I woke up at 5am this morning to catch the train for Paris. My mum and I will be staying in Paris for 1 night and 2 days - my grandmother didn't want to come - she'd been to Paris before, and didn't like the idea of waking up at 5 o'clock in the morning. So we got to the train station without too much bother (though the northen tube line was down, so we had to catch a bus most of the way...). The train ride across the Channel is just amazing. The Eurostar train travels at some 190 miles per hour (or 300km/h for us metric people)!! It doesn't really feel all that fast when you're in it, until you realise those flashes out the window are telegraph poles going past faster than you can see. Not to mention that the cars on the highway that runs alongside the train in France look like they're standing still, even though they're probably going at least 100km/h!
Once in Paris, we had a coach tour around the streets, where we saw all the major sights. The Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower,
the Louvre, we drove up the Champs Elysée. It's a beautiful city. I mean, compare to London, they're both quite old (though I believe Paris
is older - London was founded by the Romans, who called it Londinium or something, while Paris was around a few hundred years BC) but where
London has just sort of built new buildings however it seemed to fit, Paris has sort of tried to keep everything matching. In London, you'll
see plenty of 10th century buildings or whatever, but they'll be right next to modern offices and apartments. In Paris, you'll see lots of
duality. Two buildings on either side of the Seine will be mirrors of each other, or at either side of the Champs Elysée, the Arc de Triomphe
is mirrored. They're not afraid to rip up whole sections of the city to make improvements eithers. The Champs Elysée is a good example - it
was put in during the 1800s, I believe, and they basically just cut a big swath through the city and put this giant road through. It looks
amazing, because starting from the Louvre, you have the courtyard (with the somewhat controversial glass pyramid), further on is the Tuileries garden,
past that is the Concord, containing a 3,200 year-old obelisk that comes from the temple at Luxor (it was given to the French king Charles X by Mohammed Ali, Viceroy of Egypt), then further on again is the Champs Elysée, then after that is the Arc de Triomphe, then after that way
in the distance is the tall office buildings of commercial district of Paris, complete with the arched building (also controvisial in it's time).
It's a breath-taking view.
Speaking of controversial buildings, Paris seems to be full of them. The one everybody knows about (certainly if you've read Dan Brown's rather predictible [in my opinion] "The Da Vinci Code") is the glass pyramid outside the Louvre. But so many of the buildings in Paris seem to have caused quite a stir when they first go up. In the end, I think, everybody gets used to them thouugh, and they seem to enjoys pointing out how controversial everything was when it was first put in :)
A funny thing about the roads in Paris - there's no lanes marked! I was used to people driving pretty much where ever they felt like, from my trip to India, but at least they still had lanes marked. In Paris, you might gets lines on the road to divide the oncoming traffic, or sometimes at a traffic light, but most of the time there were none! It was quite amazing sitting in the taxi going around a four-lane roundabout with no lines marked and people weaving in and out where ever they felt like!
I was told when I bought my Peugeot that I was basically buying a "French Taxi" (I didn't care, Peugeots are sufficiently rare in Australia that they're still pretty special), and now that I get here, I can see that's pretty true. A lot of the taxis are either 406/407 or 607s. Unfortunately, I never got a ride in a 607 (and I've driven a 407 before) so that was unfortunate, but I was quite relieved when I saw that it wasn't only Peugeots which made up the taxi fleet in Paris. There were Renaults, Citroëns, and even Mercedes Benz taxis! Try as I might, though, I never managed to catch a Benz taxi.
After the bus tour, we went up the Eiffel tower. The weather was quite clear, so we got a pretty good view, it was a little misty in places, though. We didn't go right to the summit, but I don't think it would have been worth it anyway. The 2nd level gives you a really good view, and I think much higher and everything would have been too hard to see anyway. We stayed up there for about an hour (which is really all you need, after all, there's only so much view to look at!)
We went on a boat cruise after the Eiffel Tower. It was down the Seine River, where we saw all of Paris' lovely brides. I never realized there
were so many bridges across the river! In Sydney, we have the Harbour Bridge, and the Tunnel, and then nothing until the Anzac Bridge. Mind you,
I suppose Sydney harbour is about 10 times wider than the Seine River, which is pretty miniscule in comparison. We got to see Notre Dame from
the boat, which is a pretty spectacular cathedral (famous for it's hunchback, no less!). The girl who did the commentary did it in three languages
(Franch, English and Spanish) but unfortunatly, her French and Spanish seemed much more fluent than her English so she was a little hard to
understand. I could forgive her, though, since French accents are so wonderful :p
After a bit of lunch (I had Sushimi. No French food, it's been so long since I had some nice Japanese and I was having withdrawals! Though it
was really nice Sushimi), we took a guided tour of the Louvre - easily the best part of the trip so far. In fact, in my opinion, the Louvre
was the best part of this whole holiday! If I had to discribe the museum in one word, I think it would be "immense", but even that doesn't really
give you much indication as to the size of the place. There are some 22 kilometres of galleries in the Louvre, the building itself is
some three quarters of a kilometre long 4 levels (and the rooms all seem to have 10 metre ceilings somehow) and every wall is silled with paintings
and sculptures. Naturally, given that we only had a couple of hours for the guided tour, we were pretty rushed. We somehow managed to fit in
all the main pieces though, the Mona Lisa, the Maddona on the Rocks, the Venus de Milo and a few others. It's a bit of a shame that you're
not allowed to take photos of many of the masterpieces (the poor security guards, all they seem to do is wave their finger at the tourists and
say "no photos" over and over again... it must get very tedious). All of the master pieces there I'd seen photos of before, but truely until you
actually go and see them in person, there really is nothing like it. You could seriously spend days and days in there, looking at everything. A
true master piece, for me, is one where I can just stand there and look at it for hours without tiring of it. Something that I find you can't
really do with a simple photograph.
We got a taxi to our hotel after the Louvre (it was a Renault, no Merc that's for sure!) - the tour company paid for it, which was nice. The hotel was a four star hotel, which was quite a departure from the Royal National we were staying in at London! Dinner that night was just had in the hotel restaurant, but it was the most delicious piece of steak I've ever eaten. It was seriously about 2cm thick, cooked to perfection, and so tender I could have cut it with a bread knife.
That night, we were booked in to go see the famour Lido Cabaret on the Champs Elysée. The show was simply spectacular, and while it's quite expensive (around 100€) it's definately worth it. They had this amazing act on ice that would have easily put olympic figure skaters to shame. Don't go if you don't like nudity, though, since a lot of the female dancers could out topless. It's all quite classy though, and I didn't feel too embarrased sitting next to my mum watching them :p
Of course, the show is quite late (we couldn't book for the 9 o'clock show, because we were too late: we had the 11 o'clock performance) so we didn't get back to the hotel until 2am. Something tells me I'll be sleeping in tomorrow!!