Stairs, More Stairs & A Rude Awakening...

Paris was, well, surprising. I guess it just wasn't what I expected. But in retrospect (it's been like 3 weeks now!) I remember it quite fondly... so I've got a theory that this is the same for all those people who talk it up - that it is remembered with increasing fondness over time, so that maybe 5 years later you just recall a beautiful city with great bread and hardly smells of urine at all!
Our arrival was a bit painful - after a delayed flight and delayed luggage we found our hotel transfer and hopped in... which then proceeded to stop at about 17 other places around the airport cramming people in until we could hardly breathe for the 1.5 hour trip into Paris. And our driver was this complete psycho and the whole way repeatedly asked some British men if they were from California!!

So after we arrived, we (read: me) were feeling a bit grumpy and tired but nevertheless headed out to see the Arc de Triomphe. Although it was raining, it was just spectacular and totally worth the effort - and it started us on our "stair-climbing tour of France"!! After 284 steps we saw Paris! Including the very ugly Arc de Defense but heeded Mum's advice not to bother visiting

Both totally exhausted, we made our way back to our dodgy hotel and went to bed - only to be woken at 4am by a fire alarm... I, being the cynical Sancta girl (fire alarms were very common at college and the only purpose of getting up was to check out the firemen), refused to get out of bed. So Anth (being the man : ) decided to check it out... anyway to cut a boring story short, after the alarm going on and off and on again for 45 minutes and me eventually going out into the freezing, wet Paris street, the fire brigade eventually arrived to put out the non-existent fire (lucky it wasn't an emergency!!) and turn off the alarm so we could all go back to bed!! Not happy Jan.

The following day, our first full day there, we went to the Louvre to escape the rain. It was massive!! We only managed one wing (which included, of course, the Mona Lisa). The Mona Lisa was unbelievable - it was just so insignificant and so over-rated!! It sits alone on this massive central wall where the tourists cram 10 deep to catch a glimpse - while right behind it was this other magnificent and absolutely massive painting which people barely glanced at! After ticking off the Mona Lisa we looked around for 'The Last Supper', eventually asking a guide where it was... so it was quite embarrassing when he said "Italy"! We were expecting "down the hall on the left" or something! haha.
We spent a bit more time walking up and down the halls looking at paintings and sculptures and Anthony & I discussed our expert opinions... (eg. "Check out that, the fat baby is trying to stab someone")

After a while we had information overload at the Louvre (an occupational hazard lately) so walked down the river to Notre Dame. The inside was amazing (eg. the stain glass windows) but so glitzy and commercialised (eg. 2 euro to light a candle). We also decided to make the trek up to the top of the bell tower - more stairs, 387 this time . It was very cool though to see the gargoyles up close... and yet another view of Paris! The bell itself (called "Emmanuel"!) was huge - 13 tonnes!! Even the ding dong bit (that's the technical term) was 500kg or something! No sightings of any hunchbacks though.

Afterwards I got a well deserved ice-cream while Anthony took pictures of me (he's started a photo series which is basically a collection of every time I eat ice-cream, fairy floss, a loaf of bread, more ice-cream etc)... and no I am not a fatty bom bar.

Saturday night at our super high quality guaranteed hotel we had a black out...

On our final day in Paris we went on a mission to see the Eiffel Tower. Initially we weren't too impressed but in the end we loved it. At Jac's suggestion we climbed the stairs to the 2nd level (allegedly 1,652 of them) but after that you have to catch the lift to the top. I can't say it was overly romantic (eg. insert pictures of guards with machine guns) but it was pretty exciting to see such an icon 'in the flesh'. We also discovered the direction of Sydney, 16,962km away, so I waved but dunno if you saw me

In the afternoon we trekked to the burbs to see some dead people in this massive graveyard. (You have to buy a map at the entrance to find where the famous dead people are buried so it was pretty strange). We saw the graves of James Morrison, Oscar Wilde and Chopin but by then were both a bit over it so headed to the airport. Next stop Cannes!

Steph xoxo

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