Clarisse Paris

... LA BAUME

PARIS — Just as Le Corbusier’s white cruciform towers once excited visions of the industrial-age city of the future, so Vélib’, Paris’s bicycle rental system, inspired a new urban ethos for the era of climate change.

In Paris 80 percent of Vélib' bicycles are stolen or damaged.

Residents here can rent a sturdy bicycle from hundreds of public stations and pedal to their destinations, an inexpensive ...

... where we're staying.

I'm not usually afraid of heights, but for some reason I couldn't muster up the will to climb beyond the first stage of the tower. Mr Fitness wasn't about to stop from climbing as far as the French would let him, so after touring the first stage/level, he headed to the top and I headed back down to wait for him.

I'll let him fill you in on the rest, but not without saying that besides the language barrier ...

... cheese as well as a glass of apple cider. It was really good. The Cider tasted different from home but still good. Jen wasn't hungry to she just watched me. Afterwards we went home and just slept and read for the rest of the day.

Favourites:

Jen: Relaxing and sleeping for the afternoon

Ang: Madame Sevigne's house

Least Favourites:

Jen: Annoying women in the Catacomb's line

Ang: Being so out of breath when we climbed up out of the Catacombs

... and a speedy, efficient way to move people amongst them. The Metro goes everywhere and I don't think we have waited more than 5 minutes for a train to board. Our first train took us to the Monet and impressionist museum de L'Orangerie, constructed to house Monet's ovoid montage of his Giverny home water lilly paintings, as well as showcase impressionist paintings of Renoir, Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne ...

... museum in Paris. By this point I have had about enough of art museums. And a modern art museum was probably the lowest thing on my list of things to see. So off Karla went and I bought some postcards and sat in the park for a while. We met later that afternoon at the Notre Dame cathedral. The towers and Façade of Notre Dame were undergoing renovation the last time I was here so this was all new to me. Our museum passes got us free admission to the top of the tower, but the one catch ...

... make back in the US. And you half expect to see Inspector Clouseau driving. * The Eiffel Tower. We saw it just about everytime we turned around, during the day and night, and it evoked a "Wow" everytime. It's just a magnificent sight and, thanks to a central Paris policy that does not allow skyscrapers to be built, it just towers way above everything else. We never got tired of seeing it. I'm sure most Parisiennes feel the same. Things I'll NOT Miss: * The Metro at rush hour ...

... t on the other side of the storm so much as we were in between two giant thunderclouds. Shortly after we got to the second level, it started pouring again. We tried to wait it out, but it didn't pass as quickly as the first downpour had, so eventually we decided to just make our way back down to the ground. Climbing down the tower in that storm was, in a word, surreal. The staircase is very open, so we were being pelted with rain and blown around by the wind as we ...

... and then feasted on tempura and a huge plate of sushi at a delightfully authentic Japanese restaurant around the corner. After dinner we headed to the Irish pub to watch the football and drink pints and we were then truly missing Dublin for the first time since we left. We met up with some lovely irish punters and the Craic was truly mighty. We stayed on to watch the cricket and after many pints and shots later we headed to a Scottish bar nearby guided by one of the ...

... watch Scotland vs Belarus. Neil wore his kilt of course. We met a few Belarus fans, they were really kool. We then went back to the hostel and got more drunk. The bars closes at about 4am but the guy opened a room for us so we all went in there drinkin til the early hours, about 10 of us. An american guy was playin the guitar so it was alll goood!! Then neil fell off the bed and cut his lip haha ...