Paris, revisited

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Paris, France. It was the last international trip I made before coming home - December I stayed in the UK itself. Just as well, because Paris didn't end on such a good note I was more than glad to stay put in a country where English was the first language and everything was relatively safe.

So, what to say about Paris? Having been there just two months earlier with the family, all my earlier pre-conceived notions about it being the most romantic city in the world had been sufficiently demolished. I don't know why, but Paris freaked me out like crazy. The people seemed crazy, free-spirited, perhaps too much, and the filth of the metro stations was mind-boggling. There were homeless people everywhere, dirt and graffiti all over, and an unsettling sense of being eyed for being (1) Asian and (2) a tourist (which, as we found out later, was a Very Bad Thing). Coming from Singapore, where everything is nearly too efficient and overly organized and Rules are the way of life, I was amazed to see people jumping over the barriers or squeezing in after paying passengers just to avoid buying metro tickets. But so it is.

Anyhow, this was supposed to be a three-day weekend getaway with the girlfriends, J and M, who were also on exchange in Holland and York respectively. So I made my way from Southampton to London on Friday morning via train and tube - by then the route had become so familiar and the one thing I looked forward to in King's Cross St Pancras was the free wifi! 😊 Had a quick breakfast at Pret (if there is anything I miss about Europe it is the abundance of good sandwiches and pastries) while updating my status on facebook and then I went to get my train tickets changed, because the trip had earlier been postponed due to the Parisian student strikes. AND THEN I boarded the Eurostar to Paris! Quite an uneventful journey save for the fact that I opened a bottle of sparkling water forgetting that sparkling meant aerated so the gas buildup caused the water to spill all over me. Embarrassing. Thankfully I wasn't sitting next to anyone and the two cute guys sitting across the aisle didn't notice.

And as the train entered Paris, I got a glimpse of snow-covered fields that made me feel pretty excited.

I had arranged to meet J at Gare du Nord because our trains were scheduled to arrive at around the same time but what I didn't count on was Gare du Nord being incredibly, unbelievably crowded. I'm not sure if it's usually like that or because it was a Friday but it was insanely claustrophobic. J and I found each other without too much fuss and we proceeded to buy metro passes and Disneyland tickets before heading to our hotel just a stone's throw away. (I forgot the hotel's name - it was passable at best but for the price we couldn't really complain.) M had already arrived that morning and left her stuff in the room so we put our things down, freshened up, planned our route and headed out!

We took the metro over to the Louvre, and as we were walking up to the ground level from the metro station - it was SNOWING. Thick, falling layers of soft white snow - it was absolutely magical, simply because it was the first time in my life experiencing REAL snow (it hadn't started snowing in Southampton yet then - it started two days later). It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and outside the Louvre too, with one of my favourite people in the world - truly a nice moment. We wandered over to meet M outside the Louvre, and then we took pictures, taking in the surreal quality of it all (coming from the tropics, snow is really awesome, until it starts getting slippery and being a pain to walk on - story for another time). We headed to a cafe to have a late afternoon tea, and discovered that there was free wifi for customers! So all of us spent some time surfing facebook (updating our status, obviously) and sipping tea.

Thereafter we decided to proceed to the Eiffel Tower on foot. We could have just taken the metro, but we needed time to catch up and it was a nice way to take in the sights. We spent some time taking more photos in the evening light outside the glass pyramids of the Louvre before walking in the direction of the Eiffel Tower. It was absolutely freezing - I remember my fingers being numb inside my gloves. But it was also beautiful - Paris with people you love is really very special. We wandered down a Christmas market on the Champs de Elysees and down many many small streets. Finally we stopped for dinner at a Chinese restaurant on one of the side streets near the Eiffel - noodles in hot soup on a cold cold night with lots of Chinese tea is bliss, absolute bliss.

And then, finally, we reached the Eiffel Tower. Having come all the way we decided the experience wouldn't be complete if we didn't go up, so we did. The queue wasn't too long. The elevator up the Eiffel moved diagonally, it was very cool. The view from the top was spectacular, and so was the temperature. I will always remember it being Absolutely Freezing Cold, coupled with the winds and a bit of rain, and the fact that I was only wearing a single pair of tights (I think it was about 2 deg C, or less). But we managed to take some very nice pictures with the Parisian night skyline, and we did find a nice warm vent to huddle under for a bit, and it was all very nice.

