Paris - September 15 -18
Trip Start
Sep 04, 2007
1
10
23
Trip End
Oct 26, 2007
Paris,
France
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
First stop, the Pantheon which was only a five minute walk away. The place looked like a church (I think it was originally built to be a church). I didn't know the Pantheon had a crypt which housed Frances great men dating back from the 18th century. The flip side to this was the 360 degree views of Paris atop of the Pantheon.
After viewing tourist sites from the top of the Pantheon, we figured the closest site from the Pantheon was the Notre Dame, so we headed there
La Pantheon
. The gothic façade of the Notre Dame, Gargoyles surrounding the perimeter of the church was completely different to the other churches we had come across so far. We decided not to go on top of the Notre Dame based on the queue and already seeing views from the Pantheon. Moving on, we strolled along the river to try looking for the Louvre and along the way we saw the Hotel Deville with a big screen in front of it and thousands of people leaving. We missed out on a Rugby World cup game on the big screen. The streets where PACKED out, so we decided to follow the crowds around and lost our way to the Louvre.
We were able to get back on track after an hour and found the Louvre, took a few happy snaps and headed back home for dinner after a very, very long day (I didn't get any sleep from the night before).
September 16, 2007
We got up late due to the lack of sleep from the night before. By the time we got to the Louvre, it was 12:00 and the queue was too long for us to wait (entry into the Louvre on Sunday is free), so we decided to try the Musee d'ory, but once again queue was too long and we gave up on the museums for the day
Notre Dame
. We decided to continue with the site seeing from the day before (lucky for us it was a warm sunny day) and caught the train to the Eiffel Tower. Each foot of the Eiffel Tower has an entry point, where one of them didn't have an elevator and access was limited to the first and second floor viewing platform, but had a very short queue (only a 10 minute wait). We chose to take an elevator up to the third floor viewing platform which had a considerably longer queue and waited around 30 minutes. As we got closer to the front of the queue, access to the third viewing platform was closed off, wasted time in the queue...oh well. Again, we checked out the views of Paris, noticed a few different things we couldn't see from the Pantheon and left for the Arc de Triomphe to check it out via more tourist sites.
Headed back for dinner around our hotel (staying in the Latin Quarter), there were plenty of pub, cafes and restaurants to choose from and ended the night munching on a crepe with nutella (I forgot how good nutella was), banana and coconut.
September 17, 2007
We set a day aside and our alarm clocks early to visit the Museo De Lourve as we prepared that the queues would fill up very quickly and the day would be lost just trying to find the Mona Lisa. We were lucky the queue wait time was only 15mins at 915 am. As Rob and I almost ran to purchase tickets after the security check point we were off to find a map (in English) and audio guides to assist us through the many artworks in the Lourve (I highly recommend an audio guide especially if you prepared to do it properly)
The Louvre
. What can I say but this is a really must do in Paris even if your not a fan of art. The 1 day we dedicated didn't scrap much of the Lourve but it was enough to view the most important sculptures and paintings by artist that lived many centenaries ago. From the cultured to the not so cultured, a trip to Pigalle and Montamarte. Montamarte is the red light district of Paris, just like Kings Cross, there were plenty of clubs and bars, and of course the strip joints. Fortunately, I wasn't harassed to enter the strip clubs because Bel was with me, but we did have a laugh at the R rate pictures in front of the strip clubs, which looked like they were dated back from the 70's and 80's. Also at Montamarte is the Moulin Rouge, unfortunately we were unable to see a show, shows were booked out for two weeks (so book in advance).
Belinda and I went to revisit the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre again, just to see it at night with the lights. The only thing that went wrong was the weather, it started to rain, but it didn't stop us and the rain didn't impact on the great views. Despite the rain, we were so happy to see the night lights of Paris on our last night.
Comments
Cwossonts baby!!
eya cwossonts galorela