Paris March 2007

We have been having a great time in Paris. The weather has been fair with some rain and cold days - if the sun is out then the 16 deg C temperatures are quite bearable. We have both had to purchase some extra clothing to cope with the weather - I have done my best to dress like a wanker French person

We have however had no issues with the renouned French arrogance at this point. Everybody we have met or had to deal with has been very polite and curtious and can definitely speak more Englich than we can French !

Paris is a very expensive place to holiday, everything here costs quite a bit more than any other place we have been (including Broome !). The wine and food has been great (even the snails - no image of that ...) and we have enjoyed doing what people in Paris do a lot - sit at a street café/brasseire and be seen ! I am still surprised there are any French left over here as they all smoke like chimenies !

The hotel we are staying in is just across the road from the Jardin des Tuileries, a really nice park that also houses a museum as well as carousells and other activities. The hotel is quite central to the centre of Paris and is only a short walk from Concorde Metro station, the Seine, the Royal Palace and the Louvre. We went to see Monet's 'Water Lillies' that is on display at their but to be frank it did not really appeal to us - it was a bit too impressionist - Claud's images of garden parties are more what we expected and we hope to see those soon at another Monet museum.

We did a boat trip on the Seiene (another hop on/hop off), because there are few really tall buildings in Paris and the river is quite narrow it is not the same as doing a cruide on a harbour or even the Brisbane River but it still showed a side a Paris quite different to the street level view.

We have done a hop on/hop off tour that was really good to get our bearings and see a lot of Paris. Paris is an extremely beautiful city, not being dismantled by explosives during the wars would have helped it retain all of its beautiful buildings. We have seen the standard French sites such as :

The Eiffel Tower

The Arc de Triomphe

The Place de la Concorde

Notre Dame as well as other churches (the second is the Madeline)

Buildings with French flags

We had lunch one day on the left bank on the Seine at Saint Germain. It is a really nice area with lots less pretention than where we are staying. If we come to Paris again this is the area we will stay. There are lots of nice little shops and a generally a better atmosphere on the street. Along the bank of Seine there are also these great little metal enclosures fixed to the wall that backs onto the river where the street merchants can lock up there wares when they are not open. Some are full of junk or just cheap souvenirs but they still really add to the feel of the area.

We have decided to head back there every day for lunch to some new little cafe as it hard to beat looking out at Notre Dame while eating your snails and drinking franco-belgium beer :-)

We have also done a trip to Amiens and the Australian and Allied battlefields of WW1 and some WW2 sites. I will do a separate blog entry in the next few days on that trip. We are off to two more museums today.

Cheers,

Stephen and Emily