Saturday
We set off at 4am for the walk to the train station. We caught the train to Kings Cross and the underground to Waterloo, arriving in plenty of time. We checked in (sooo much easier than at an airport!) and grabbed a bagel and a drink and sat to wait forour train to be called.
We boarded the 8.12am train to Paris Nord and made ourselves comfy. I then decided that I needed a cuppa and headed to the refreshment carriage...which was a mistake! The queue went right around the carriage with one (slow) bloke serving! I was there for what seemed like an age (at was actually about 30 mins!) I thought I was going to get to Paris before getting served! When I got back to Carl, I pointed out that the guys in front were watching Family Guy...my second mistake. Carl then spent most of his time peering through the gap in the seats to watch it!
We arrived in Paris at 11.45 and then decided to head to the tourist information office to pick up our metro tickets and find out where our hotel was!! Our hotel was 2 minutes walk from Pont Neuf, the Seine and a metro station. Ideal and sooo much nicer than the New York 'hotel', but then again...that's not difficult!
Lunch was needed and we ate at 'Cafe du Pont-Neuf' where we ate brushetta and drank wine (yum yum!) After this we decided to see a few sights and churches were the name of the game! First it was off to the Sacre-Coeur (Sacred Heart). It is on the top of a hill and the views were great, although it was a little cloudy and drizzly. I liked this church the best from the outside as it was 'dome-y'!The Great Mosaic of Christ inside was spectacular. It was then off to see St Sulpice, which I wanted to see as it was mentioned in the Da Vinci Code book! It has 2 huge towers and 2 floors of pillars - nothing like I expected. But one of the towers was covered in scaffolding - something I am getting used to after Barcelona!! Inside it has 2 big holy water fonts made out of shells and a fantastic sculpture at the rear of the church. We then went to Ile de la Cite. We walked around the island and to Notre Dame (see photo). We walked inside Notre Dame and a service was going on. Very strange to walk around, with the other vistors while an actual service is going on! I wondered how the priest managed to concentrate...We then decided to head back towards the hotel and find somewhere nice for dinner. We walked around a lot and then found another church St Eustache, which was closed by this time but very pretty from the outside (apart
from the scaffolding...again!) We then spotted 'the big head', which was a sculpture I'd wanted to find -it was right outside the church! So I got to sit on the 'big hand', as the 'big head' was too high!! It is actually called 'St Eustache sculpture', which, really, is a bit of a givaway to its location huh!We did find somewhere nice to eat called 'L'Auberge du Louvre', where we ate yummy food and drank yummy wine.
Getting down from the sculpture was harder than it looks!!
Sunday
We had an early start this morning as we wanted to 'beat the queues' at The Louvre. My nifty little guide book said to arrive 20 mins early to avoid the queues...so that was the plan. We found the entrance and marvelled at the queue...all 8 of us! We got in and headed straight for the Mona Lisa, as we knew it would get busy. The Louvre was pretty busy anyway and when we got to the Mona Lisa it was a bit disappointing. No photography (so sorry Caro - no photo of the floor!!) and it is behind glass with security watching your every move. One woman was made to leave for trying to photograph the painting. I thought the painting would be...er...bigger! It seemed like A3 size to me! We looked, over the heads of the crowd and then turned around and saw a much better painting...in fact the biggest in the Louvre - The Wedding Feast at Cana - 67sqm of it! We spent a lot longer looking at this painting than the stamp-size ML! We walked around a fair bit of the Louvre, mainly concentrating on the sculpture areas rather than the paintings. The Egyptian stuff thay had was very cool.We also saw the Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo. Then we decided to see the Pyramid,
which is pretty cool. Carl wanted to see the Easter Island head (yes…another ‘big head sculpture’!), but when we asked, the information desk guy knew nothing of it, so we headed outside to see the pyramids from there. We passed the main entrance, not the one we went in, and the queues were immense!! I’m talking over an hour to get in! Carl and I looked at each other in a smug way at this point! From the pyramids at the Louvre you could see the Eiffel Tower in the background…see?!?!We then headed back towards the way we’d come in, still curious about the Easter Island head thing, as Carl had seen something on the way in. We passed the entrance and what do you know?!?! No QUEUE!! Jam-tastic!! So straight in and to the ‘Arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas’, my guess as to where ‘the head’ would be…and I was right!! Here is Carl…with the big head! (photo)
I have to say, this area of the Louvre was by far my favourite…and to think we nearly missed it out entirely! I especially liked the big-lips sculptures! We did photos of us with big lips and got plenty of strange looks from people, but did we care? No! Well, not much anyway!
