think the waiter thought us a bit crazy with our photos of everything, but we are tourists after all !
Sunday was our last full day in Paris, and we left the hostel about 9am, passing through the Place des Vosges, past the house of Victor Hugo, past the Center Georges Pompidou (which is RIDICULOUSLY ugly) and the Forum des Halles before reaching the Louvre where we’d planned to spend most of the day. The Louvre was definitely the highlight of the whole weekend for me, and luckily we were there at a time when not many other people were. From 11am to 3pm we looked around – seeing the most famous things first, and then looking at the map and going wherever took our fancy. It would take a lifetime to see everything there !! My camera ran out of battery just as we were leaving so the Louvre was my last picture of Paris, more’s the pity. Walking back along the Seine we crossed over to Ile de la City to go and see Notre Dame – Melissa’s high point of the trip. We found that there was a free organ concert on there from 4.30pm, so we went to Ile de Saint-Louis inbetween where we had reputedly the ‘best ice-cream in the world’ (although I think the stuff in in our freezer here is better), walked the gorgeous wee streets, and each bought a classy French beret!!! The organ concert was wonderful, and gave us a good long time to take in the interior of Notre Dame. We found another small café for our last meal in Paris that night.
I left Melissa very early on Monday morning (5.45am) to make the most of my Eurail day pass, going back to Lyon via Bordeaux (3.5hrs on TGV from Paris) and an 8hr trip through the Massif Central. It was EXACTLY like those postcards one always sees of the typical French countryside, and HOORAY FOR THE WEATHER – I did not see a SINGLE cloud anywhere in France the whole day! Got back to Lyon about 7pm once it was dark (Melissa had an afternoon class and so had come back earlier) and was home in time to do washing and have dinner – exhausted from my holiday, but very thrilled with it. We now feel we know our way pretty well around Paris, BUT of course, there’s still heaps we both want to do there – Versailles and Disneyland for example ! Maybe sometime in the future. Pretty soon I should have the photos burned onto a CD and then I’ll put the best ones on the net.
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