3 days in Paris

---

Paris

We arrived at 10.00am in Paris very tired and exhausted from our big overnight train trip with no sleep,and extremely long car trip in a cramped sports car. (this is Kath talking) The Hotel was quite close to the train station so it was not so bad walking. Thank god I bought Greg along this trip - his map reading skills have saved me hours of wondering and wandering and standing at train stations trying to work out which line etc.
We arrived at hotel praying that the room would be ready for us, as check-in is normally 2pm and we had a tour on later that evening from 6pm till 1am and we both needed to get some sleep.
Thankfully the room was ready, we both just crashed on the top of the bed and passed out until about 12.30pm, showered and changed and the hit the streets of Paris to find something for lunch. I wanted to do the Parisian thing just sit outside and watch the world go by. We walked and walked as Greg was looking for Escargote or frogs legs- we didn’t want big lunch because we were having dinner in our tour, most of the outdoor restaurants (brassieres) were Italian, we wanted to eat French food in France the other problem being that I forgot to take menu decoder and we couldn’t work out what was on offer. Finally on a little side street a man came out of his restaurant and immediately started speaking to us in English telling us how much of a special his menu was etc. We thought it was a real special as we thought it was entrée and main for 8.50 euro all the other restaurants started at about 12 euro for mains. It wasn’t a flash place or a sit down outside but by now we had walked for about an hour and we had to eat or it would be getting close to our dinner time, he also was a very friendly man. We ended up getting steak, salad and chips and chicken, salad and chips. There was no entrée as we had misunderstood the menu, not that we needed the 2 courses anyway. Still it was not very French. We had two more days to do the French thing.
The thing that shocked us both as soon as we arrived was the poverty, beggars everywhere, bums sleeping in sleeping bags in side alleys, buskers (musical) at all corners in every train station and even on the trains. At one stage we ended up at some special statue and surrounded by the statue is a fountain and gardens. I am sure this would be a nice place to visit if the dome tents, beggars and the washing of clothes in the fountain weren’t there, with the fresh smell of urine.
We wandered around our area, then decided to check out the metro to see how hard it was to catch a train to get us to our tour that night. Easy peasy, 1 voyage ticket and metro map and Greg the map/train reader we would be okay. So back to hotel to iron clothes and prepare ourselves for our Tour Eiffel (real name for Eiffel tower) dinner at the 1st level, ( Greg and I decided to do visit to 2nd level and Greg the top level instead of doing the Seine cruise. We kept the ticket for next day) Seine Cruise and Moulin Rouge Cabaret show.
Back at the room Greg decided he needed to do another load of washing and thought that he could fit that in while waiting to get ready for tour. So off he went to the Laundromat. All glammed up and ready to go we headed for the station. One of the stops had a broken down train so we decided to walk from that station which was about 10 minutes, we were getting close to time of tour, we had about 10 minutes to spare. Doing the tour meant we had no real major cues and dinner was served straight away with bottle of wine. While we were in cue for a short time we did have the usually hawkers hassling us to buy souveniers etc. After dinner Greg and I left first to get up the tower in case we had to queue, we had to meet the bus back at drop off point and everyone else was doing boat tour. (we thought we would rather do tower while we were there instead of going back the next day and queuing for tickets then lifts etc we were already 1/3 way up) we went to get ticket for level 2 and we could just buy them at ticket vending machine -no one else was there and then straight onto a lift (that was easy) but then Greg wanted to go to the top - I think he got his ticket quickly but the queue to get up top was wound around the outside of the tower. I wasn’t stressed at this stage because I knew we had about 1 & 1/2hr to get back to bus. I waited on 2nd level for him- it was very, very cold and had no extra clothes as we were going to cabaret and didn’t want to take extra stuff. We met again on 2nd level ready to go to ground on lift and he suggested we walk down the stairs to the first level, I suggested we meet at the gate where we went in, me on lift him on stairs.
