Paris au Trois

I met up with Ian and Lisa a couple nights ago, though they didn't manage to arrive until about 9PM or so. I spent some time waiting for them in a bar talking to a French guy about various things. Not long after we'd started, a rugby league game between France and Great Britian started on the TV. He hadn't seen such a game before, so I tried to explain it to him and his mate, I hope they got the gist of it.

Eventually I found Ian and Lisa, who were ready to go and get some dinner. I hadn't eaten myself, so I joined them. They'd invited two other Australian guys, Matt and Brett, along with us, and we had a nice meal at the restaurant a few stores down the street from the hostel. After this I took them up to the Sacre Cour, as the view I'd seen from it during my wanderings through the day were quite impressive. Acting the tour guide, I found our way up there and after a few photos and a walk around it was time to call it a night.

The next day called for a sleep in, which unfortunately resulted in the missing of the hotel's breakfast. Ian picked up some fruit from the grocery store and we began the days touring. It took us from the hotel down to the "Latin Quarter" of Paris, named due to the high level of historical academia in the region, and that they all used to speak Latin there, rather than due to the current ethnic connotation. There was no salsa dancing. There was, however, the Notre Dam cathedral that we meandered around. Admittance was barred due to some kind of music spactacle that was being prepared, and a pile of chairs was being created in the doorway to block entry. An novel method to be sure.

Following this we bought some wine and baguettes and had lunch in the Luxembourg gardens. This was quite nice and there was an orchestra about thirty meters away from our bench playing various classical tunes. This was followed by a marching band that went around the gardens a bit and then started performing in a different section. I'm not sure if that is a regular Saturday occurence, but it was nice to see.

We moved from the gardens around more of this part of the city and I directed us to the Pantheon which was most impressive. A huge building, I got some nice shots of it, as it was sunny for the first time in a long time, but the queue and high entrance fee caused us to skip checking it out inside.

The Eiffel Tower came next, and we waited around for the "Fat Bike" tour guides to arrive. Ian and Lisa had coupons for the ride, and I decided to tag along for fun. Whilst waiting at the bike collection point, Ian happened to recognise a girl by the name of Kim, whom with which we'd attended primary school. His facial memory was excellent, and we spent the evening hanging out with she and her boyfriend, Cam. Cam, Kim and myself were allocated to the "Kaboose" part of the bike ride, which meant we got to wear flouro yellow jackets and ensure that no cars tried to drive in the middle of our bike group. This seemed a bit odd when we were told about the job, however made perfect sense as we started to clog up the roads of Paris. As a lot of the time, our group literally took up the whole road, it was our job to spread out and ensure no cars tried to overtake and take out any cyclers in the process. It was fun, and Cam and I also took up the guides challege of high fiving as many Parisians as we could to beat the previous record of 13. He got 21 and I got 20, and we both managed to high five a cop. The bike tour ended with a boat ride up and down the main river in Paris (the name eludes me at the moment), upon which we were given a few complimentary wines. The tour all up was quite enjoyable, however not much actual history was given of the buildings. It was more a sight seeing affair which included Notre Dam, riding around the Louvre (this was cool) and a few other significant monuments.

We made our way back to the hostel, and Cam used some of his Bali-tuned bargaining skills to pick up a flashing light Eiffel tower for $2.50. He then tried to sell it to a few other groups for $3, but wasn't so successful. Kim decided she wanted to keep it at any rate, and the nice little trinket was quickly tucked away in a bag.

The next day was a trip to Versailles. There wasn't a lot to see, except one -massive- garden with a huge variety of fountains. We arrived a bit late, 3PM, which was due to getting the wrong train which caused our 30 minutes trip to take about 2 hours. We also got up a bit late and missed breakfast again. At any rate, the gardens were very well maintained, and included quite a big rectangular lake upon which we rowed a small hired boat across for half an hour. Unfortunately after completing this, it was past 5 and all of the fountains had been turned off. This was a shame, as we'd only seen about half of it, if that. We cut our losses and headed back to Paris, finding the correct train this time.

For dinner I had my first try of Escargo (snails), which while after being pulled out of their shells look pretty horrible, don't taste too bad at all. My main meal consisted of Beef Bourguignon (I still don't know how to pronounce that correctly), which was excellent.

I'm very much looking forward to tomorrows adventures, which consist of a trip to EuroDisney. My main goal is to get a photo with a certain blue capped duck . The Indiana Jones ride sounds pretty fun too!