You Gotta Love This City

Trip Start Sep 07, 2008

Trip End Oct 10, 2008

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Where I stayed

Hotel Ibis Grand Boulevards Opera

(Paris hotels)

Flag of France Paris, France
Tuesday, September 9, 2008

We are finally here on our much anticipated honeymoon. Paris has always been special for us, as it is one of the places we travelled to in Europe in those first few magical months of falling in love. It is my 4th visit and Matt lost count somewhere in the 20's. Matt also promised himself many years ago that he would bring his wife to honeymoon in Paris and we are both so happy that his wish is coming true.

The flight here can only be described as long and tedious, mixed with enough turbulence to almost make me use the provided vomit bag for the first time ever. The pilot briefly mentioned that we might hit some turbulence over Eastern Europe. Well, Eastern Europe is a big place, and we had a good 4 hours of pretty impressive turbulence. However all else went very smoothly and we arrived in Paris just as the sun was starting to come up.

We could hardly contain our excitement at being back in Paris and despite not having been to bed for 36 hours we still managed to fit in almost a full day of sightseeing

Eiffel Tower

. We started at St Eustache church in the Marais district. Apparently it is as big as Notre Dame, but is missed by so many tourists. We were awestruck by just how tall the vaulted ceilings were, and by the impressive rose window inside. Outside were amazing flying buttresses, a great example of Gothic architecture. It is not as impressive overall as Notre Dame, but I would definitely recommend it to anyone visiting. It was also almost deserted at 9am, which never happens in Notre Dame.

We continued our walking tour of the Marais, through Forum des Halles to the Pompidou Centre. Certainly it is a unique building but wasn't to our taste as it was quite dirty looking with some of the coloured pipes faded from the sun.

We had ourselves a lunch of baguettes in Place des Vosges, which is an impressive square surrounded by 36 houses, 9 on each side to form a complete square. One of which was once home to Victor Hugo. If you are a pigeon in Paris, this is certainly the place to be, as we saw the fattest pigeons we have ever seen. Some were so obese they could barely walk and we questioned whether they could possibly manage to fly at all. The ground level of the houses fronting the Place is a strange mix of homeless people shelters and couture fashion shops. Very odd!!

As we were leaving Place des Vosges, we saw a doorway leading into a courtyard and followed some other people though. It opened into a magnificent courtyard garden which was so peaceful, even with the handful of other tourists inside. On exiting we found out that this was the Hotel de Sully. I love stumbling on places like that when travelling, it is sometimes so much more of a highlight than going somewhere because the Lonely Planet tells you to

Picnic on Champ Des Mars

.

We continued our walk onto the Ile De St Louis and spent some time enjoying the sunshine and marvelling at the fact that we were back in our favourite city. However, despite this excitement the fact that we had now been awake for more than 36 hours was starting to catch up with us and we headed home via Palais Royale.

One of the things we had sworn we would do this trip was to have a picnic on the Champ de Mars in front of the Eiffel Tower. Every time I have come to Paris I have seen couples doing just this and have always thought how romantic it would be. Tonight we decided that was about all we could manage, so armed with a baguette, blue cheese and pate, we made ourselves comfortable and settled in to admire the view. Great cheese, great wine from Bordeaux and great company with my lovely husband. Perfect!!

Bizarre Travel Experience #1 - Being sprayed with "hygiene spray" prior to disembarking from the aircraft in France. "This spray has been approved by the WHO and is required by the French government for all aircrafts landing in France." I have no idea what it was but it made my eyes sting...