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up the stairs!
Just so i remember how stupid we were for climbing this many stairs!After the "excitement" of Monday, mum and i just walked around, i slept and we worked out what we would do and when...
SO
Yesterday (Tues) we did all the touristy bits... the day started with Cornflakes thank goodness because we then headed to the Eiffel Tower where we chose the option of climbing the stairs! That's right... at 10am or there abouts, Meryn and Rachel start their ascent up 668 to the second viewing level. From there you can only get a lift to the top level, so we did that too and wandered around. The view was well worth it! Absolutely amazing being able to see everything and all the roof tops and looking at the street structure (or lack there of) of the city... it was amazing...
After a few photos and gazes up the top we finally got sick of the wind and headed back to level 2 for a Hot Chocolate to warm ourselves up (we couldn't find the Moet place).... Then we descended all 668 stairs! A few more photo ops and then we headed off... I was pleased we did the stairs though, i mean there were a lot of them,
View from the top
This is just part of the view you get from the top of the Eiffel Tower! but it is a real sense of achievement to say you literally climbed the Eiffel Tower! Plus, we had plenty of room, could stop for photos if we wanted and could do it all at our own pace, rather than being jammed into a packed lift! also i got to pull faces at the people going up in the lift hehehehe
After braving all those stairs, we then headed to the Arc de Triumph... This was cool... and my first glimpse of Champs de Elysee (the busiest street in Paris). I watched the roundabout and was pleased it wasn't the one i had to drive through on Monday! Took many a photo yet again of the Arc, of the Eiffel Tower peeking through, of the traffic and of the chaos surrounding us... i loved being able to stand in the middle of such chaos and just watch it all go around me 😊 So we ticked that monument off our list...
The next was Monmatre, or Sacre Coer... and guess what... MORE STAIRS!!! Sacre Coer is beautiful... the gardens in front are lovely, and the view from the top of the hill (highest land space in Paris) is
unbelievable! Mum said to me "there you go, you have Paris at your feet" and she was spot on, that's exactly what it felt like! The church itself is one of the more beautiful i have been in... you aren't allowed to take photos so you will all just have to go yourselves and see! After wandering around a bit there we headed back down to the Monmatre streets to have a look at a few shops... i couldn't be bothered rumaging through the sales bins (shirts for 1 Euro!) so we gradually headed back home....
Now what happened to the louvre and Notre Dame??? We had visited them on Monday, but without our cameras, and will be heading back there later in the week...
We decided on a bit of a break after many stairs (easily 2000 by the time you do the Eiffel Tower, come out of the Metro at the Arc de Triumph, then go back underground to go to the middle and back again, Sacre Coer and many Metro stops in between!) and that we would head out to see some of the illuminations after sunset.... which doesn't occur until 10pm!
With france
playing in the soccer, the streets were so quiet in the evening that it was almost creepy... we headed back to the Eiffel Tower and watched it glitter for all of 30 seconds, then waited half an hour to watch it glitter again... it didn't and we gave up, but not before getting some really awesome photos!
We also had plenty of entertainment provided by a group of very young Americans who must have been under 21 because they were all excited about drinking alcohol and taking stupid poses with an empty bottle... i might state, they were also buying this alcohol from a hawker for something like 10 or 15 Euro a bottle and it was absolute goon if it was wine at all! Next to them we had a couple who were trying to set up their camera on a tripod to take a self portrait of themselves in front of the Eiffel Tower... i kid you not, the first shot they took was after 30 mins of setting up... and the pose, oh if only it wouldn't have been too obvious to get a shot of them... it was hilarious!!! they then got to work setting
looking down the tower
so when the signs say don't hang anything out, what does everyone do??? stick their cameras out over the side and click looking straight down the tower to the ground below... i thought i would follow suit... up for another pose...
Further along from them we then had another group of under 21 Americans who were buying booze off the hawkers and being really excited by the "bargain" they got for their 10 Euro... idiots... go to the supermarket, you can pick up goon that is at least sealed for 2 Euro!
all in all very entertaining, but also mildly irritating, so we moved on to the Arc de Triumph again. This was fun with photos as you had all the cars streaming past with their lights and so on... i had a few issues in that i a) can't keep my hands still and b) kept getting hit by wind every time i went to take a shot! FINALLY we got some i was happy with, and just as well as it was starting to rain and was 1130 by this stage and the trains stop running at 1230... headed back to the hotel where we very happily crashed out...
This morning we had a bit of a sleep in and then headed to Giverney to visit Monet's house and gardens. We didn't quite realise it was an hour and a half on
hello at home!!!
me waving to you all back home across the kms from the top of the Eiffel Tower! the train, but we managed to amuse ourselves out to Vernon where we caught a bus to Giverney (you could ride a bike, but we both said no to that one!)
When we got there the sun came out and it was a beautiful day... the whole area is filled with beautiful gardens with roses and banksia roses and poppies and all sorts of colours and prettiness... unfortunately the Wisteria wasn't in bloom over the arch ways, but fortunately neither was the lavender, so my allergies stayed fairly calm 😊
Monet's gardens in particular were absolutely spectacular and worth the hour and a half train ride to see them! They were massive filled with gorgeous flowers of all sizes and colours... and you get to walk around his water gardens which inspired and feature in so many of his works... it was like walking through his paintings... granted with about 50 other people, but there were places you recognised and that was really awesome...
i tried to take a few arty type photos as well as some generic ones of the gardens in general... we will see how they look on the big screen when i get
waving to Canberrians
HI!!!! that is my hand waving to you all in Canberra (they only had sydney and Canberra... sorry other states) back!
went through his house, which was massive!!! and coloured similarly to his gardens with each room being a different colour, and most being a vibrant pastel colour... it was a pretty neat house, and the view from his bed overlooking his gardens would have been magic...
after dancing around in that wonderland for a bit, we wandered through Giverney a little longer before heading back to the bus... the bus timetable we had gave us a 20 min wait until the next bus, which then had a one hour wait for the train, but would be less packed then the one after that got there in time for the train... Back at Vernon we went and grabbed something to eat while we waited for the train... then headed back to the station to discover that there was no train at 5, the next train was at 6!!! and we hadn't missed one either!!! so us, and everyone else that caught our bus with the same idea waited another hour for the next train... Mum bought a sudoku book and i played Brickbreaker on my Blackberry whilst listening to my ipod... neither of us had brought our books
Eiffel Tower at night
whilst being entertained by young Americans and romantic couples, i took a few photos... here is the tower not glittering :) with us as we didn't realise how far out it was and that we would be needing to kill an hour and a half at a train station!
After a close call of getting on the wrong train, we finally got on our train back to Paris, only to discover it was an express (woohoo!) so only took 40mins instead of 90! we headed down to Champs de Elysee, but the opposite end to the Arc de Triumph... now, how do you get a perfect photo looking down the Champs in peak hour??? That's right, you cross the road, stop in the middle, take a photo and keep crossing (rather quickly) to the other side! THEN you do the same going back, but zoomed in some! So this is what we did... twice back and forth! i took one for you guys so you could see the fruits of our labour hehehehe
Following much laughter at ourselves we walked back to the hotel via Notre Dame, and discovered that the French guy beat ferrer in the French open... there was much excitement to be seen and had at the big screen outside Hotel de Ville!
Tonight is
a cruisy night... we are both pretty tired and will probably crash early...
so enjoy your pics... tomorrow is the Louvre and maybe Versailles... then Friday we are going to a fashion show... as you do in Paris!
fill you in then
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