After spending all morning in the museum, we'd worked up an appetite, so we went in search of food. We headed down a few back streets and found a cafe called 'La Coupe D'Or' which looked nice. More yummy food and we were talked into dessert too...which was a very tasty strawberry tart thingy! Yummy!!
Then we headed back towards the Louvre and walked from there, through the Jardin du Carrousel and Jardin des Tuileries to Place de la Concorde, where the rather large obelisk lives. It is only 75ft tall and from a 3000 year old Luxor temple...not bad huh?! From here was the long walk down the Champs Elysees (a place I remembered from year 3 French!) And what a long walk it was!! My feet had begun to do the Barcelona thing (I pulled the muscle in the arch of my foot...again!) which was annoying!
On arriving at the Arc de Triomphe (which was origionally going to be an elephant spraying water...) we decided we'd better climb it! So we did...and I managed to ask for 2 tickets in French and everything! The views from the top were great...you could see just how far we'd walked!! One American guy peed us off when he asked his on how many steps there were. The boy said '217' to which dad replied 'I counted 218. I knew you'd be wrong.' What a supportive dad! Had I known how many steps there were myself, I would have said something, not in a confrontational way, but in an i'm speaking loud enough for you to hear me way!! There are 284 steps, in case you were wondering...
From there we took the metro towards the Eiffel Tower. We got the Metro to the Trocadero so we could walk to the tower via the Jardins du Trocadero, for the views. The tower is pretty huge, and not like I expected at all...not sure why as I'd seen enough pictures and seen it from a distance. It is just so immense...and brown!!
We didn't go up the tower as we had that booked for tomorrow, so we headed out towards the Opera area of Paris for a drink. We found somewhere and had crepes and more wine...yummy!
It was then back to the hotel to get sorted and refreshed. After 'dinner' (which was McDonalds as we were in a hurry...a bit of a joke with Carl and me really as it was the first thing we ate on our honeymoon...that's what you get when you arrive at about 11pm and have no idea where any eating places are!) we headed off to the coach tour of the illuminations. The tour took us round lots of Paris but unfortunatly you couldn't always see what they were talking about (as the coach wasn't an open top bus!) but we did see a very sparkly Eiffel Tower, which was cool! We got back at about 11.30pm...worn out and knowing we'd have to get up early for the trip tomorrow...
Monday
Up early again for the coach tour around Paris. This one was much better as we had front seats and it was light!! The tour took us round the main Paris highlights (Place de la Concorde, Arc de Triomphe, Hotel des Invalides, Pantheon, Notre Dame, Place de la Bastille etc) which was great as we hadn't seen some of these places. We then had a boat cruise along the Seine, which was very pretty, before a trip up the Eiffel Tower (avoiding the entrance queues!!) We did have to queue to go up to the top floor though! The views from the top were great! One of my favourite buildings, the Hotel des Invalides, is the golden dome building in the background. After the Eifell Tower, we wandered around the Trocadero area before heading back towards the hotel for a late lunch (it was about 3 o'clock and we were rather hungry!) We decided to eat at 'Cafe du Pont-Neuf' again as they had 'Block de foie gras de canard et ses toasts' (duck pate with toast...apparently very french?!?) which was very yummy. I then had roast cod which was melt in your mouth delicious and Carl had steak, which he said was very yummy too. And more wine was drunk.... We then headed to an off-licence to buy some wine to take home before heading back to pick up our bags from the hotel and getting to the train station to catch the Eurostar home. We eventually got home at about 11pm...and collaspsed!
1 comment:
Sounds like you had a very 'Yummy' experience Plugs!
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