Paris with Matty

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So if Rome didn´t live up to expectations, Paris exceeded them.

Everytime I´ve been to Paris it has had a different way of welcoming me that has felt uniquely parisian and had me hooked from the off!

In 2004 I arrived late at night and couldnt find my hostel from the metro station. An elderly women tried to explain to me where I was and unable to break the language barrier decided to take my hand and walk me there herself while i held her shopping bags... So much for the french arrogance you always hear about!

In 2005 I arrived early in the morning and was hurtling through Paris on the metro with suit, dress and beret wearing frenchies all reading their papers in peak hour transit. One local guy was absolutely wailing on his accordian entertaining the packed carriages and had me in stiches yelling out god knows what in french as he played. Absurd.

And now in 2010 after feeling a little disillusioned with Europe after the Rome experience Dan and I checked into our hotel dropped our bags and opened up a big bay window to the parisian skyline of chimnies and window sill gardens while a lone saxaphone was crooning in the distance. I almost floated out the window and felt like launching into some impromptu ewan mcgregor lines from moulin rouge but got stuck after 'I hope you don't mind, I hope you don´t mind, how wonderful life is now your in the world!'. Great start!

So we got to walking around and looking for some dinner the first night, Matty was arriving early the next day. We headed down towards Notre Dame to the heart of paris to get the bearings for Dan, around sunset this is the best time to visit the square in front of Notre Dame, it is always slightly changing coloour as the sun sets. One of my favourite sights the world over and something I had missed.

The next morning Matty arrived after a 10hour night bus from London and we were so excited to finally get to celebrate the engagement with some family members (we miss you so much!). Headed down to Notre Dame again to climb quasimodo´s bell towers and search for another one of Dad´s coins. Thanks again pops, thats another one en-route back to you. The view from the top is incredible and being right in the centre you can almost take a tour of paris with just your eyes.

The rest of the day involved walking! lots of it. We went past the Eiffel tower and arch de triomphe. Dan got a good few hours in shopping on the champs de ellyse while matty and I caught up on everything. After an early start we were knackered and matty went to check into his hostel while we chilled out for a couple of hours.

Matty had the evening planned out for us. It was nice to have someone else organise something for us. We met up at the Sacre Cour and shared a bottle of bubbly on the lawns. Its high up so you can see almost all of paris from that height, great sunset, conversation and company. Really a special night.

The place has lots of performers like musicians, fire twirlers, jugglers etc up there that makes it feel a bit like a carnival...There was one african bloke Iya Traore (look him up!) he had the greatest control of a football I´ve ever seen. Whenever I go to games I like going early to see what the proffesionals can do when they´re not under pressure, they´re great to watch but this guy was insane. He stands up on a little platform not larger than a metre square just off a staircase and freestyle juggles. I´ll put photos up soon but his routine gets better and better for like 20 minutes, culminating in him balancing a ball on his forehead and climbing a lamp post!!!!

Paris was brilliant, I think i´ll save the second half for a second blog!

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Comments

[marty]

man checked out that Iya Traoré guy on youtube, epic stuff, reminds me of the old hacky sack days, ahh the memories