la belle Paris...

Paris

I was in Paris 8 days altogether, to round off nicely the month of August, quite enough to get a good taste of the city that's supposed to be the world's most beautiful.

The first five days I really enjoyed, as I was with my parents whom I hadn't spent much time with in the last 7 months ( - a slight understatement). We did lots of nice things!

- Notre Dame & Crypte
- Tour Eiffel
- L'hopital des Invalides
- Louvre
- Moulin Rouge
- Champs Elysees
- Montmartre
- L'Arc du Triomph
- La consiergerie
- Le Pantheon
- Cathedrale du Sacre Coeur
- Quartiers Latin et Marais
- Les Egouts
- Hotel de ville
- Jardins des Tuillerie
- boat cruise on la Seine
- Palais Royal
- Grand & petit Palais
- L'Opera

We also ate lots of nice things, like:

- Fondue traditionelle et a la Bourguignonne
- Lots of cheeses and pates on baguettes
- Escargots!
- Omelette
- Crepes
- Lots of pastries and croissants
- Creme brulee
- Onion soup
- Duck
- Beaujoulais & Bordeaux
- Raclette
- Creme fine

We were luck to stay in a lovely apartment with all the comforts, so although we did lots of walking, it still felt like a holiday - although not quite like we were in France, as we heard more Italian spoken anywhere than French.
We taught my father how to say one sentence in French (although he's quite convinced he can almost say anything): "Peux-je avoir la note, s'il vous plait?" - strategic teaching, I call it ;) but it was quite funny him associating the pronunciation of peux-je to pesce ('fish' in Italian).
Other nice memories were of the cute restaurants we endulged in, and after-dinner walks in nice quartiers, which proved that Paris is, really, undoubtedly beautiful, more than I expected. No extremely snobby Parisians encountered, although there seemed to be an unexplainably disproportionate amount of urine on walls and footpaths.


I also spent 3 more days in Paris with Patrick, a good friend from Austria, who joined me there the day my parents took off for Perth.... sniff sniff! On my own again :(
Anyway we had a good few days wondering around the city, using the Velibs, eating baguettes, and going out a bit (shame it was the start of the week!). We were able to stay in a cute studio, also leased from the guy who gave us the other apartment, and slightly cheaper than a hostel bed would have been. So, if anybody has plans to go to Paris, ask me for accommodation contacts :)


Here are photos!


And right now I'm in Grenoble, where I'll be the next 5 months or so doing my second exchange. It is now rather past my bedtime and I shall blog about Grenoble in the next few days. The arrival has not been as I expected so keep an eye out for news!