March 19 to March 21 (by Heidi)

March 19:

*I've put some photos on Facebook which you can see here. You don't need to have an account, that's a public link that anyone can see.*

The day you fly out is never exactly fun. The knowledge that we were about to go and sit through 3 consecutive flights was not exciting, but it's a necessary evil.

The flight from Brisbane to Singapore was fine and uneventful. We both stayed awake and watched movies. None that I was excited about, but they served their purpose. We arrived in Singapore about 730pm their time and had a couple of hours to wander around the termianl before our flight departed a bit after 11. I was very unimpressed to discover upon boarding that we were about to spend the next 14 hours sitting in the very back row of plane. Thankfully it wasn't quite so bad as the last back row flight I took, the seats did actually recline somewhat on this one, but I still was not very happy about how loud it was back there and how many people were constantly standing around me waiting to go to the bathroom. We slept on and off thanks to earplugs and eye masks and eventually arrived in London about 520am local time.


March 20:

We jumped on the bus to take us to the right terminal at Heathrow and then had a couple of hours to kill before our flight to Paris (CDG) at 910am.

CDG was a little bit of a surprise.. It's a bit rundown but they do seem to be doing renovations. Thankfully our baggage arrived with us so we threw all our junk on a trolley and headed outside. The bus was easy to find and we caught it to the train station. We decided to catch the lift once we arrived as the stairs weren't exactly luggage friendly. But inside the lift we found someone had apparently been unable to make it to the bathroom and decided that the corner of the lift was as good a place as any to do a number two. Worst of all, some other poor bastard hadn't noticed it and there was luggage wheel tracks through it. Keeping breakfast down was a little bit of a struggle.

The line to buy a train ticket was ridiculously long so we decided to use the machines and do it ourselves. Unfortunately for some silly reason the machines dodn't like our credit card (we've been rejected most times we've tried now) so we had little choice but to go and join that ridiculously long line. After what felt like an hour we finally had our tickets and jumped on the RER to Gare du L'est, and then changed onto the metro to finally finish up at Jacques Bonsergent.

Once we finally made it onto the street we were unsure of which way to go, but a friendly local stopped to see if we needed directions and happily pointed out the way to our hotel.

Hotel Magenta reminds me of the pod hotel in Kyoto... The room is itsy bitsy teeny tiny but clean and has a very comfy bed. We got it cheap and honestly, we don't plan to spend too much time in here anyway.

First priority was a shower - it was nearly 40 hours since our last one so it felt like heaven. Being extremely tired we had planned on just sticking around nice and close to the hotel, but instead we decided to go for a walk to Hard Rock Cafe. Buffalo wings with blue cheese sauce went down a treat and my mojito had me quite tipsy very quickly. Not such a good thing to combine with jetlag! Steak and ribs for dinner hit the spot and then it was time to walk back to the hotel. In spite of our best intentions I flaked by about 730pm and not even nasty cramps could wake me up for any more than about 2 seconds.


March 21:
(click photos to see larger version)

We both woke about 4am thanks to being early to bed the previous night but managed to get back to sleep until about 7. The free breakfast at the hotel was more than satisfactory and we pushed out on our first day exploring Paris.

Here's a map of our route for the day.

First stop was Place de la Repulique - an impressive monument smack in the middle of an intersection just a few blocks from our hotel. We're not quite sure what it's about, but it does look pretty cool. That's not the first time I'll say that on this trip..

We continued on down Boulevarde du Temple until we reached Bastille - another monument in the middle of an intersection (again, you'll be hearing that a lot). We know what Bastille Day is and the few french words we could make out on the engraving backed us up that it was a war monument. Thank goodness English has absorbed quite a lot of French words (and visa versa, I guess) as we'd be in trouble here otherwise!

From Bastille we walked down beside a canal filled with very prettily decorated boats until we reached the Seine, which we then followed towards Notre Dame. We crossed the Siene at Pont De Sully and walked along the southern side for a couple of blocks before crossing over to head to Notre Dame.

Notre Dame blew me away. Construction on the gothic cathedral began in about 1163 and took about 170 years to complete! That alone is amazing... The thought of building something over 170 years is just mind boggling. Notre Dame has a fine example of flying buttresses. Personally I think they are ugly from the outside, but when you see what they make possible on the inside, all is forgiven.

The cathedral was partially destroyed during the French revolution, but thankfully it was then restored in the 1800s.

The stained glass work is simply amazing and the intricate carving work makes you wonder how many lifetimes it would have taken to complete.

