Paris: Day 1 - Walk through central Paris

(Yes, you might be right, this might have been better before Tuesday's post. Hush. I'm pre-caffeinated and covered in mosquito bites. I might snap at any moment.)

Anyway, some of the sights of Paris - you can find more photos here.

Pantheon:

Cite Universitaire:

Notre Dame (without scaffolding!):

Metro sign (there may be more on this another day - I found lots of different metro signs):

River boat:

Mark showing the level the floods reached in 1910:

Accordion player:

Pont des Arts:

The road to Paris plage:

Water sprays - apparently Paris doesn't get enough rain during the summer, so to keep people cool, they've introduced automatic people watering systems:

The Louvre courtyard (Louvre pics themselves coming in a separate post):

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Paris: Day 1

These blog posts are obviously being written with a bit of a delay, and on an AZERTY keyboard. Any misplaced a's, q's, z's and w's are due to that. What punctuation you'll get is anyone's guess... Photos will follow when I get access to a computer with a SD card slot and internet. Possibly in September, at this rate.

Alors, I left you at stupid o'clock, waiting for the Eurostar. It duly arrived, with very un-British efficiency, and we got to Paris for mid-morning. Our hotel is near the Parc Montsouris, so after checking in, we went for a walk through there and had a picnic lunch, fending off tame (hungry) ducks as we ate. People feeding the ducks at the park may seem like an innocent hobby, but they grow to expect it. Saying "no" doesn't work well with ducks...

From there, we walked through to Saint Michel and Notre Dame - they've finished cleaning Notre Dame now and all the scaffolding is gone. This is the first time I've ever seen it without some work being done - it's lovely! Then we walked along the banks of the Seine, where Paris has opened "Paris plage", a series of cafes and activities to entertain those left in the capital over summer. We walked up to the Louvre and through its courtyards, then headed back to the hotel.

Dinner was in Montparnasse, in a restaurant we go to at least once whenever we're in town. The food was fabulous, as usual, and we followed dinner with a walk past the Hotel des Invalides to the Eiffel Tower, arriving as the sun was setting. It was a gorgeous sunset, and there are many, many photos living on my camera which tried to catch it.

Time is now running out on my internet ticket, so the rest of my trip will have to wait to be written up for a little while. Highlights so far include Chartres, the Louvre, a free concert outside the Hotel de Ville and the Canal St Martin...

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Christmas, the last part: Paris

I think we left the Christmas story at the point at which we'd found a working Eurostar. I'm too lazy to check, mind, so let's all just assume that's where we were. Train over was fine, except we were next to a bunch of teenagers, for whom Paris was their haven, and they didn't care what their richer friends who went across the other side of the world said. It was their haven. And they were going to meet all these - presumably famous - people, and blah, blah, blah. For hours. Hell really is other people.

Once we got there, we had just under 24 hours (23 hours, 59 minutes, to be precise) until our train back home to Villefranche. We were staying in a hotel near Place d'Italie, which was nice enough - the bathroom was scary though, the tiles had faces on. Distorted faces. And eyes. Horrible. The room was decorated with books though, so I approve of that.

We walked, a lot. I was going to get a map and colour it in to show you all how far we walked. Because I knackered my knee doing it, and wanted sympathy. But I can't find a map, so you can't see the extent to which we walked just yet. But we saw a lot, and had dinner at the restaurant around the corner from our old flat in Montparnasse (called Zazous, I recommend it, if you're in the area - even with the refurb, which makes it look like you're eating in someone's living room. Food is good!) and we walked around the Eiffel Tower and the Trocadero and down the Champs-Elysees. All nicely decorated and full of Christmas Market - and people. So very many people. None of whom paid the slightest bit of attention to anyone else around them. But the lights were pretty, and the giant wheel in Place de la Concorde made a lovely backdrop for the wedding photos the couple we saw were having taken. And the Tuileries was pretty in the moonlight. Blah, if you've been to Paris, you know all this. If you haven't been to Paris, stop reading my blog and go and book tickets. Now.

The next morning, despite my aching knee, we went to Sacre Coeur, then down through Chatelet, past Notre Dame to Gibert Jeune and Saint Michel, and then back to the hotel to get our bags to go home. I recommed first class TGV travel, in case you're interested - huge seats, no screaming children, bliss for several hours. And finally, we were home!

Many photos here - a selection follow, because it's my blog and I can...

Eiffel Tower:

Ugliest Building in Paris:

Eiffel Tower and some peace garden statue thing they've got at the bottom of the Champs de Mars:

The big wheel in Place de la Concorde:

And from the Tuileries:

Lights at the end of the Champs - they flashed, which you can't see...

Sacre Coeur:

St Eustache:

Notre Dame:

Shakespeare and Co - it is a very, very good thing I never went in here when we lived there, I'd have had even more books than I ended up with as it was. (If you're looking for an English bookshop in Paris though, go there. Really.)

Or here. Gibert Jeune sells all kinds of books and is fabulous and I love it. All of them, since there are several shops selling different topics of books. Except the Law shop, that one is kind of boring. But still. Go there too.

And, lastly, the mad fountains by the Centre Pompidou:

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