The Paris post

It has been a week since I have been back from Paris and I still have not made the time to write this blog entry about it. I had meant to do it on Thursday as I had the day off work, but it was such a nice day, I went out and explored Covent Garden instead. Now I'm at work and it's a Sunday so I'm going to try and start this off.

We caught the Eurostar from Kings Cross St. Pancras at just after 9am, which meant not getting up at the crack of dawn for a change. The trip only takes about 2 and a half hours and drops off at Paris Gare du Nord in Montmartre. We had booked ourselves an apartment for 4 nights, which worked out to be cheaper than the both of us booking into a hostel. This place was quite small, but bigger than a dorm and was actually quite cozy.

I was a little apprehensive, as I always am, when going to a foreign country about people not being able to understand me or being offended that I'm in their country but not speaking their language, but my initial worries were unfounded as the French people are very friendly and helpful. I actually learned quite a lot of the basics of the language while over there and I'm still adjusting back to English even now.



Anyhow, our first view of Paris was from the top of Montmartre, just 5 minutes up the steps from our apartment. At the top of the hill (the highest natural point of Paris) is the Sacre C'oeur cathedral, which is a big, white limestone monstrousity that looks over the city. It's actually rather pretty, but like everything else in the city, the locals don't like it. It seems to be a very French thing to hate monuments.



The view from the top of the hill is amazing and allowed us our first ever glimpse of the Eiffel Tower! I also noticed how flat the city looks and only later found out that after the building of the Montparnasse tower (a very hated building) the government banned tall buildings in the city. For this reason, the Eiffel Tower dominates the skyline in Paris.





[caption id="attachment_213" align="aligncenter" width="620" caption="Bonus points: Spot the pig in this picture"][/caption]

Soon after, we took a tour around Montmartre with the Sandeman tour group which started off in the Pigalle area, right across for the Moulin Rouge and took us back up the hill past the Amelie cafe. We saw several sites of artistic importance, such as where Van Gough lived for a while and where Picasso got free meals and we saw the last remaining windmills. It was a very entertaining tour and when it was over, we went back to the Amelie cafe (Cafe des 2 Moulins) and had a dinner of Confit de Canard and les Grand Assortment. It was very good and just the beginning of our French food experience. There was also a band doing very bad covers of english songs, but everyone seemed to be getting into it.





After our dinner, before retiring for the night, we caught the metro on a spur of the moment trip over to the Arc de Triomphe. By this time is was very dark, but as we stepped up out of the metro exit, we were greeted by the massive arch in the middle of the most insane roundabout in the world. We walked from there to the Eiffel Tower to see it up close. When we got to the River Seine, the tower was right in front of us, exploding into a spectacular light show.





We walked under the tower, scarcely willing to believe this was it, the actual Eiffel Tower. I can imagine some people being wholly unaffected by this, but it's one of the most iconic human constructions ever built. To see it with my own eyes, to cross it off the list, is a very rare and special rush that I am very much addicted to.







So that concludes day one. I'll have photos uploaded when I am home sometime and then I'll tackle the next few days.