Paris!

Oops! I forgot to write about Paris! haha

The Eurostar train from London to Paris was soooo fast!! We were going about 300km/hr for most of the trip - talk about highspeed! Well, for trains anyways haha Interestingly, the announcements were in English first then French while we were in English territory, but as soon as we passed over to French territory they were the other way around - french, then english. My first test of French came when we had to buy tickets for the metro to get to our hostel in Montmartre... Apparently I went ok, cos we got tickets and DH was impressed ;) We made it to our hostel fine and made new friends :D

Again, we started out with a bus tour the next day. Was a bit of a mission to find out where we were meant to go to find the beginning of the tour, as we weren't given a map or anything, just a street and store reference. So that was an adventure, but we found it and went on a trip around Paris. Wouldn't really recommend L'Open Tour for a Paris sight-seeing tour, the commentary wasn't nearly as good as the one in London.

That said though, Paris is beautiful and magical. The Eiffel Tower, Champs-Elysees, L'Arc de Triomphe, Louvre, all the beautful parks and gardens; there're cafes on almost every corner, as well as boulangeries (bakeries) and patisseries (pastry shops, like bakeries but with chocolatey yummy things than just bread things) and chocolateries (nuff said, really). We bought a bottle of wine for 3€ (instead of a grape it just said "rouge", which means red : hmmmm...), and it was actually not bad - for cheap wine hahah

Notre Dame was breath-takingly stunning. you can really feel the presence of God there. In a modern-take, there are souvenir and guide vending machines, and a mini coffee stand and souvenir stand inside the church!! And there are about 3 different confessionals, that are all in glass window-ed rooms rather than the wooden boxes... cool, huh?

We went up the Eiffel tower last night. It took all of 3hrs from the time we arrived and got in our first line, until we were up the top of the tower. This is because 1) there are like a million people there, 2) the tower pillar they had open decided to have technical problems with the elevators so not only were people not moving but they then had to open another especially for all of us lined up and move everyone over after 30mins of radio communications and 3) there were like a million fillion people. It was definitely worth the wait for the view up the top. Going right to the top is totally recommended, if just for the first view of Paris - that and going up the ARc de Triomphe... Stunning at night time, with all of Paris lit up... absolutely stunning.

Well, today we're off to Rome! 15hrs of train, overnight, should be fun and at least give me time to journal up more of this trip so I can relay all the funny stories i can't quite remember under pressure right now lol

Until laters...