Paris, France

Paris, France, Sunday (29/05/05)

Getting close to the end of our journey, tomorrow we leave Paris to head for the coast and soon we will be back in London. We think that 2 months is been the right amount of time, enough to see a lot but not too much so that we are overwhelmed with data.

Here is what has happened up till now...

Troyes, France (Thursday)

From Dijon we ride to Troyes. The interesting thing about Troyes are the half wood houses. Half wood houses look like they have been built by Dr. Seuss, they lean at all manner of weird angles and the tops are wider than the bottoms. Most are 3 stories high and they are built together without nails. It is amazing that they stand up at all.

We enjoyed Troyes and spent the day walking around checking out all the old buildings. We finished off the day with an African meal (nice to have something without cheese for a change).

I must point out that the weather now has started to get hot. I think that the temperature was around 31 (and this continued till Sunday in Paris)

Paris, France (Friday, Satruday, Sunday)

We managed to book a hotel from Troyes in Paris. Luckily we phoned around first because the first 5 we tried were booked out. We ended up having to up our price and managed to find somewhere in the Latin Quarter. The hotel has no air-conditioning and is on a busy road, I hate to think what the cheaper places were like! We spend the night weighing off heat Vs noise in the desire to sleep.

We had got into Paris by around 12PM, so we donned our walking shoes and headed straight for the Eiffel (via the Siene). We climbed our way up to the second level, which had pretty good views and didn't bother goin further because there was about a 2 hour queue for the lift (people were giving their tickets away). We had a rest and then headed back via the Batobus (boat bus).



Saturday we did a big walking day (with some help again from the boat) and saw most of the sites of central Paris (from the outside at least).

Sunday, Laura was buggered from all the walking the day before, so we decided to have an easy day and see the Catacombes, which were nearby to where we were staying. Unfortunately, when we got there they were shut for reconstruction.

Side note: Almost every city that we went to had at least some portion of some famous building covered in scaffolding. It became a joke that we should just take the photo's anyway because it will be one of our memories of travelling.

So we had a lazy day, Laura hung out on the hotel and I went for jaunts around Paris finding info for the ferry and food. We did manage to get a market in and buy some stuff we wanted (e.g. Groovy french steak knives that we had admired in restaurants - they look like hunting knives but don't fold up). I also tracked down the local Vespa dealer, which we will check out tomorrow when we leave (Laura is thinking about getting a scooter blanket)



Here are some other interestign Paris photo's...


Franken-scooter


Bigscreen fun