After the Eiffel we took the metro over to the Arc De Triomphe, snapped a couple of pictures, and headed down the Champs de Elysees only to end up having supper in Macdonalds before heading back to the hotel as we were exhausted. (I don't know if the cold or the sun makes one more tired). I did find out that the MacDonalds in Paris serves very nice potato wedges.

The next day was DISNEYLAND DAY! That had been the entire point of our Paris trip, actually. I'd only been to the Disneyland in Hong Kong before that which was much, much smaller, so I was pretty excited.

Breakfast was crossiants and coffee on the train, and before we knew it we had arrived at Disneyland! It being a Saturday morning, it was predictably crowded, but the queue to get admission tickets wasn't too bad and then we were in - transported into a magical fairytale land where everything was pretty and sparkling and perfect. Kind of fake, yes, but Disneyland is designed to make everyone feel like a kid again if only for a day so it was really fun. We spent ages queueing up for a ride about movie special effects that turned out to be a little disappointing, and grabbed overpriced hot dogs from a pushcart for lunch, but most of our time was spent running in and out of gift shops and taking photos of/with everything. Sadly we didn't meet any Disney mascots to take pictures with but everything was so lovely anyway. My only regret is that we didn't have enough time to see all the different areas. The day passed pretty quickly, but we did catch the parade in the evening, before spending an hour queueing up for Space Mountain in the freezing cold (as you can see, the cold moments are the ones that remain most sharply etched in my mind). But that one hour culminated in sixty or so seconds of pure hurtling-through-the-dark shrieking-at-the-top-of-your-lungs adrenaline that left us feeling warm and rejuvenated after we emerged from the ride. Definitely worth it. The rest of the night, we took the carousel, the teacups and other amusements, and about a million pictures with the pink Disneyland castle, before we finally, sadly, left.

The next day, Sunday, we headed to Montmartre to visit the Sacre-Coeur. Breakfast was crepes and coffee at a cafe at the base of the hill, before we trekked up to visit the church and take in the view along with all the other tourists and illegal souvenir peddlers. After that we bought a few requisite souvenirs and headed underground to take the metro to Notre-Dame, and that was when everything went downhill. We were the last to squeeze into the crowded carriage and a young woman with a huge backpack in front of her was squeezing against me, presumably because it was crowded, or so I thought - when we got off the train at the next station I discovered with growing horror that the clasp of my bag was undone even though I distinctly remembered doing it up before we boarded - and after rooting through my stuff I realised with a sinking heart that my wallet was gone, together with it cash, credit cards and other associated documents (though thankfully not my passport or train tickets home). The woman had somehow managed to sneak it out of my bag which had been in front of me and in my sight at all times. Anyhow, our trip had now been sufficiently ruined, and we set out to find a police station to make a report. The policeman could barely understand English but we managed to get it done, somehow, and he didn't seem particularly sympathetic because as we were now beginning to realise Paris is full of these awful gypsies who resort to criminal activity and it really didn't help that we stood out as tourists from miles away. Anyway, after all of that hassle and trauma, we visited the Notre-Dame but my heart was no longer in it though I was comforted by sympathetic texts from the best friend all the way back in Singapore that made me feel a little less awful. After Notre Dame we had a quick coffee and strawberry tart in a cafe to perk up our spirits (mine, mostly) before J and I parted ways with M as we had to head back to the hotel to pick up our stuff and catch our trains back. We had originally planned to go shopping at the Galleries Lafayette after Notre Dame but no thanks to the unintended detour we didn't have time for that anymore.

So, Paris ended on a low note, but it didn't detract from the magic that had been the past two days before that, so it was still a nice trip with them. My Sunday ended with a nice curry bento takeaway while waiting for my bus back to Southampton from Victoria Coach Station. It was still a nice trip though, and fantastic company. I do hope karma bites that gypsy bitch in the a**.

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