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Published: February 21st 2007
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So...............the time has arrived for our first travel blog.
We have been living in London for three weeks now and have done what everyone first does when in London............. book a flight to Paris.
A belated valentines gift to ourselves was our trip to Paris and as expected it was romantic but it did also attract some travel dramas.
I woke up on the day of our flight, Friday morning, at 7.10am and went straight to the internet to check out some futbol results (yes soccer!) in Uruguay............this is a daily ritual!
In the haziness of just waking up and reading a result i wasn't happy with I decided to check on our emails and went straight to the confirmation email which indicated the time of flight, flight number and terminal etc...........by this time it was around 7.25am............and to my amazement the flight was not at 11.00am as i had thought but at 9.00am and the travel time to the airport via public transport was approximately an hour and 10 minutes according to our well travelled friend Matthew!
Needless to say I woke Cristina up in my usual soft and passive voice and made sure she
felt relaxed!!!!!!! NOT!
We had 5 minutes to pack our bags, have a shower and head to the station.........a 10 minute walk.
Yes we packed our bags....................no we didn't have a shower and we packed NO toiletries and I think Cristina ran out in her pink ugg boot slippers!
We ran up to the train station, a very busy street, with our rolling suit cases rattling the whole way. We were definitely the center of attenion!
We arrived at London City airport at 8.42am and had 8 minutes to check in............easy!
Except we were flying Air France and they had french staff who spoke Frenglish...................I could not understand a word this woman was saying and all I wanted to do was check in for the flight...........
Cris managed to somehow understand what she was saying and I was given the subtitled response.....a bit like SBS!
Anyway....................The sight of Paris through the windows of the plane quickly made us forget about our drama.......
Paris is beautiful..............Yes Paris IS beautiful!
It is nice by day but absolutely stunning by night...a great city to walk, to eat, to catch a few cultural activities or
just to watch life go by...............
We had three days in a nice hotel and fantastic weather.
In these three days we went to the Eiffel Tower as I hadn't gone the first time 6 months ago because as many of you may recall it was World Cup time and going to the eiffel tower clashed with the semi final time!
We made sure this time to go up at dusk ensuring we got the daytime view and night time view! The queue was 2 hours to get up!
We also went to St. Chappelle: A beautiful small church with great stained glass windows and a very tall dramatic space, Notre Damme:the main cathedral of paris, the Pantheon where many significnt people are buried, went to the pompidou an architects heaven, the Latin quarter and spent a lot of time just wandering around the streets of Paris.
It was a relaxed three days with the highlights definitely being the pastry's that we gobbled up and finding the main shopping street of Paris on a sunday...... meaning all the shops were closed......................Window shopping was all Cris could do and our credit card was very happy with that!
All in all Paris was really beautiful, charming and delightful!
It was now time to go and having learnt our lesson from friday we decided to leave the hotel an hour and half before the flight was scheduled to take off! This was, according to us, ample time!
We did not count on the erratic French train which was an all stations train!
We arrived at the check in counter 10 minutes before the flight was due to take off..................we were late and told by French Airlines staff (de ja vu) that it was
impossiperble to board the flight..............we were now in BIG trouble.
We were given two options..................cross all of Paris, which takes an hour and half, to catch a flight due to leave in one and half hours or wait until the next day at 11.30am to fly back. Thats it............ no other options.
I couldn't wait till the next day as I have just started a job and the next day was Monday so we paid an additional sum (200 Euros) to leave on the flight that night and risked losing our money again and crossed all of Paris from Charles
de Gaulle airport to Orly airport on bus.
Every traffic jam felt like an hour was ticking by and Cristina and I were ready to jump out and run Forest Gump style to the airport...........
The good news is we got our flight..........only because it was delayed. We arrived 15 minutes before the original take off time whcih means that we would not have made it again!
The delayed flight really helped................................. but looking out the window and seeing Paris again quickly made us forget about our dramas!
Au Revoir Paris till next time..................................................
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Edley
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Je ne sais pas...
Geez, it's only the first trip and the dramas have already started. And here I though it was dad to blame for all the delays and missed flghts last time we were in Paris! Nevermind, as you said - a stroll through the Champs-Elysees can make you quickly forget about all your woes...