Blogs from Île-de-France, France, Europe - page 498

Today we'll visit the brilliant stained glass windows of Sainte Chapelle church, Notre Dame and the Louvre. Tomorrow we will tackle Versailles and its sprawling palace, gardens and fountains. In a few days, we'll take the high speed Eurostar train and chunnel from Paris to London, see you in England. Au revoir et merci beaucoup! ... read more

After arrived in Paris main train station from Brussels and then the d’Artagnan Hostel (luckily, we still got our reservations at the fully booked hostel), we took off around 8:30 pm for dinner around the Champs-Elysées, where the Eiffel Tower is. To get there, we need to transfer the Metro twice, and it took us more than an hour just to get to the area. Our hostel is located in the East Paris, and the Eiffel tower is, of course, on the west side of Paris. We were hoping to find an inexpensive restaurant around the area at this hour. First incident in Paris with a Chinese restaurant We arrived at Eiffel Tower base around ten, just enough to see the ten o’clock show with flashing lights for about ten minutes. After the show, we ended ... read more

Today Ghislain took it easy and spent the morning at home, Tania was getting here from Amsterdam, so I went out to visit my 1st cousin once removed, Ruth, in St-Germain-en-Laye. I got there no problem thanks to really good directions and a short French lesson from Ghislain. (Un billete pour St Geremain en Laye si vous plait. merci) It was really cool to spend time with Ruth, she is really interesting, and we had great conversations about family, and even politics, especially concerning how the French view Americans. We ate a delicious and relaxing lunch before I headed back to Paris. Ghislain and I went all the way to the top of the Eiffel tower and spent lots of time taking photos! (between the two of us we took over 200 photos qt the Eiffel ... read more

Started the morning with a delicious pan au chocolate. Ghislain and i headed out to the Champs Elysees (spelled right this time). Took lots of photos at the Arc de Triomphe, and watched the crazy traffic circling it. Then we walked down the Champs Elysees, cheching out stores and stuff. I saw a McLaren Mercedes F1 mad cool. Grabbing baguettes (even a simple cheese and tomato w/butter is good, and the butter wasn't greasy... much better than the British equivalent.) we headed to the Louve. We met up with my cousin Betsy and her posse for half and hour to visit and watch her friends float their sneakers in the fountains. The louve is HUGE. So Ghislain and i went to the Northern European paintings. Wow. Once you get into the late 15th and 16th centuries ... read more

Well there is hope. David says I have a chance to get to either Brussels or Amsterdam tonight. Wish me luck.... read more