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Published: February 12th 2014
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The flight from Cape Town to London was pretty painless (no lost cameras!), even with Ms Fidgety Mc Fidgety and her lack of personal space next to Toni. Passport control was an exciting experience as we did our ‘own’ immigration control and the automatic biometric scanners. Yay for British passports. Toni's cousins met us at Heathrow and guided us through the Underground and busses to their place in Barnes in south London. It was quite fortuitous arriving in London on a Sunday, as we then headed straight out to one of their local pubs for a scrumptious Sunday roast lunch. The pictures tell a thousand words but look at those yorkshire puddings!!! A stroll along the river and another pint of local brew finished off our first day in London. Pam played tour guide for us the next day as we made our way through to the London Eye, past Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Soho for lunch, St Pauls Cathedral and in between all that, Starbucks and cupcakes.
It was a short intro to London and the following day, after a quick trip to Richmond, we caught the Eurostar down to Paris.
Paris was a fantastic experience and just
the right amount of time for us. Our hostel was in a great spot and super easy to jump on the underground Metro. The weather was fairly kind to us and we managed to walk majority of places without getting caught in the rain. Our first day we squeezed in Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees, the Obelisk, walk along the Seine, past the entrance to the Louvre (queue was ridiculously long), Notre dame Cathedral, a delicious lunch of French onion soup and escargot and ending off with the Eiffel Tower.
We were glad we weren't caught by any tourist scams as, surprisingly, they are very common from what we could see outside the Louvre and Eiffel Tower. We saw both the “paying for the string on your finger/wrist’ and ‘finding your gold ring for a reward’ play out with unsuspecting tourists.
Dinner that night was a 'cheap' simple affair of hummus, crackers and wine, after which we strolled down through Pigalle and got to see the infamous Moulin Rouge and its iconic windmill. James was not prepared to spend 150 euros for a dinner and a show. Spoil Sport..
The next day we went straight to the
Paris Catacombs and meandered through the tunnels and ossuaryfor nearly two hours. What an extraordinary place. To cut a long story short, in the late 1700’s the Parisian cemeteries were overflowing within the city and, at the same time, there were a number of sinkholes and building collapses from hundreds of underground quarries mined beneath the city streets. As they started stabilizing the passages and tunnels, they came up with the ingenious decision to transfer and deposit an estimated 6 million skeletons. Somewhere along the line, the bones and skulls were stacked into walls to create the scenes we see today. For lunch we missioned a few blocks in the rain to the Crepe quarter and indulged in some traditional delicious salted caramel crepes and cider. nom nom nom
Our last night in Paris we visited the Sacre Coeur and enjoyed a picnic dinner whilst watching Paris light up below us. What a beautiful experience
Next stop, Grenoble!
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Dave
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Cool Beginnings
Sounds like you guys are having an awesome time. Really glad that you enjoyed your stay in Paris...i had such a bad experience there that I was worried that you would also suffer the same fate as me. Looking forward to reading all about the next part of the journey. Travel and stay safe, love me xx