Still in Paris

The story continued....

We Walked back up Avenue Des Champ Elysees, the most famous street in Paris, we had a coffee on the street for 5.50 Euro, The Café’s charge more depending where you sit in the café, but you can’t pay for the location we were at!! The sun was shining and it was a perfect day in Paris and left us wondering what the poor people were doing today and feeling very fortunate to have the opportunity to be here.

We are having our ‘No Regrets Tour’ and we’re not counting our pennies - can’t put a price on experiences. My roomy and I are perfectly matched and both having been here before made it so easy as we both knew what we wanted to see and didn’t have to rush around.

I’ve been a bit sick lately and was starting to get the flu again so we went to the pharmacy and tried to get antibiotics over the counter. We were told that you need a prescription here, but after Art used her best French he gave them to us anyways!

We had a chocolate crepe in the park and we were feeling very French as we walked down to the Louve. We stopped and stood out the front and looked at the beauty of this massive building before we went inside. It’s huge and amazing inside. They say if you looked at every piece for just 1 minute you’d be there for 9 months!! We decided to just view the main pieces and anything else that was on the way. First stop was ‘The Victory of Samothrace’ or better know as ‘Nike’, followed by the main attraction the ‘Mona Lisa’. I waited patiently in the massive pack for my turn to be up the front so I could take a picture and the man in front of me was the rudest American man ever. He had been there for 5 minutes and then decided to push everyone backwards because he wanted to take a picture of his wife and kid in front of the painting. He pushed back so hard he nearly knocked me over and we got into a massive argument - it wasn’t good!!

Then we went and saw ‘Venus de Milo’ sculpture which is Artemis - Goddess of Hunting and my roomies name sake!!

Saw the obelisk that was given to France by Mohammed Ali. It is the twin of the obelisk which sits in Egypt at Luxor Temple which I also stood in front of only a couple of weeks ago!!

We then headed to Notre Damn Cathedral. Notre Dam is now clean - it’s one of the buildings which they’ve cleaned using lasters which has replaced the use of acid which was destroying the sandstone of these old buildings.

We then decided we’d seen what we needed to so we picked a restaurant for lunch - most the waiters spoke reasonable English and they had English menus which made life so much easier this time. I had a main, desert and half a bottle of wine for 20 Euro which was good and it was right across from Notre Dam. Art had escargot - she says snails are lovely but they look bad and I couldn’t bring myself to do it!!

We made our way back to La Concord and caught our bus back with the group.

It’s been such a different experience this time around, I had an amazing time, so much less stressful. I’m so glad that I had the chance to come back and enjoy this beautiful city and it helped that Art spoke French. I’m sure this is a city that I will never get tired of visiting.

7 of us booked tickets to see the Moulin Rouge instead of seeing the optional show that was organised by Contiki. I wasn’t missing seeing it this time around. Dinner was rushed before hand but we finally got in and seated. It was packed and they had over booked so some people didn’t make it in. We all got ½ a bottle of champagne each. They had 2 guys doing strength/yoga moves much like the Circus de Solie people. There were also pythons in a glass pool where an Aussie girl swam around naked!!

Headed to the nearest bar and met up with the rest of the group after the show. Had a couple of drinks and finally went home at about 3.15am… They are tough days I tell you!!

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