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After no sleep in my hostel due to people talking and turning lights on and off at all hours of the night, I got up at 4:50 to catch a cab 10 minutes to the international train station as I couldn't walk there with how heavy my bag now is. I fell over trying to get it on my right shoulder, so I tried my left, which was more of a disaster as it overbalanced and fell forward over my head...on the floor squeeking as I try and extricate myself from the straps and still not wake people up I decide to lay it on the floor, then get into the straps and then use the bed to pull myself up, at at same time in a panic as I am now late and need to be upstairs 5 minutes ago. At this point I am hoping my upper body strength will allow me to stand, for a minute or so the goal of standing was looking dim. But I got there, got my cab and got to the train and my Paris hostel with no more dramas (except one wrong metro train - my French is nonexistant).
Paris was very rainy and I was super tired so I am sorry to say I spent my first day indoors updating my blogs and chatting to hostel people. I met Jeremy from Paris and Errika (male) from Nigeria. I ate dinner with Errika before he headed off to catch a plane and then met my new roomates who turned out to be AWESOME! 3 lovely girls from Germany, Lena, Inis and Patricia and Cody from Australia who was finishing his 5 months in Europe. We headed out for some Parisian nightlife reccommended by a friend of Laena which turned out to be pretty amazing. They set the bar on fire, set of sparklers and were free pouring shots into a birthday girl's mouth. Not to mention some crazy bell ringing which none of us could work out why. We danced the night away in another club before discovering the metro stopped at 2am and we had to catch a cab back to the hostel. Not bad for a slow start!
Day 2 was amazing and filled with some truely Wow moments and highlights of my trip so far.
I started by getting myself to the free walking tour by 11am, no small feat considering the antics of the night before! Our guide was Alex from NZ and having a degree in history meant he was very knowledgeable about pretty much everything! Haha
We started at the fountain of St Michels, saw Notra Dame, the old Palace, walked the Senne River, saw the monument to King George the 4th, the favoured King of France who was stabbed by a revolutinary. His death (or rather torture) was inturn as horrible and immaginative as the French could make it. GORE WARNING: don't read on if you don't like gore.
He was first burned all over with sulphuric acid until his skin pealed, then held just off death his non-essential organs were cut from his body and boiled in front of him, then he was hung, drawn (pulled by all 4 limbs by horses in four oposing directions) and quartered (literally) which took over an hour and they had to replace one of the horses as it was exhausted. The French, still angered by his assisnation of their favoured King then stomped on his various strewn limbs and it is spoken in one memoir that a lady gnawed at his descrated bones. Gross, but interesting history!
We then walked the Paris bridge of love, filled with locks with couples names written or engraved on the lock. On a side note it was where Carrie and Big got together at the end of Sex and the City last season episode! We also saw a proposal while there so we gave them a big round of applause! Paris moment! Haha The two buildings on either end of the love bridge is the school for French languages where they invent new words in French so that they don't have to use English and also decide if new words will be male or female. Interestingly this process can take up to six months and the people who run this are only ever invited to join by a current member. They are called 'The Immortals' and you pretty much have to wait for someone to die before you are invited to join. The other building is The Lourve, impressive from the outside, let alone the inside!
Originally the pyramid outside was supposed to be entirely made of glass and be a.most invisable, unfortuneately due to structural reasons, they have had to reinforce it so much with extra metal structures it is definately not invisable. It does make for an impressive entrance though! We walked past the Opera house, which is where the Phantom of the Opera story was based - definately going back to visit this one again!
The Gardens outside the Lourve is actually where the the old palaced used to stand but it was destroyed in a communist uprising. The French decided not to rebuild and instead turn the entire area into a garden. They are slightly considering re-building the palace to make it a straight line from the Arc di Triumph but at the moment due to economic reasons it will remain a garden. We then had our very first view of the Eiffel Tower! Paris moment! It was meant to be taken down after the world fair but they left it up for tourism and it is now used as a radio tower.
The Egyptian Oblisque in the centre of town stands where the guillotine area was during the revolution, called the Plaza of Concord. At the height if the revolution there was a beheading every minute. After Marie Antoinette, they continued with the nobels, then city leaders, the leaders of the revolution, then even the exocutioner! This is probably why there is now a giant Egyptian statue there now...be-headings? What? Oh look a giant Egyptian Obelisque? Diversion tactics much? Haha
We headed down the Champs Elysee where we saw a wedding go by blowing their horns and the groomsmen were hanging out the car windows. Paris moment! Our guide told us two stories about the eternal flame - the first being a Mexican guy who after loosing the football to the French decided to drown his sorrows and then thought it would be funny to extinguish the flame by peeing on it... He managed it, was deported and the French got an official apology from Mexico. Then some drunken Aussies were wanding around with some sausages, couldn't find a bbq so used the flame to cook their snags, again they were deported, but the Australian government have refused to apologise! We were warned Australians aren't looked upon fondly near the flame now!
We saw the Gaunde and Petite palaces and heard the amazing story of how Paris was saved from massive destruction in WW2 by a clever German soldier who made it seem as if Paris was burning by lighting a fire in thr Grande Palace to blow off the glass ceiling, instead of blowing up all the major monuments like he was supposed to.
Our last stop was the war hospital where Napoleon is burried. To get to the back of this building to get to our lunch destination was a struggle. I have never experienced wind like it, I was buffeted by the intensity and was struggling to get a foot hold on the ground! It was amazing but luckily didn't last too long. Not what I was expecting in Paris. I met 3 awesome people on this tour, one was Fiona, a fellow busabouter and the others were a couple from South Africa, Ruby and Louis. We all had lunch together at a tiny french cafe and had cheese, ham (delicious) and frogs legs (I tried them, but they were kind of bland).
Fi and I decided to walk to the Eiffel tower where we spotted locals doing some traditional dancing, it was great, kids, teenagers, adults and grandparents all got involved in a song and circle dance! I then spotted a carousel at the foot of the tower...luckily Fi is also very in touch with her inner child and we spent our 3 euro to have a ride! OMG BEST PARIS MOMENT! We were the oldest riders by one *cough* maybe two decades. But we had the time of our lives! Haha We even had some random guys take our photos when we got off, so we must have made an impression!
We did some shopping on the Champs Elysee and saw a girl in her wedding dress going shopping with her dad....random! Saw the biggest Sephora, ever, got stopped again in the street by French boys this time. Mine was cute but Fi's was pretty pushy. Although saying that, mine asked for a kiss before we left! Haha Very forward!
We then headed for the Opera house to see if we could get cheap tickets to a show. We ran into some policemen in snazzy uniforms but they wont let you take photos here which was interesting. We walked a funky shopping district with some unusual window displays so I have included some pics. Fi also led me, very willingly, to the best macaroon place in Paris where I had a strawberry one and a cinnamon scroll. Amazing, yet another Paris moment! Unfortunately the Opera house was closed to a private function so we went back to the hostel for dinner before going out to a pub for some drinks. When we got there I discovered a salsa club out the back, so I ditched my new Aussie friends in favour of new French friends and had an amazing night salsa dancing until the earky hours of the morning and took a taxi back to the hostel with my new friend Christine, originally from York now living in Dubai.
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Lucy Quaggin
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adventures in paris
After reading your blog when I head to Paris in June I will definitely take one of those tours as I found previously in Paris there is so much to do and a guide seemed to get you to the places known and unknown which are essential for a visit in Paris. Your description was rich, enticing and unfolded like a story. I like how you spoke about getting to know both tourists and locals and how your experience with friends and nightlife also made Paris so special. Great blog, your writing style was fun, interesting and informative.