From Notre Dame we crossed back to the northern side of the river and wandered along until we came to Pont Neuf. Sadly there was no sign of Jason Bourne, but it's a pretty cool bridge anyway. Neuf means new - so despite it being the oldest existing bridge across the Seine, they've been calling it 'New Bridge' for the past 4 centuries. Ha.

Next stop was Musee du Louvre - or the Louvre which was orignally constructed in 12th century as a fortress. It then became the royal palace until Louis XIV decided to move to Versailles in the late 1600s and the Louvre was used to display the royal collection. It was made into a museum in the late 1700s.

The Louvre is, of course, home to Da Vinci's favourite painting, the Mona Lisa. I was actually a little bit surprised at just how small it is and honestly wasn't overly taken with her. To me, the enormous and intricate painting of Napoleon 1's coronation was far more impressive.

There's far more to the Louvre than just paintings and we wandered through exhibitions of amazing sculptures such as Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss and artifacts from Greece and Egypt. After a couple of hours we decided we had had enough. Only problem was we couldn't get out. There was exit signs everywhere, but they didn't actually seem to point to THE exit, just the way out of whatever room you were in. We looped around in circles a few times until we had to resort to peeking out windows to try figure where the pyramids were so we could try and make our way towards them. We eventually made it out, but it was far from easy!

From the Louvre we headed to Place de la Concorde and the obelisk gifted to France from Egypt. Again, this is in the middle of a huge and crazily busy intersection. On the subject of intersections, neither of us can quite figure out how traffic works here... There's forever people stopped in odd places in the middle of intersections and God only knows how they work out who has right of way... The obelisk is also at the beginning of Avenue des Champs Elysses - seemingly Paris' answer to Fifth Avenue... Or is that the other way round?

At the other end of Champs Elysees is Arc de Triomphe Etoile - one of the best known sights of Paris after the Eiffel tower. The view from the top is stunning - you can see for miles. One thing that really strikes me about Paris is the lack of skyscrapers. Yes, there is a small cluster of them to the south of the arc and a few others scattered here and there, but other than that, the city buildings are fairly low. Most buildings seem to be around 5 or 6 stories high, and that's it.

On our way down we found the area directly under the arc was fenced off for a group of people in military dress. We thought it had something to do with the lighting of the flame for the unknown soldier at 630pm each day so kept going and started to head home. We got a little way down Avenue des Champs Elysses to discover a whole parade of military personel, complete with a band! We stood for a bit and watched the marchers go by. We are still wondering what it was all about....

By this time our feet and legs were absolutely killing us so we took the metro home - even at 7pm it was packed! We found a little place near our hotel which did dinner. Very conveniently it was also happy hour and the happy hour menu included mojitos and a beer - we were set. Not the greatest steaks we've ever eaten, but still a nice meal and a lovely evening. We made our way back to the hotel and fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows.

March 22:

Being so buggered from yesterday, it was a bit of a slow start. We didn't actually wake until about 830. The blockout curtains do a good job! By the time we eventually got ourselves going and to the station - Gare du Nord - it was getting close to 11am. A quick line switch at Notre Dame St Michel and we were on our way to Chateau de Versailles. Versailles becaume the royal palace when Louis XIV decided to move there in the 1680s.

Put simply, the place is amazing. We opted to pay to go inside and were blown away by what we saw. A lot of it has been restored as much was lost thanks to the revolution, but it has been painstakingly restored to drawings, where they are available, or in the style of the day. The Hall of Mirrors was one of the most impressive rooms with its massive chandeliers, but all of the rooms were impressive in their own way. It was interesting to note that the bedrooms of the king, queen, prince and princess were not, in fact, strictly private... Gees...

The gardens of the palace stretch for what seems like an eternity. Unfortunately being early in spring most of the trees are still bare, the statues are all covered and some of the fountains have been drained for cleaning, but it is impressive nontheless. I was particularly taken with the ducks in the Grand Canal. No surprises there.

After wandering the palace and gardens for a few hours we made our way back into the town in search of food before setting off back to Paris.

As it was on the way back, we decided to stop at the Eiffel tower, intending on doing the climb up the stairs to take in Paris at dusk. Unfortunately we were about 5 minutes too late - the line was still there, but the security guard wasn't letting anyone else join it. There was a whole lot of people standing around complaining that he had cut it off early as it wasn't yet 6pm, but he wasn't having a bar of it.

Instead we dodged the throngs of tower replica floggers to go and take photos and then went for a wander to wait for it to get dark enough that they would light her up.

The lights finally came on about 730pm and after a few more photos, we made our way home.

Tomorrow we will probably go back and make the trek up the stairs.