From the gorgeous city of chocolate and beer (Brussels) we went to Paris, the city of love!
Paris was amazing. I tried not to have any expectations as you hear so much about it and obviously it is one of the big cities of the world (Paris, New York, London etc) so you know it’s going to be good but I still really had no idea what to expect. Well, even if I did have expectations, it exceeded them! What a gorgeous place. There were so many interesting buildings and lovely green areas not to mention how nice it was to wander up and down and over the Seine River. In some of the places we’ve been, the noted ‘touristy’ things to do have been stretching it a bit but in Paris we really had to be picky with what we chose to do because we just couldn’t afford to check out everything Paris had to offer!
So a quick run down... we saw the Champs-Elysees, the Arc de Triomphe, Cathedrale de Notre Dame de Paris, Musee du Louvre, and off course, the Tour Eiffel! All the big ones off course but well worth doing no matter how touristy they were! I was surprised by how big the Arc de Triomphe was! It was huge but really graceful and there was an excellent view from the top. We also really enjoyed the Tower Eiffel. We timed our visit as dusk was falling so we got to see the city in twilight heading into complete night so we could see all the pretty lights.
Our other highlight of Paris was the food. By this stage of our travels I was starting to get pretty sick of pizza/pasta/kebabs and McDonalds so it was such a relief to find an excellent restaurant near the hostel that had a 3 course menu for 12 euro and it was delicious too! Nice healthy fresh food! Not that easy to come by (well, not that cheap anyway) when you’re travelling! The service was so good that we even went back on the last night and the waiter recognised us and made a big deal of us so we got even better service that time around! It was great! :) Oh, I also love the crepes, yum!
Just some other random thoughts...
French people really do carry breadsticks around all day long! I’m not kidding, they really truly do! It’s a huge part of the diet there and I saw people buy them and just eat it as they walked along!
Also, contrary to what many people had told me, I found the people as a whole were not rude to me once they realised that I could hardly speak any French. With one or two exceptions everyone was really friendly and just as keen to help you out as everywhere we have been!
The last observation is about food again... the French people know how to enjoy food! I noticed that most places, even in McDonalds (!) everyone orders an entree, main, dessert, coffee and then some sort of alcoholic drink to finish the meal not to mention the breadstick, the different wines with the different courses and I’m sure all sorts of other subtleties I missed! Oh, lastly, Johnnie was most impressed that you could order a beer in McDonalds!
So from Paris we made our way to Nice which Johnnie will post about so keep tuned...
