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Friday, April 20, 2007

i seem to be getting lazier, but i still went to paris

so after some more snow in london,

we set tracks for paris for a long weekend that we were able to swinder from work. We headed to the airport on a friday afternoon pretty much straight from work for a few vinos at ol'weatherspoons before jumping on board our plane direct for paris (it worked out way cheaper for us to fly than train it, by about half). We headed into town, checked into out cute little place with the view

in republique and headed out for some awesome vietnamese just around the corner.

After a beer and some food, it was to time to kip. We awoke determined to hit up a casa de cambio so we could burn some euro off, so we headed west, towards up the street before finding a cash house to fill our pockets & a bakery to fill our stomachs before finally arriving at Sacre Cour, an amzing old church built upon a hilltop with amazing views of the city;



we wandered around for a bit, taking in the sights and snapping a few photos before coming upon this little place where we could fuel our bodies with caffeine before moving on.


We spent the next 45 minutes walking around the area trying to stumble upon the musee de salvador dahli, which we finally found pretty much around the corner from sacre cour in a tidy little side street. The museum was awesome, not massive but it contained a lot of dahli's sculptures that went hand in hand with his ultr-unusual paintings.


Post Dahli, we wandered some more (we tended to walk quite a bit in paris)down towards moulin rouge

and we found some awesome street markets selling fresh seafood and produce abound.

We continued to wander around in loops

until we found a tube station we boarded before we fell and eventually we found ourselves at the beginning of the Champs-Elysees where we continued our wandering towards the Arc de Triomph.




We snapped away, grabbed a famous french baguette and pondered whether the weather was good enough to head for the mother of all sights - the most visited in Europe and I dare say one of the most visited in the world: The Eiffel Tower


We arrived at the ginormous monument,

not long after 2, jumped into the queue that seemed to wind and bend forever! 40 minutes later the cloud began to roll in and we thought we had made the wrong decision. A raindrop or 2 and everyone had thought they had made the wrong decision, but as we got close to the end of the line, the skies cleared up and you could hear a faint celebration within the crowd.

We skipped the first level, that was for pussies and headed straight to the end of the first lift being level 2. We took some photos




and wandered about before Lil lost her nerve and headed away from the edge for a hot chocolate as I headed for level 3 - the point that feels so far off the ground it's as if your flying! I had to wait in yet another queue and this one was freezing but the wait was well worth the vistas that were upon me from way up there.

I headed back down and met with lil before our final descent back down to the ground, we wandered through the gardens on our way south, before coming along a bus that went somewhere vaguely in the direction of the hotel. We jumped off the bus when we thought that we were close and walked along a road which seemed to never end before stumbling across parque de republique - yay: nap time!

We snoozed for an hour (had never walked so much in my entire life) before getting ready for a big night out on the town with all the students down in the latin quarter. Now I thought that the latin quarter got its name as every mother there was from latin america, so i was getting ready to spice things up with some tequila, sunrises and nachos but what i later discovered is that the latin quarter is called so because all the schools within the area used to focus on teaching latin, fat lot of good that did them. Anyway we found ourselves a cool little cocktail bar, very small, funky and cheap. We sipped away on a couple of drinks listening to the languages around us trying to figure out where everyone was from.

We headed from there to an awesome little wine bar with fantastic wines by the glass on a balcony overlooking this posh restaurant, we had a wine or 2 there before leaving on the hunt for food! We were scooting in and out of some backstreets looking for the ultimate in french cuisine, before we found this 1 little joint that offered very reasonably priced set menus specialising in local french food. We couldn't resist.

We had mussels and creamy things and all sorts of stuff that I can't remember as it was ages ago and a great bottle of wine, before stumbling from the place, extremely full, slightly drunk and exhausted. We headed for another quick drink before jumping on the tube and heading home to collapse in a heap in bed.

We got up relatively early for a holiday the following morning and decided that sunday was the day for marketing, so we headed out past the latin quarter to a place that was supposed to be pumping with stands, people and action, but when we got there we realised how quiet & smal l it was so decided to keep walking. We grabbed some breakfast, coffee and a baguette for lunch at a little bakery before gitting a U-turn towards the Seine up and over that and onto some more markets.

The markets we found were pretty interestin; full of loads of food, wine, cheese and other assorted goodies do we grabbed some dips and stuff from a little middle eastern stall for lunch and continued shifting through the stalls to see what else the place had on offer. Once we reached the end, we decided that seeing as the weather was pretty average, we would head for the musee louvre for a warm dry day inside.


We rocked up and was surprised by the lack of a line as we were told by all to expect to wait 3o - 60 minutes to get in, not that I am complaining or anything, we headed straight in grabbed our tickets and then found a cosy spot to each our recently purchased middle eastern lunch.

The food was great, very garlicy: just the way that I like it. We fished for some chewies, packed up our things and started to venture deep into the depths that is the louvre.

The place is amazing & amazingly huge, we wandered around all the different galleries checking out the world famous venice de milo, mona lisa and many other assorted arts, sculptures and jewels. The place itself is a work of art! After several hours of wandering, we decided to head back into town for a coffee and a walkabout before finally deciding to head home for what seemed to have become our reoccuring afternoon snooze.

That evening we had decided to head back to the Champs de Elysees to check out the area and the Arc at night, we wandered around for a little bit looking for a bite to eat when we stumbled upon a really cool african influenced restaurant serving up random game meats and dishes from the continent. The decoration throught the restaurant was amazing, loads of hand crafted wood carvings, masks and a really cool atmosphere at not too bad a price! We stuffed ourselves before heading home via an ice cream store.

Monday morning, still not satisfied with our achievements of marketing, we headed towards what is supposedly the biggest market in Europe, full of vintage clothing, new clothing, antiques, furniture and all sorts of random goodies. The markets were pretty much a massive group of shops rather than the traditional stands, although there were a few rows of stands chucked in amongst it here and there. We wandered around for a bit, checking out the sights before heading back towards the centre of town and onto.........

I actually don't know what I was writing about now, it's been like 3 weeks since i started writing this, very lazy! I guess that it was the?? I don't know but I will update further soon, time for zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz