Advertisement
Published: August 2nd 2010
We had a slightly quieter day today after our hectic last few days. We spent the morning doing chores. We took our laundry down to the laundromat a few doors down. I doubt we would have ever worked out how to use it though! We studied the instructions for quite a while and tried to translate them with the help of a dictionary. Finally an older man came to our rescue. Clearly bemused at our stupidity he explained in rapid French what we should do. Our complete lack of comprehension just confirmed his belief in our foolishness. Sighing with the air one takes when dealing with a silly child, he gestured that we should give him some money. We handed over a few coins and he inserted it into a machine on the wall, pressed a few buttons and then went to the opposite wall and retrieved soap powder! He gestured for us to place our clothes in the machine, emptied our newly purchased soap powder in the top, took a few more coins, inserted them into the same machine on the wall, pressed a few more buttons and the washing machine promptly started to wash our clothes. I think we
would still be there if we had tried to work this out on our own! With more gesturing at the clock he indicated that it would take 35 minutes before the clothes were ready.
We had already worked out that, after buying new clothes, we had too much weight in our suitcases so we decided to buy a box and post some stuff home. We wandered off in search of "la poste".We spied a van emblazoned with "la poste' and a young man rummaging in the back of it. We accosted him and asked if he could direct us to a post office. I thought my french was pretty good but apparently not as he immediately replied in English! He was very kind though. He tried to explain where to go and then had a look through some stuff in the van and finally produced a label (obviously used in his business). The label had the actual street address of the post office next to Gare du Nord. We thanked him profusely (who ever said the French are not helpful was so wrong!) and set off for the post office which we found quite easily with the help of
our label and map. We bought a box which was prepaid for up to 7kg to go anywhere in the world. At a whopping 41 euro we were expecting great things from that box!
We wandered back to the laundromat to find our washing nearly finished. Our helper showed up again and demonstrated how to use the drier. We managed to transfer our clothes from the washing machine to drier with success. Perhaps our level of intelligence rose in our helpers eyes?
We read books while we waited the 10 minutes, collected our nearly dry washing and headed back to the hotel. Unfortunately our helper has disappeared so we were unable to thank him properly. Hopefully he enjoyed telling his family about the silly tourists he had to help!
We spent a fruitless hour trying to get Kristy's laptop to connect to the hotel's wireless internet before finally giving up and using their (expensive) internet kiosk instead.
After midday we decided to head for Jardin des Plantes which contains a herb garden set up as a source of medicine for Louis XIII. The antiquity of these icons is hard for us to comprehend. The day was incredibly
hot so the shade of the big trees was most welcome. There is a menagerie (zoo) right next to the gardens. It is supposed to be the oldest zoo in Europe. It was a bit hard to really enjoy it in the intense heat but it was good to see the animals. I particularly liked the kagoo, the little frogs and the tiny baby vultures being reared in incubators. Very cute.
We thought about looking at the museum which is attached to the gardens but it was closing at 5 just as we got there. We stayed in the Jardin for another hour or so reading books in the shade of the trees before heading back to the Gare du Nord by metro. We stopped for dinner at a Pizzeria and enjoyed a lovely salad, pizza and orange juice. At 31.50 euro, dining out is not cheap in Paris.
Tomorrow morning we leave for London on the Eurostar.
We are finding the hours of light to be quite odd in France. It is about 11 before it gets properly dark. Quite confusing for us kiwis. Be interesting to see if it is like that in London.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.107s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0375s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
