Advertisement
Published: January 18th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Eiffel Tower
In all its iconic glory After reading Leah's very bubbly blog, mine is going to be a little bit more sober. Before our New Years trip to Paris and Normandy, Leah and I wondered whether Paris would be able to live up to our expectations. For Leah, Paris was a city she had dreamed about visiting since she was a kid, and for me, it was a city that I had heard rivals Rome, so high standards indeed. On the way back to the train station to Eurostar as we left Paris, Leah and I compared notes and came to the conclusion that Paris was missing something, and though we enjoyed ourselves, Paris did not make the upper echelon of world cities. For myself, it never came close to the heights of Rome, Athens, London, or even Istanbul. But I’ll start at the beginning…..
The start of Team Paris heading for our New Years trip started with an extra early 5am wake-up on a Saturday to catch the Eurostar to Paris. It was comfortable, but just another train really. We dumped our stuff at the hostel and headed to the Eiffel Tower. We had a look, took many photos and walked along to the Arc
View of the Eiffel Tower
From the Palace over the other side of the river de Triomphe and the Champes Elysees. Personally I was most impressed by the Arc. Very cool. We went back to the hostel to meet Aimee (one of Hannah’s friends joining Team Paris), then grabbed some dinner before hitting the sack.
Our first full day was out to EuroDisney, where we spent most of the day queuing. A few rides deserve special mention, including Space Mountain, which was just plain awesome (except for Hannah), and Buzz Lightyear’s ride, where I hammered Aimee in a combat battle. The day became a lot better the later it got due to the queues dwindling massively. We left around 10pm and were back early the next day (New Year’s Eve) for Walt Disney Studios where we started with a Stunt Show, then jumped in another 2 hour queue for the Aerosmith rollercoaster. Despite the wait it was pretty awesome. Not quite as good as Space Mountain, but better music. Over the course of the day Hannah got braver and braver and after surviving the very scary Finding Nemo rollercoaster, she joined us in our second round of Aerosmith. We now have another adrenalin junkie on the loose.
For the actual New Year celebrations,
Hannah and I
In front of the Eiffel Tower we headed back to central Paris and had dinner at a Thai restaurant, where they absolutely loved us and gave us free wine, champagne and sake shots. Needless to say, we were fairly merry by the time we left there about 11.30. It was then a sprint finish via the alcohol shop to the Eiffel Tower. We arrived very appropriately at 11.57 and joined in the countdown and watched the fireworks. We very gradually made our way towards the tower whilst drinking and meeting other people. Leah and Debbie also managed to have a New Zealand lakes experience. Enough said about that one. After about 2 ½ hours, we made it there, and headed back to the hostel. I, however, had the task of carrying Clay back to the hostel as he had had a few too many vodka and sprite mouth shots. We made it back eventually, and Clay’s head wasn’t the only one that was sore the next day.
We had specifically planned nothing on the 1st, but we did make it up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, which was alright. The views were restricted a bit by the smog, and to be honest, it
Tourists
Don't you just hate tourists who do touristy things like jump in front of the Eiffel Tower and take photos of it? isn’t a very pretty city to look out on. There's better views from the Sky Tower! It was an early night before being up early again the next day on the way to the Lourve, where we managed to beat most of the crowds and saw quite a bit, including Mona Lisa. My highlights were the art from the old Persian Empire, and the castle remains in the basement. In the afternoon, we checked out the Notre Dame Cathedral, where I was a bit disappointed I didn’t see any hunchbacks. I had to wait until the train ride where it seemed every old person with a back problem seemed to be heading out of Paris. It must have been a convention or something.
Before we got out of Paris, we went and saw the Sacre Coeur, which was another pretty cool church. Our trip out of Paris got us to a gorgeous walled city called St Malo, which was our base to visit Mont St Michel. I enjoyed St Malo a lot more, and everything about it was better than Paris, even down to the food and the air. We had our best meal of the trip on our
Sunset View
Eiffel Tower at sunset over the river first night here, a quaint little restaurant that had some delicious home-made lasagne and mouth watering deserts. After a game of spotlight on the walls, we enjoyed the slightly more up market accommodation before heading to Mont St Michel the following day. This is basically a fortress right on the coast, which was so well built and designed that even the English during the 100 Years War could not conquer it! Quite a feat given the ineptness of the French military. We had great fun exploring around the almost deserted castle and felt like we were Kings of olde. We just needed swords and some serving wenches.
The following day was our last in St Malo before our trip back to Paris to wind down our trip. We spent the day doing a bit more exploration (ie, the girls went shopping) and managed to get everything we wanted to get done. For the last night of our trip, we were back in Paris before exploring Versailles the next day. As we waited in another queue, I played the audio guide and relayed the history and role of Versaille in World War I and II. Versaille was incredible just for
it’s wealth amongst the rooms, and then you went out into the gardens which could have taken a day of exploration by themselves. Almost thankfully, it was winter so the access we had to the gardens was quite limited.
After leaving there, it was back to the Eurostar for our trip back to London, and boy was I glad to be back. Despite the trip being pretty fantastic, it was great to get back to my own bed in my own room. My next task is to sit down and plan out the trips for this year. Already possibilities are springing to mind. Russia, Ireland, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe........
The list goes on.............
Advertisement
Tot: 0.044s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 11; qc: 18; dbt: 0.0163s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Leah
non-member comment
What you mean where Tour de France starts? You been reading the wrong books man... it finishes there! You did make a good audio guide in Versailles though, just as well you were switched off at the Arc de Triomphe... haha!