We haggled for some souvenirs and then went and waited in cold wind for our bus, while waiting the Eiffel tower lights came on in flashing effect, very pretty. Off to Moulin Rouge to see the Titties, we had to queue there for about 1/2hr. The restaurant seats 1000 people and we had to wait for first show to leave before we could go in. Once we were allowed in they took all cameras off us and herded us into tables. They were so narrow and squashy we were just lucky we got front two seats or we would be looking around people in front of us. They were tables of 6 squeezed onto table for 4, the show was fantastic all colour and great costumes (not that there was much costume needed for the female dancers) and Greg was actually asking after the show if there were any male dancers. The ladies in the audience showed their disappointment when the women stripped off and the men stayed fully clad. In between the cabaret parts for prop changing and costume changing they had other entertainment, a juggler - unbelievable, a ventriloquist - hilarious and balancing male and female act - amazing. There was an unopened bottle of champagne left on the table at end of night so I took that home as my souvenir. The Bus dropped us off at the Hotel (thank god- it was freezing cold and very late) at about 2am. BIG DAY.
Next day we awoke, had breakfast in hotel, did some interneting and then headed off to see some attractions on the hop on hop off bus. We had our commentary tour and looked at things as we went we hopped off at the Arc de triumph and went up the 285 steps of spiraling staircase. We then stayed on bus until we got to the Louvre area which took about 1hour so we could get to our tour booking office again by 2pm for our pre-booked tour to Versailles- this is about 1/2hr out of Paris and thank god again we did as tour as the queue for the tickets was ridiculously long. Versailles is a Palace of grandeur it was absolutely packed and we shuffled through with the other 1000 or more people to see the rooms and listen to our audio guide. We then paid a little extra and went to the gardens which had a waterfall display on between 3pm-5pm. The gardens were sectioned off into different areas and each area had a fountain display of some sort, we had two hours to look at the gardens and we still didn’t cover them all. We got back at about 7.00pm and decided to get something for dinner and then do our Seine cruise (I wanted to do a night one to see the lights as Paris is known as the city of lights). We went to the street with all the Restaurants-Champs Elysees and found a restaurant that did escargot, but to eat you had to go inside. Only drinkers could sit at the outside tables (which I think was the way with most of those restaurants) We went in and sat down and waited about 10 minutes for the menu- everything was very expensive even a bowl of soup was about €15, we waited and waited and waited to be served not even to be offered a drink. So we decided that we weren’t going to wait any longer and then pay those prices so we got up and walked out. Across the road in a little lane we found another restaurant half the price and better choices. We shared a dozen escargot for same price as other restaurant had ½ dozen, and then I had steak Béarnaise and Greg tried steak tartar- for those that don’t know that is raw meat. We then had a fair walk to the Eiffel tower area again to catch our river cruise. It was very nice seeing the city from the river and watching the lights come on and this was about 10pm and was just getting dark. We caught the Metro back to our hotel. Yet another late night around 12.30am.
Hop on hop off bus ticket was for 48 hrs so we used that again to see the few things we hadn’t seen the day before and visited Notre Dame- again big queues so we just went inside the ground floor and didn’t bother lining up to go up the 400 stairs to see the bell tower and the gargoyles. On to the Lovre this time to actually go inside and see the Mona Lisa. The usual crowd situation was happening but we went straight to the Mona Lisa and then had a quick look around at some sculptures etc- one very very big museum and there was no way we were going to see all of it so just saw what we wanted and escaped. We walked through the park of the Louvre and caught Metro to Mont Martre and visited the sacre- Coeur. While we were at the top of the hill a massive thunder storm was brewing so we quickly headed for a restaurant for lunch. A nice stroll back to our hotel and collected our luggage and headed for the station for the Eurostar train - a train from Paris back to London in a tunnel under the channel- 2 hr train trip. We caught another metro from that station to Paddington Station and walked to our apartment. It was very nice apartment with separate bedroom and kitchen area with lounge etc, I went to supermarket and bought something for dinner and breakfasts for the next 3 days.

Kath

---

Photos

Moulin Rouge Windmill
Yes, it is really on top of Moulin Rouge

The Tunnel where Princess Dianna Died
Just across the River from the Eiffel Tower

Comments

[Robyn]

wow!
you will both need to sleep for a week when you get h ome! Hope you enjoyed the bottle of Champagne! Robyn