Paris: "The true traveler..."

"The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time."
-Colette(1873 - 1954), Paris From My Window, 1944

Paris was incredible, and wow…my feet have never walked so much in my life! So I am going to outline my weekend travels because I find it the easiest way to post what we were up to.

Thursday: Andrew, Robi and I leave campus at 9:20am to catch a train to take us to Lutton [a small airport outside of London]. Our plane leaves at 12:15. We arrive in Paris and make our way through the RER system and the Metro to our hostel, called “Aloha” [which ends up being filled with mostly Americans]. We drop off our luggage and then wander around before Whitney and Kamani arrive [they had to take a later flight because both had class on Thursday morning]. Around 7 we make it back to the hostel, meet the girls, and then go in search of a restaurant. We venture into a Creperie, and of coarse eat crepes! [They were great]. Then we (thinking that Paris can’t be that hard to navigate), attempt to venture towards the river; we end up at the Eiffel Tower [we have great navigational skills, can you tell?]. We see the tower in the dark and see it do its twinkle show [beautiful] but decided that we don’t want to go up it until tomorrow. We then get lost trying to find our way back to the hostel and it takes us three hours to walk back [ouch].

Friday: First to the catacombs, see a bunch of bones; walk forever [97 stairs spiralling down into them and then 83 stairs coming back out].
Then went to the Cathedral de Notre Dame (Huge and wonderful!).
Went to a supermarket and bought baguettes (bread), and cheese, meat, yogurt and grapes; took all to a park and ate a nice relaxing lunch. After lunch we went to the Musee du Louvre and spent a good amount of time there. I saw the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory, and the Mona Lisa [among other art items, obviously]….all of it was really cool.
Back to the hostel, we grabbed dinner on the way at a supermarket, and ate in the kitchen area of the hostel and wrote post cards. Go to sleep early, ‘cause we’re all tired.

Saturday: Go to the Flea Market [disappointing, because there is only used stuff there, no neat booths of crafts or jewellery or anything else]. Hop on to the metro visit the Moulin Rouge which turns out to be really cool. We pass a bunch of sex shops [eeeek!]. Find “Tati”, the best/cheapest store in Paris for clothes. [I got 2 items: cute purple-ish turtle neck sweater, and red pants (they’re hot!), both for €6].
We take the metro to Arc de Triumph. Found lunch as before.
At this point I think that we went back to the Eiffel Tower [in the daylight]. Finding the tower, however, to not be as exciting as it was during the night, we decided to get some ice cream and take a short river cruise thing. [There was also Jazz playing across the river, ‘cause every Fri. and Sat. night in September are jazz nights apparently]. So we get on the boat going all the way down the Seine and back. This was great ‘cause it got us all off our feet [Kamani even fell asleep on Robi’s shoulder]. By the time we got off the boat and found some water it was getting dark so we got in line to go up the Eiffel tower. We went all the way to the top floor and were up there when it did it’s little twinkle show. Then it started to rain and we decided that we did not want to be caught in it, so we made for the metro again. We crash in bed again.

Sunday: Wake up at 5:45am [ugg], to catch our plane which doesn’t leave until 9:20am [we were there way early, but better that than late!]. We arrive safely back in London get some lunch and then take well deserved naps [smile].

Love to all, I’m going off to take another nap [grin]…just simply because I can.

Post a note, I have it so you can post anonymously now [you don’t have to have a blog address]. So leave me a postJ.

<><,
*maike rinaye*