Fabulous Paris!
Trip Start
Mar 05, 2008
1
81
107
Trip End
Jan 11, 2009
Paris,
Île-de-France,
France
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Well, what a blast of a time we've had in Paris. What started out as a 2¼ hour drive to get there, turned into over three! Whilst the Sat Nav is great at working out times on the roads with no traffic, she doesn't quite know how to factor in Paris-peak, doing 15 in a 90 zone!
Anyway, we finally made it to the campsite, and true to form, as we were setting up ... it started to rain. We hoped it would not be the story for our entire visit to Paris!
Luckily for us, the Gods really smiled on us ... the weather was fantastic whilst we were there! The first day was a little overcast - but no rain! - and each one just got better and better.
We bought a two day museums pass to get us started, but thanks to my new found love of McDonalds cappuccinos (we ran into some Aussies who were looking for Maccas & they gave us their passes as they were leaving), we managed to stretch it out to four! Ok, so maybe I got a little creative with the ink work on the passes we were given ... but you won't tell will you?
We needed every bit of those four days though - here is a run down of all the things we managed to cram in during our visit ...
Champs Elysee (must have walked up & down it at ;east a dozen times!)
Louvre (spent over 5½ hours in there, but it is impressive!)
Arc de 'Triomphe (we climbed it at night. The view was amazing)
Eiffel Tower (OMG! What else can you say - it's huge, it's metal & you can see for miles!)
Notre Dame Cathedral & Tours (where Victor Hugo set The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
Pantheon & Crypt (massive building with lots of famous dead people entombed there - Hugo, Braille, Alexandre Dumas, Emile Zola and lots of soldiers from French history)
La Sorbonne (the university, for those intellectuals amongst us)
Trocadero Gardens & Monument (great place to view the Eiffel Tower from ... so we went back there again during the night as well!)
Place de La Concorde & the Obelisk (apparently a 'gift from' Egypt ... some say 'taken from' ...)
Hotel de' Ville (massive building that now offers free wifi to anyone in the vacinity!)
Musee d'Orsay (an old, converted railway station with more recent masters)
Musee de la Armee (Napoleon's Tomb - all 15 tonnes of it! WWI & WWII exhibits, old armor & weapons, etc)
Chateau de Versailles (incredibly massive, although, not the most extravagant palace set up we've seen)
Air & Space Museum (actually quite interesting ... we went on the Concorde ... we're also pretty sure we saw John Travolta's plane parked in the airport next door!)
We even had a bit of time left over to go to the movies ... Batman - The Dark Knight this time around. Long, but not too bad.
Well, that was basically Paris. We have stopped at a place called Peronne on the way up to Lille so we can sort out the car before we have to return it in a couple of days. Hopefully, we'll get a chance to catch up with Karen, Ian's cousin, whilst we are in Lille as well. Then it's goodbye to the continent & hello UK
Til then ... Au Revoir!
