Say Chowder Frenchy, say it!

Well, people give France and Paris accolades. Whenever someone talks about Paris it inevitably leads to talk about the magnificance, the sophistication, the beauty. I'll be diplomatic; Paris was a different experience.

The train trip from Brussels to Paris was simple, the easiest European travel we've done. A single train with no changes, in great condition with plenty of room and it took about 2 hours. This could be a great sign for the awesomeness of Paris to come! We jumped off the international train in Paris Gare de Nord and decided to jump on a local train to another station in Paris called Port d'Orleans (pronounced or-lee-anh, even though we kept saying Orleans to people and completely confusing them). So we lined up for a ticket, only to find out 45 minutes later that the line we were in didn't sell local tickets even though the sign at the start of the line said they sold all tickets! Fuckin' French (Mariya).

So after walking down the stairs we were directed to, we found a ticket vending machine and payed 1.70 Euro for our train trip to Port d'Orleans. At least their public transport is cheap, let's check it out! Your ticket is a little slip that you put though a machine at a gate, the gate opens and you walk through. Simple right? Wrong! In my normal, casual way I put the ticket in the machine and meandered through the gates ... bad move. It appears you have to put your ticket in the machine while jogging through the ticket turnstile, before then breaking into a sprint to make it through the gates before they slam shut on your sorry ass. Not knowing this was the required entry parameters to enter the local Paris transport system, the doors slammed shut on my sorry ass. The gates somehow managed to shut on me between my backpack and back. I proceeded to spend the next 2 minutes trying to hold the gates open and pull my backpack through while Mariya stood by in a fit of laughter. Fuckin French. "You shall not pass!", was all I could muster (Gandalf style) once we were finally past the gates and on our way to the train.

The trains are quite old but they're super fast, I'm sure the train drivers are qualified rally drivers long since retired. They accelerate at about 15g's and then brake twice as hard. The plus side being, it's very quick to get from place to place on the trains. Brock, you'll love this ... the trains are just as packed as the ones in Japan. I said this to Mariya and now apparently we're never visiting Japan ... I think she's serious.

When we arrived at Port d'Orleans we weren't sure which way to head to get to our hotel so we followed signs underground heading to a road we could see on the map. It appears the french are half rabbit or meerkat ... we walked underground for atleast 3 kilometers before we finally returned to the surface ... maybe I really was Gandalf in the caverns and the French are all bloody evil balrogs. When we finally emerged from the centre of the earth we found a little French Patisserie to ask for directions to our hotel.

"Parlez vous Anglais?", my very basic French isn't too bad. With a reply of, "A little", from the person behind the counter, we both heaved a massive sigh of relief. Her english was fine, we got good directions and were on our way to the hotel. I won't bother discussing the hotel, for a complete breakdown on the awesomeness of it I suggest you refer to Mariya's post on Paris. After checking in we had a nice dinner out at a pub/bistro/cafe before having an early night.

We did some sight seeing in Paris and visited the usual attractions in the middle of Paris. Notre Dame was breath taking and had an amazing reverence about it. The Louvre was huge but we only walked along the outside and took some photos of the big glass pyramids. We then walked through the Le Jardin de Tuileries (the Garden of Tulips), we hadn't even heard of this but it's on the way from the Louvre to Champs Elysees. The garden was beautiful and we stopped in their cafe for a coffee. Champs Elysees was a huge disappointment ... it's just a road ... going through Paris ... I have absolutely no idea why people rave about it and claim you have to see it. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant along Champs Elysees and the food was great and really good value. After lunch we headed off to the Arc de Triomphe, now this is some impressive French Architecture. The Arc is enourmous (atleast 30 meters high at a guess) and it's in the middle of a huge round about. I made a deal with Mariya, we had to climb either the Arc or the Eiffel tower ... after some debate (and seeing the size of the Arc de Triomphe up close) Mariya decided on ascending the Eiffel Tower. So, onto the Eiffel Tower it was (via a Postal Courier, but that's a story for another day). Arriving at the Eiffel Tower was a bit of a shock, we could see it for quite a few blocks but the sheer size of it when we got there was very impressive ... maybe Mariya should have agreed to go up the Arc de Triomphe. We decided not to go up the Tower as Mariya was feeling ill so we headed home for a break at the Hotel.

Deciding that we'd seen most of what Paris had to offer and knowing we still had a few days before we needed to arrive in Croatia we made an executive decision to return to Heaven (err I mean Austria) for a few days, with plans to check out Salzburg (translating to Salt Castle) and Vienna. So with our accommodation booked in Austria and a reservation on the earliest train possible out of Paris the next morning our time in Paris came to an end.

Paris is certainly a very different city, I'm not really sure why people rave about the place. It's architecture is nice and the food was great, but the people, to put it bluntly, are a bunch of uptight assholes. Hopefully Southern France is less French.