Paris is simply HUGEEE. And there are SO MANY LITTLE STREETS in paris, making navigating there a pain in the arse. Even the metro lines are confusing. Lyon only has 4 metro lines; paris has like, 8 + RER lines. Gosh.
I reached Paris on sat morning via TGV. The lyon-paris TGV line is the fastest around. And I was lucky to get first class seats, though I was stuck seating behind a group of noisy american kids throughout the journey.
PARIS! Something really funny happened; one of my friends who could not read french was cursing away because he thought that the C on the tap meant COLD, only to turn on the tap and find hot water flowing out.
Well, C stands for Chaud, which is HOT. F stands for froid, which means cold.
There was a manifestation going on down the street from where I lived.
Yea, viva la france! et les manifestations! et les greves! quoi d'autres?
This manifestation was for the handicap, because they only get 628euros/month and they want more.
Fantastic string ensemble outside the Louvre. The acoustics around there was fantastic. You feel as though you are living in Mozart's time, walking around the old buildings and listening to classical music being played along the sidewalk.
LOUVRE!!!!! I was soooo happy to finally see the Louvre in full glory! I snapped many pictures of the darn pyramid from different angles. All pictures came out more or less the same.-___-
Mini arc de tromphe.
Eiffel tower!
Notre Dame de Paris. It was so insanely crowded and there was a lonnnnnng queue to get in, so I gave it a miss.
I went into the Louvre musee on my birthday, 30th march. It is simply impossible to finish the Louvre in one day. C'est PAS POSSIBLE.
The louvre consists of 3 buildings having 4 stories each.
Speaking of my birthday, I got cheated because the daylight savings time kicked in on my birthday (at 30th march 2am, the time jumped to 3am), so I lost 1 hour. Yea, 23 hour birthday. I spent 30th and 31th march being very confused about the time because some of the clocks in Paris were not adjusted to the correct time.
Anyway, LOUVRE!
The inside of the glass pyramid.
Famous painting La Liberté guidant le peuple by Eugène Delacroix. Notice that the two victorious subjects are minorities.
THE FAMOUS MONA LISA!!! There were soooooo many people crowding in front of her, making it impossible to admire it for long at close range.
Aphrodite, aka Venus of Milo.
Next day... visit to the Eiffel tower!
At Champs Elysee.
Eiffel tower, the mega lightning rod of Paris, hehe. When it was first built, the parisians hated it. When the Louvre pyramid was first built, the parisians also hated it. And when the esplanade was first built, the singaporeans hated it too. hahahah.
Eiffel tower again! We had a choice to walk up or take a lift up. Since the queue for walking was short, we walked up. The key to visiting attractions in Paris is to go as early as possible to beat the insane queues.
From the top down.
View from the 2ieme etage.
OYSTERS for lunch. The fantastic thing about paris is, all the road-side resturants I ate in served fantastic food. The thing about french cuisine is that there is high weightage on presentation and service. We had oysters(flat Belons! Bretagnes!), crevettes and escargots. So french! And the meals are not very expensive; you can get a 2 course meal for around 20 euros.
Monday was spent in Disneyland (the only disneyland in europe)! I made a mistake and used the wrong ticket to take the RER to disneyland. Instead of using the 6 euro ticket, I used a normal 1 euro ticket. So we had to climb over the barrier to get out of the train station.
Disneyland is made up of 2 parcs: the studio parc and the parc with all the fun rides. Since I knew we won't have time to cover both, we bought the ticket for one parc.
Studio parc.
fun parc! :D:D:D
GOOFY!!!!!!!! I had the guts to take photos with these characters because I was the only BIG KID doing so.
Mickey! Mickey speaks french.
Sleeping beauty's castle.
Roller coaster. I rode all the scary roller coasters, those with high limits. Yes, I managed to ride them even with the high limits, I am not THAT SHORT. Out of the 4 scary rides, 2 of them had 360degree turns, so this was my first time doing those.
The perpetually smiling cat from alice in wonderland.
Alice in wonderland maze.
Alice in wonderland house.
"its a small world after all" ride!
They had little dolls representing all the continents. This one is obviously France.
Dolls!
Pluto! There were so many kids crowding around him to get autographs, it was so paisae to ask him to take a photo with me.
Space mountain! I got a little car sick after this ride.
Before leaving Disneyland, We managed to catch the march pass of the little disney characters.
Beauty and the beast.
Snow white.
There were many other characters like aladin, mickeymouse + co, sleeping beauty, little mermaid.
escargots!
I went to the most posh boutique I've ever been to my life in Paris-the Cartier boutique. They actually hired one dude to just open the door, and two women to stand near the door to dish out honey-coated "bonjour"s and "au revoir"s to you. It's just Crazy. If you are a poor man like me and go in, you'll certainly feel very uncomfortable.
The real Arc de Tromphe.
THE LV shop in Paris. It's 3 stories filled with LV stuff- clothes, shoes, watches, wallets, bags, jewelery.
Inside of the big LV store. Of the 5 days I spent there, I went to LV 4 times. Twice to the big LV, twice to the small one in Gallery Lafayette. Talk about LV overdose, I don't think I want to see another LV bag in the next 3 months.
One amazing thing about the LV boutiques was that it was FILLED with asians. Like, 3/4 of the customers were asians. At Gallery Lafayette, almost all the service staff were asians too. It felt as though I stepped into Chinatown. But it was also heartening to know that asians are getting more affluent. :)
Our loot! Nar, I didn't buy any LV bags for myself, though it felt really cool to go up to the salesperson and say "Je prends ca, ca... et ca" when helping my friends buy their stuff. I got the chance to see the LV bag I have been eyeing since last year up close, and boy was I disappointed! It didn't look as nice up close. :(
Oysters and crevettes for my last dinner there.
I love oysters =)
2 comments:
Looking at those photos reminds me of the days I spent in Paris. Le Louvre! Gosh... I've been there twice and I'm seriously sick of it. Same goes for Disneyland. Btw, did you realise that they have staff who can speak almost all the major Asian languages in the LV boutique at C-Elysees?
YES! It's crazy man.
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