New Year in Paris plus five amazing days

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Our trip to Paris was absolutely fantastic.. Everything went so well for us from our host to the things we wanted to see during our five nights.

We arrived late in the day and it was ok since our host, Christophe, was working late as he did for most days so we went right to his place and we had a warm welcome with some wine and turned out to be a late night.

The next morning we walked into the city (Christophe lives in a perfect spot) via the arch de Triumph before heading to a lookout over the Eiffel Tower which had some great view! It was a busy day and people were all over the place, well with New Years only a few days away it was always going to happen. We had planned to do a walking tour today so we heading to the metro to get to trains but we buggered up and ended up missing the tour (did the next day) so we just cruised around the street of Paris for pretty much all the day.

It is a magnificent city and the buildings, architecture and the history of the place was great to be walking around in. Since we missed the tour that day we headed to the Louvre to check out Mona Lisa and see what she was up to. The lines were massive, people angry and time running out so we asked a couple walking out if they were going to be going back in and if not could we grab your ticket.. Success! We were in without lining up for a couple of hours but getting to the Mona Lisa picture was a challenge. Could not believe how many people was in that place to see the picture but we got their adventally. Cruised around for awhile when getting dark then headed to the Eiffel Tower to watch the light show before finding a nice cafe to have some pizza before Christophe returned home. A great day..

Third day was sleeping in and having another long brekki with Christophe, seemed to be very long and big each morning, and we headed right to the walking tour today to make sure we did not miss it this time. The tour did not disappoint and who was talking us no other than an Aussie.. we are everywhere which was fine for me as understanding the accent was a piece of cake. She gave a awesome tour and told many funny stories over the four hours taking us to all the main sights. It was late afternoon by the time this finished and we found out we were close to the memorial for Princess Diana for where she died in the tunnel.. They had taken in down the memorial before because people would themself walk into the tunnel and near die also but we didn’t do that, just took a few photos before making our way to the cinemas. Christophe had given us a couple of tickets to watch any movie which was very nice of him and watching movies in France is an experience.. When you finally work out what you’re going to watch, we went to get the tickets and asked the poor lady ‘what do you recommend’ she first said a fantasy movie but didn’t sound too interesting then she said a romantic comedy. In France, that sounds perfect so off we went. The movie was packed and as we found out the French really get involved in the movie, I mean clapping along, laughing out loud etc it was really good to see. After the movie we walked around the city at night and it was a perfect time, the weather was quite warm and very little people out on the streets, that time walking around was maybe a my highlight of the trip.

Day three we decided we needed to head up to the top of the Eiffel Tour.. Long story short, day before New Year’s wanting to go up the Eiffel Tower takes around three hours to do so, so don’t do it. But the views were good once up the very top and it has to be done when in Paris of course. The rest of this day was spend just wandering around the city drinking the most expensive hot chocolates ever and then heading out to Sacre-Coeur which is a massive church overlooking the city in the art area of the city. We were not here for too long though as we needed to head back to our host as he was taking us to a underground jazz session, next to Moulin Rough, which was quite an experience. It was true French in this place and although we had no idea what they were singing it was really great fun and ended up as another late night.

December 31st was a day that we are both not going to forget. It was so much fun from going food shopping with Christophe in the seafood market, you could get anything there and in the end we came back with 8 or so different types of seafood and snails for the evening’s dinner. Of course it was flat out in the market with people doing last minute things as well, like us. We only went into the city for a couple of hours after the food shopping since people were all over Paris but we had our one last most expensive hot chocolate each, and was nice to get back to our host away from the crowds and stat preparing the magnificent feast we came up with. By the end of the mean a couple of bottles of wine had disappeared, some snaps and dancing in the apartment was going on.

By this time it was around 10pm so we decided to welcome the New Year under the Eiffel Tower, packed a bottle of champagne, glasses and headed on our way. The trains were packed but we got there in quick time and found the perfect spot to watch the celebrations. For the last hour before 2010 arrived we were busy taking photos, watching the different light shows the Eiffel Tower was doing and being dazzled by the constant flow of people who were rushing to get a spot to watch the countdown. 2010 arrives, fireworks, Eiffel Tower going crazy, crowd erupts and champagne bottle is opened. Welcome 2010!

This link is to the last minute or so for the countdown... (not from us, we were not making those noises 😊)

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Photos

Eiffel Tower
Heading home after New Years and came accross this nice view...

Comments

[dianne]

awesum
So glad you're blogging again. Love following your adventures with the beautiful Diana by your side. Love Dianne.