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Published: October 14th 2008
Tuesday, 12 August
My whirlwind Europe tour was to begin. It was an early start after a small sleep, no thanks to Wayne's World 2 the night before. I made my way to west London to meet up with my tour group at 6.30. From here we got on the bus and made our way down to Dover where we caught the ferry across to Calais in France.
Leaving the white cliffs of Dover behind us, we were on our way. It was a bumpy trip, but managed to arrive at the destination with my full stomach contents. After waiting for a while to disembark the ship standing with a bunch of French school kids, a little Damian arose, firmly saying something in his native tongue to me as I walked passed, eyes as wide as golf balls. Very strange, yet entertaining. Then we were on French soil. We met our bus driver, Brad, and tour guide, Leticia, and were on our way to Paris.
After dropping our bags off at our hotel, we headed up to the Basilica, Sacre Coeur, for the amazing view. Beautiful. We then went on a night bus tour, not before losing Team
Korea for the first (but certainly not the last) time. The bus tour took us passed the Moulin Rouge and all the sites including the Opera House of Phantom of the Opera fame, the Pantheon, the main square, and the bridge from the last episode of Sex and the City. Of course we went and saw the Eiffel Tower and got many snaps of it all lit up in it's glittering glory, while street vendors tried to sell us "bling bling". We also did countless laps of the Arc De Triomphe, which lasted about 10 minutes, exiting unscaved. No crashes seen, but there were some close calls.
Wednesday, 13 August
What a day! I now have the biggest blister I have ever seen on the back of my heel, but I wouldn't have changed a thing about the day. We started with a climb up the Eiffel Tower. I set off with my roommates Kirsty, Emma and Naz. We climbed all the 668 and some stairs, and then caught the lift up to the very top. Extremely windy, but the view was incredible. Paris is a very white city.
Kirsty and I lost the other girls
on the tower and headed off to the Louve, on the way we stopping to have some crepes for lunch. Yum! After being much impressed with the outside of the Louve, we went inside to get a glimpse if the famous Mona Lisa and Venus De Milo. We also saw the famous French painting The Coronation of Napoleon and The Winged Victory of Samothrace, which has no head or arms. The art in there was very pretty, but we were most impressed with the ceilings. They were beautiful!
After a little look at the shops we trekked over to Notre Dame very slowly as our feel were starting to feel the toll of the day. The queue was massive, so we were happy just viewing it from the outside. Once we had picked the gum out of Kirsty's shoe it started to rain, so we opted to catch the Metro up to the Arc De Triomphe and one of the main shopping drags.
Still no accidents were seen at the Arc, but there were more close calls. We then felt that some icecream was in order and went to the Hagen Daz Icecream Gold Restaurant. So Good! After
searching in vein for the internet, we had a look at the Louis Vitton shop, which was five stories high. The people we saw in there were interesting. We then took the back streets back to the Tower, where we met up with the rest of the tour group for a picnic next to the Eiffel Tower.
On the way back we walked passed Victor Hugo's house. Don't know which one it was exactly because we saw the sign after we finished walking the street, but we like to think it was number 11.
That night we went to the Paradis Latin Cabaret, which was great and very entertaining. The highlight was definitely the crazy trapeze artist, the Wonderful Mr Christopher. Don't look at his frozen face for too long people, as it gets a little frightening.
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