Blogs from Paris, Île-de-France, France, Europe - page 334

Avg. temp: 38 I arrived to the hostel in the morning around 10am. In the reception, I met Ian and Carly. They are both from Canada. I spent the next few days with them. Ian is a very smart guy. He created a method to predict the stock market. I learnt alot from him. Carly moved to Montreal for school and her parents live in vancouver. We hung out together in the second day. We went to a small museum and had lunch in a park. Then we decided to go to a mall (similar to the Bay). Since it is VERY hot outside (38). We spent the afternoon there. We enjoy the A/C and good and cheap wine. yeah that place has a good cafeteria in there. The price is very reasonable and fresh. I ... read more

This was definitely one of the best days of this trip! Down along the Champs Elysees we managed to get an awesome spot to see the end of the Tour. We waited for about 3 hours but it was worth it. The street was alive with so much atmosphere and excitement while everyone tried to get in the best position to capture all of the action as the riders came into town. The speed at the riders go past is unexpected, they were still going quickly even at the end of the race. We timed one of the laps and it was 7 minutes 15 seconds. I managed to get more than 250 shots, I still haven’t gone through all of them but I have managed to get some ready for the blog. After the laps ... read more

From Eindhoven we drove to Cergy-Pontoise to Marion's Aunt Daniele and her husband Alan. It was getting unbearably hot. We stopped by a supermarket to buy some flowers. Tired as we were, tempers started flaring by the time we arrived in the evening, and we had to take a half hour to chill out before we drove to their place. It began to dawn on us, some of the difficulties we went thru were due to less-than-ideal equipment, or less-than-ideal traveling conditions for mototourists. Lessons from mototouring Intercom: While Zak did the driving, Marion was the navigator, looking at maps and giving instructions. It was both a blessing and a curse - good to be able to talk to each other, but bad when someone is literally inside your head for hours, trying to affect your ... read more

A very late note about the last day of the trip - as I uploaded the pictures ages ago and never wrote the text. We spent the last night in Geneva, and didn't do much except a nice stroll around the tip of the lake, where we enjoyed a small food festival. On Friday morning we checked in the airport just to discover that the connecting flight to Israel was postponed to the middle of the night which meant a very long day in Paris (we flew with Air France through Paris). For me personally it wasn't bad at all - I won a visit in Paris + lunch with my cousin Sharon (that part was planned) + got to see the rest of the family, including my beautiful charming nieces, in the evening. The touristy ... read more

(August 12th through the 16th 2005) Before I left on my trip, I tagged along with my mother to her favorite pastry shop. Owned by a Swiss and German couple, the pastry shop serves wonderful delicassies. Under their payroll, they have a Colombian, whom my mother speaks to when we go, and a French lady from Marseilles, that I practice my French when I can. I told her that I was going to meet up with my brother in Portugal, after his program ended, and we were going to go around Europe, and stop in France for a while. After describing several cities, the only thing she say about Paris is that it is a beautiful city, and that you should not miss le Pigalle--with a hidden smile on her face. We left Nice early morning ... read more