Advertisement
Published: September 1st 2008
Eiffel Tower
My favorite picture! Taken with a very cheap digital camera. But it takes great pics!Our journey to Paris, a lifelong dream of mine, started out poorly. Our seats were literally the last. And they didn't recline. There was so much turbulance that the man in front of us got up three times to vomit (we were also by the latrines). When we finally landed in Paris, I called for a car and then stepped outside for my first cigarette in almost 18 hours. It was heaven.
When our transport arrived, we wearily climbed aboard and gave our direction. And we were off to Monmartre! Watching the city of my dreams begin to show up was amazing. The streets were narrow and one way in our area. There was one main road which was larger. As we turned down the street that our hotel was located on, I noticed three things: There was a McDonalds on the corner, a Metro station in front of said McDonalds, and a Hookah bar across from the hotel itself!
Since our flight was early getting in, we left our bags at the front desk and were directed to a market on the street just past ours (go past the McDonalds and veer right). There were so many people! They were
Sacre Coeur
Not far from our Hotel! shouting and bartering so quickly that my head spun. Vegetables, fish, bread... all in a row! At the end of the market we turned right. And continued walking, turning as we felt like it. This is a wonderful way to see parts of cities that aren't touristy. Unless you're in Monmartre. And exhausted. And your french is passable, but hard for natives to understand.
We wandered for three hours looking for a familiar anything! Finally, in a stroke of genius (which, admittedly, we were lacking when we got lost), I broke down and went into a hotel to ask for directions. The man I spoke with spoke english very well and it turns out we were a block and a half away from our hotel. Good thing we were so lucky!
Our hotel was very small. We had to ride up the elevator and then the clerk sent our bags up when we sent the empty car back down. Our room was smallish, but we had a window that looked out on the courtyard and a working shower. The only problem with our room was that one of the beds was positioned directly under a lamp. That was almost touching
Stairs to Sacre Coeur
Seriously. And these aren't the worst ones! the mattress. But I worked around it. C'est la vie, non?
After taking a brief nap, we made our way down to the concierge and asked about Metro passes. Turns out the station just down the way was a main station! We were able to get our Carte l'Orange very quickly. And we were off and running! We had dinner at a small patisserie next to McDonalds and decided to take it easy and hang in the hotel for the night. Did I mention we were exhausted?
*to be continued.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.061s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0378s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Sara Jones
non-member comment
Me too!!!
Waw, it sounds like you had a pretty good time. Looking forward to hearing about the rest of your journey. I'm guessing it'll menition you getting lost a few more times as I stayed in monmartre in January and got lost more times than I can remember. The hotel I stayed in were quite helpfull with this though, I phoned them up on more than one occasion to help me find my way home. Oooops! I stayed with http://www.all-paris-apartments.com/en/ and would deffo stay with them again as they made sure I didn't end up in Nice. XXX