Paris Part 1 By Dave

Our first full day in Paris started off as late as possible, then breakfast which consisted of a croissant (of course) and then the usual cereal, yoghurt, coffee, etc. We headed off to the Champs Elysee, wandering up and back, dropping into hideously priced places, just for a look-see!!

We got some CD’s burnt of our photos taken so far, from our camera memory cards, little were we to know that they only transferred half of the photos onto the CD, a fact that we weren’t to find out until we got home.

We also dropped into the Louis Vuitton store, their flagship store, which apparently used to have some huge handbags or something out the front. They need to work on their customer service, when Alice picked up a wallet or something to look at a bit closer, the security guard leaned over and told us in no uncertain terms that you weren’t allowed to touch the display, dunno how you’re supposed to get a closer look at things if you can’t pick them up, but they are French I guess!! What made it worse was that there was already someone there who had picked something up and was looking at it, consequently Louis Vuitton aren’t on our Christmas card list anymore!!

Renault had a shop open along here with a few cars and a Formula 1 car, pretty interesting to see, although there were so many people there it was hard to get a good look.

We eventually got up to the Arc de Triomphe Du Carrousel which was errected by Napoleon to celebrate his battlefield successes of 1805. The top of teh Arc used to be home to the ancient Greek sculpture 'The Horses of St Mark's' which Napoleon 'borrowed' from St Mark's in Venice, but returned after his defeat at Waterloo in 1815!! It now has a two-wheeled chariot drawn by 4 horses on the top (added in 1828) which celebrates Napoleon's dopwnfall!! The Arc is set in teh middle of the Jardin du Carrousel which is basically a roundabout full of crazyFrench drivers with a death wish!! For those that don’t know, apparently your insurance is null and void on the car if you have an accident there!! Plus you have to give way to people coming onto the roundabout, bit different to the rules back in Australia, although quite similar to the way some Adelaide drivers actually treat roundabouts back at home!!

We headed back down the other side of the street dropping into a few places, with much friendlier people working in there!! We had a baguette for lunch, we were in Paris after all!! Very nice, and got some French pastries as well, also very nice!! We stopped and had a coffee to recharge for a bit, then hit the Rue de Rivilie, a shopping strip that was a bit more realistic, very touristy though, but good to see none the less.

The next stop was the Cathedral De Notre Dame De Paris, amazing old place, although you’d think people could be a bit more respectful inside, after you’ve gone past numerous signs saying no photographs (pictorially, so easy to understand), to not stand there and blatantly take photos while they’re holding a service! Translated to the Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris, Notre Dame is kind of like our GPO in that distances from Paris to every part of metropolitan France are measured from place du Parvis Notre Dame - the square in front of the Basilica. It was actually really cool, we flucked it with our timing so there was actually a catholic service going on with singing and everything. It was really cool to see, although being that it was in another language (i dont even think it was in French) we didnt really understand much!! Amazing to see all the old architecture, and to read some of the history associated with this place, good to also see how the French hold their mass, we can now say we’ve been to a church service in the Notre Dame!!

We then headed back towards the hotel, stopping for dinner at an American restaurant. It was good to have a nice big burger, with a nice big beer (for me, Diet Coke for Al) for dinner after a fair bit of walking for the day. Then headed back to the hotel for a good sleep, after a long day, we were both very ready for sleep!!

The next day (Thursday the 4th), we headed to the Louvre in the morning, well probably midday by the time we got there, we were on holiday after all!! The sun was out, with a bit of wind blowing clouds around, so we got some good photos out the front with the big glass pyramid, very weird seeing something that modern in the middle of such history. The line ups to get into the museum were massive, as per usual, so we saw as much as we could, then moved on, via another baguette for lunch, to the Hotel des Invalides, and the Army Museum. This is where Napolean’s Tomb is, we went through the shop there, and then headed to the Tomb, only to find out that we had to go back to where we were before to get a ticket. We couldn’t really be bothered, considering we wouldn’t have had much time in there before it closed after lining up for the tickets.

We headed back to the hotel, grabbing a chocolate éclair each (well i had a coffee éclair and Al had a chocolate éclair ), have to get the real French feeling, very very nice, although very rich, wouldn’t have wanted it to be to much bigger! Dropped off the camera, then headed to Galleries Lafayette, a big shopping centre, spread over a couple of blocks with an absolutely awesome Christmas decoration in the big centre dome area. Very nice area, although reasonably similar to shopping centres back at home, guess it’s hard to do too much with shops isn’t it!?!

We managed to find an internet café, checking emails from home, and checking up on bombs that had been let off in Bangkok on New Years, we were scheduled to stop in Bangkok on the way back to Australia, so needed to check out what was happening there and decide whether to keep heading there or not. In the end we decided that we would still go there, just try and stay vigilant and all that kind of thing. Not sure what we’d pick up, but we made it home OK.

We tried searching out some Italian food, we’d both been hanging out for a good pasta or something like that since we’d been travelling, but hadn’t managed to find anything decently priced. We just headed back to the hotel, only to find out that directly across the road had awesome pizza, pasta, etc. Just what the doctor ordered!