Firstly, happy new year to you all!
I've decided to kick off 2013 with a post on the city where I hope to spend the next New Years at - Paris! The City of Lights. Loved and remembered fondly by so many around the world. I was expecting to fall in love with Paris as soon as I set foot in that city. Instead, my experience in Paris turned out to be unexpectedly memorable.
I've decided to kick off 2013 with a post on the city where I hope to spend the next New Years at - Paris! The City of Lights. Loved and remembered fondly by so many around the world. I was expecting to fall in love with Paris as soon as I set foot in that city. Instead, my experience in Paris turned out to be unexpectedly memorable.
Paris was the first stop of our Topdeck trip (what a way to start the trip around Europe!) We arrived after 5am wake up calls, a ferry ride from London to Calais and finally a few hours on the bus. We stayed in a budget hotel in one of the "slums" of Paris where the twin share rooms were so small that we had step over each other's suitcases to get around. No fancy buildings or pretty patisseries in sight. Instead, we were greeted with grey looking buildings, dirty streets and slightly scary looking people.
first dinner in Paris - classic French onion soup with an escargot; and yes I did eat the snail, it was quite chewy and garlicky.
I was starting to doubt whether we were really in Paris until we were taken on a twilight driving tour in the heart of the city. Our tour guide, Jem, sneakily told us to squint through the windows at some random floor of the Cafe Trocadero to distract us, before telling us all to turn around to the other side of the bus to find the Eiffel Tower, standing there against the setting sun in all it's glory. Needless to say a general round of "wow" went around the bus before we all hopped off for our photo op!
We were given half a day to explore the city before doing a group bike tour. Of course the first thing we did was climb the Eiffel Tower, and yes we did climb up all those steps! We were lucky to be there on a beautiful summer day with sunshine and a clear blue sky and the city of Paris, from the top of the Eiffel Tower, was simply stunning. I got so caught up with the view that I lost everyone else from the group and could only find one person, whom I ended up travelling through Paris with.
The bike tour consisted of 20+ of us riding through peak time Paris traffic, stopping once in a while in the heat to listen to our very enthusiastic and entertaining Canadian tour guide talk about the history of this and that. Before the bike tour I had not been on a bike for 6 years so once we started, all I could think of was "omg I'm going to die I'm going to die!!". Next time I sign up for a bike tour in Paris, I'll make sure to sign up for a time slot not in peak hour traffic -.- but don't let that put you off, a bike tour is a great way to see the many sights of Paris!
Stay tuned for part 2: impressions of Paris in Autumn.
xoxo
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