Lost in France: Part Un - An Australian in Paris

Apologies if this reads like a travel diary. I guess in some ways that is exactly what it is. I'll only put a few pictures in for now, but will put more up when I get home and have given them the photoshop treatment.

The flight to Charles de Gaulle went pretty smoothly. There was minor turbulence throughout the flight and unfortunately quite a large number of small children, neither of which were condusive to much sleep.

We arrived at 6:45am and went straight to the hotel to leave our bags at the desk. Going straight to the hotel entailed taking a shuttle bus to Gare Montparnasse and then the Metro (subway/underground) to a station right outside the hotel. The shuttle was definitely the most interesting part. It took us half an hour to leave the airport! It was a never ending jumble of roads, cars and buses. I'm so glad we didn't have to drive it or we'd have got lost or had an accident.

We decided that the best way to combat jetlag would be to be active all day and crash as close to bedtime as we could make it. So off we went to Musee d'Orsay. My first travel tip for Paris (and probably my only tip) is to buy a museum pass. It's not cheap, but if you go to a few museums and monuments, you'll get your money's worth, and the best thing is that you get to skip the queues, which makes it worth it's weight in gold.

Unfortunately many of the Monet's at the Musee d'Orsay were on loan to another exhibition, but there were still plenty of Van Gogh's and Manet's etc.

Next up was the Lourve.

The queue was massive, but we got to skip it. Thank you museum pass!

The Louvre is massive and we knew we weren't going to get close to seeing all of it, so we picked a few things that we really wanted to see and went from there.

We checked out the old structure of the medieval Louvre that they had built over and recently uncovered. From there we visited the Egyptian antiquities and the Asian antiquities. We both really loved the Iranian building facades with beautifully coloured bricks. From there we visited the Venus de Milo and then went on to the inverted pyramid followed by the Napoleon III apartments. These were gorgeous and very lavish. It was onto the Mona Lisa next. We'd both seen her before, but decided to have another look - along with half of Paris. From the Mona Lisa we wandered through the Itallian section to the Winged Venus and then called it a day. Doesn't sound like much, but it was hours worth of viewing!

After a rather slow amble back to the hotel we realised that we were both very tired, so we decided that a bath and some room service would be ideal for the evening. We managed to stay up until 8pm before passing out in bed.

On day 2, we woke at 6am and felt fully refreshed. We had an amazing breakfast at the hotel that consisted of egg, bacon, cold meats, cheeses, pates, croissants, baguette, pain au chocolat, other pastries and delicious jam. Don't worry, we didn't eat all of that in one go... we had two courses. haha!

After our breakfast we were all fueled up for our walk to the Champs Elysees.

We walked via the Place de Concorde, which is a massive intersection. Crossing the road was extremely scary, even at the lights, but we made it okay. I have no idea how people drive in Paris. It's insane. There are no lane markings despite there being 4 or 5 lanes of traffic each way.

We had a coffee on the Champs Elysees...

... and then climbed the many stairs of the Arc de Triomphe where we could see all of the Paris sights.

We then walked to the Eiffel Tower and had a crepe...

...before boarding a hop-on-hop-off cruise down the Seine. We hopped off at Notre Dame, which is beautiful.

Unfortunately most of the best bits are shut in low season, so we could only wander around the chapel itself (which is still impressive) and the treasury. Wow, what amazing wealth!

We hopped back on the boat...

...and headed over to Hotel de Ville where we visited the Centre Pompidou, which is a modern art gallery. They had some fantastic examples of cubism including a large collection of Picasso and Braque.

We hopped back on the boat and traveled back to Musee d'Orsay which is near our hotel, grabbed a bite to eat on our way back to the hotel and this time managed to stay awake until 9pm. Getting better!

Day 3 started with another awesome breakfast. We were hoping to head out to the Palace of Versailles today, but because of the national strikes, the concierge recommended that we didn't leave Paris in case we couldn't get back.

So we were set for another day of walking. My legs hate the French!

We walked to the Rodin Museum only to discover that the march would be going past, so they were opening late. We then trekked across town to the Pantheon, which is a monument dedicated to St Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris.

The buiding is lovely inside. Beautiful murals and wonderfully decorative ceilings. There are a number of famous French people entombed in the crypt at the Pantheon, including Pierre and Marie Curie, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas.

From the Pantheon we wandered to the Luxembourg gardens, via a shop to buy macaroons. Whilst at the gardens, it started to rain on us, so we sought shelter under a tree to eat our macaroons.

We decided that the day had it in for us, so we should head inside. We walked to the Conciergerie, which is near Notre Dame, only to discover that that was closed for renovations. We then walked all the way back to the Rodin Museum. It was open! And it was full of amazing sculptures, many of which are outside in a gardens. Such a great way of doing a sculpture museum. Of course we saw the thinker...

The Armee Museum was nearby, so we thought we'd head there for a bit of a change. We'd only got halfway through medieval armour when we were told that it would be closing early due to the demonstration. As we were leaving, we saw police stationed on the roof of the museum, riot vans and police decked out in full body armour. Paul wanted to stay out of curiosity, but I put my foot down so we headed back to the hotel. Right out the front of the hotel, there was a traffic diversion (due to the demonstration). We sat at a nearby bar, had a beer and watch the hilarity that was the French traffic attempting to push their way past the blockage, each other and pedestrians. It was insane!!

We ended our day with pizza at a nearby Pizzaria (okay, I know it's not French, but the pizza was awesome!) and managed to stay up until 9:30. Getting even better!

That was our last day in Paris. Yesterday we caught the train to Toulousse where we picked up a hire car and drove to a little village near Carcassone where we'll be staying for the next 2 weeks. I'll write more about driving in another post, but I do just want to say that the French certainly know how to do train travel...