Blogs from Paris, Île-de-France, France, Europe - page 369

Got here yesterday to great weather. Took 235 photos, will try to post some tonight. At Bryan's suggestion took 3mg melatonin and it seems to work fine. Probably all in my head though. Went to the top of Notre Dame. Walked around and went to cafes. Berthillion is closed Mon and Tues, so we'll save that for tomorrow! You know we love it. Been struggling finding Wi-Fi (or Wee-Fee as someone here said). And web cafe wouldn't let me plug in laptop. Hey - I'm paranoid about key sniffing attacks, what can I say? We're outside a cafe now, but it's actually kind of cold today. Probably will just sack up and pay the 5euro/15min in-hotel access tonight to get some photos up. On to Luxembourg Gardens...... read more

Arrived in Paris at 10AM. Decided to take the RER (train) into town from the airport to save a little $$. Unfortunately we stood in a long line at the ticket machine before discovering 1) it didn’t take US credit cards and 2) it didn’t sell the kind of tickets we wanted. We got a 3 day Paris Visite pass which gives you unlimited usage of the Metro and RER. It’s nice to have a pass so that you don’t have to stop to buy a ticket each time you get on and calculate the exact ticket price for each destination. We headed for the hotel on the Ile de St. Louis first. We had walked by this hotel the last time we were in Paris (Feb. 2002) and decided we would stay there on our ... read more

12th, 13th and 14th October 2005 Paris, France. Tour Day 1 Finally, after seven months of being in the near distance of it, I am able to say that I have been to Paris, France.....and it is spectacular! Stunning! Grandiose! But let me begin at the beginning; not with birth as Dickens once did, but at the conception of the trip. Having worked almost two whole months without a holiday (ah, but it's a hard, hard life), and with some misgivings on attempting foreign countries and even more foreign languages unescorted, I gave in to the hated idea of package tours and organised a twelve-day taster of Western Europe with a company called Topdeck. We set off early yesterday morning, leaving England via ferry from the famous white cliffs of Dover, which I am sorry to ... read more

It’s Wednesday night and I am tired after long days at school. It’s hard to fall asleep though, because every few minutes the street erupts with cheers and cars honking their horns. France is playing Cyprus in “football” and every male in Paris over the age of two is watching this match. I’m sure that about half of them at least are watching on the TV in the bar about a block down, so I might as well be watching too. In fact, during dinner tonight the table suddenly started shaking and there was pounding overhead; at this point, I thought maybe there was an earthquake but Victor informed us about the game and grabbed his plate to go sit in front of the TV. So now it France 3, Cypress 0 and the renowned French ... read more

Bonjour Tout le Monde! Testing, testing. How do we like the new travel blog concept? I think this will be easier for me to use than the mass e-mail list. This way I don’t feel like I am imposing my life on you all, but at the same time you can check out what I am up to. Hopefully it will also make me feel more comfortable blabbering on about what is going on for me ... so just check out my site when you feel like seeing what Winnie is up to! I start classes this week. Up until now I have been taking a French grammar course that was from 2 - 5 PM. The past week I had no class and so I took a trip down to the south of France. My ... read more