The rise of the iced coffee

Ok, grab that unfinished cuppa from the fridge and lets continue where I left off yesterday.

Book 2 of the Chronicles of France

After lugging around my 10kg bag all over the 1st district of Paris, I was looking forward to having a good night's rest at a friend's friend's apartment. So, after meeting up with the aforementioned friend's friend, we headed to his place.

I'm grateful to have a place with a bathroom, toilet and heater to sleep. (That's all I'm gonna say.)

The next day, we woke up real early to get a headstart for the day. Or at least, that was the plan. By the time everyone got over our fatigue, it was already 10a.m. So we hastily cleaned ourselves up, ate breakfast, and headed to our first destination, Champs-Élysées.

Known to be "la plus belle avenue du monde", the most beautiful avenue of the world, it would be just that if there wasn't so much traffic and noise around. It really is just a much prettier Orchard road with more prestigious labels along the road, less glass and concrete and more stone and brick with lots of additional details on the buildings. Not to mention that there are monuments marking the start and the end of the street.

Most people around the world would be more familiar with the Arc de Triomphe, the huge Arc that marks one end of Champs-Élysées. The Arc is magnificent from afar. Champs-Élysées is really a very beautiful street. The rows of trees that flank the street, the architecture of the buildings and monuments at the end of the street regardless of which direction you take, it all has a very French-y effect (pardon for my lack of a better expression).

We mainly walked down the street, soaking in the atmosphere of it all while making our way to the Arc. The shops were just too expensive. Don't bother walking into shops that remind you of how poor you are... However, that being said, one couldn't resist going into Louis Vuitton. Well, one would be blind to miss the huge LV sign (gold plated, no less) on top of their building. I spent some time wandering around the interior of it while waiting for my friend to choose a bag (She used daddy's emergency credit card). I tried to call home to ask if anyone wanted anything from LV while I was here, but funnily, no one picked up the phone. Ah well, can't blame me for not trying...

After my friend purchased her LV bag, we went to the cheapest place we could find on Champs- Élysées for lunch and had our meal like a French, out on the sidewalk watching the traffic go by.

Next up, we went exploring around the other parts of Paris. My friends wanted to go to this place that sold really great macarons, Pierre Hermes. It was a piece of whatever-flavoured-macaron-you-had-bought heaven in your mouth for a price of 1.65 euros (about 3.30 SGD) for a little one. Its expensive, but really, you have to try macarons in France and Pierre Hermes is as good a place to splurge on as LV or other luxury goods. We bought 5 each (it came in boxes of 20s) and so I tried 5 different flavours of heaven. Was completely happy for the next few hours... :-D

All righty, next, we went to the Louvre. Was looking forward to it the whole day. The whole museum was filled with artworks! There were 3 levels, each with 3 parts to it. I spent more than 3 hours there and I had only went to abput 5 parts in total. I went into the part where Mona Lisa was kept but guess what, there was a whole swamp of people there pushing against the barricade, trying to take pictures of the painting.
See what I mean?
Frankly, I find it very amusing. There is like a thick layer of glass in front of the painting, a security guard and a barricade around that painting. It was the only painting that I saw that had such a treatment. But then again, it was the only painting I saw that had such a crowd around it.

Walking on, I explored the sculpture collection, italian and french painting collections. There were so many things that were picture worthy and I had to remind myself that I have limited battery and space for them. But I did buy a book on the Louvre and its collections. After all, they have better pictures and more explanations than the french ones that were available. (Why would an international museum like the Louvre only have explanations in French? C'est bizzare!)

Anyway, after the Louvre, it was already pretty late into the night, so we went back to sleep.
End of day 2...

Paris is really a tourist destination. One can instantly tell by a couple of indications.
1) tour buses
2) Hordes of people that are herded from destination to destination
3) Long queues at ticket booths to monuments.

The third day of our France trip started off with a tour of the Eiffel tower. Unfortunately, there was such a long queue for the tickets that we had to stand in line for the tickets for close to 2 hours. After that, we still had to queue for the lift to get to the top of the tower. That made a total of 3 hours of waiting just to get into the lift of the tower. It was exasperating and I was thankful for once that I had brought along my notes to study.

The view from the Eiffel Tower was amazing, as predicted, but nothing that you haven't seen from the Notre Dame. At least the Notre Dame had gargoyles and chimeras to pose with. But then again, it's just a touristy thing that one should do when one is in Paris. Thus, that 3 hours of queuing was well spent in my opinion.

For lunch, we met up with a friend of my friends who was also in Paris at tht time. We went to this little African restaurant that had just opened. The restaurant owners were nice. We even had a free glass of champagne to celebrate their first day of opening! The meal was pretty nice. I had blood pudding as appetizer (a friend chose it and I didn't know what it was at first, but it was really nice! Especially with the salsa that went with it!) and beef stew with rice for the main course. It was expensive to us, but probably cheap considering that it was Paris.

After the lunch, it was back to wandering around Paris. We visited Sacred Coeur and La Defense. The trip to La Defense was especially unforgettable.

La Defense is the business district of Paris, with nothing much to see except its Grande Arche, so it was a pretty boring trip that would be a waste of time. Or so I thought. But I was sorely mistaken, thanks to a very nice old man who took the time to show us around the region!!

This weird old man was really a nice guy! He introduced to us the other side of La Defense that was underneath its glass and concrete skyscraper facade. He was very entertaining and funny, sharing with us the art pieces and statues that littered the district like monuments do to the heart of Paris. This was the part that I liked about backpacking! The people that one gets to meet, the experiences that one would experience that is so different from the scheduled experience that tours tend to have. We would have NEVER met this strange man if we were in a tour! It was really great!

Ah... I should stop now for your sake. Its the end of Day 3 in France and I have 7 more days to go. While I don't think that I would have as much stuff to write for the later days, it is not a good idea to make you trudge through a few pages worth of blog post. Hell, you have a great deal of patience if you made it so far (with the help of several pots of coffee, I suppose).

So, i'll go make myself a btch of those cheese thyme biscuits while you guys rest your eyes a little.

A bientot!

Jump to book 3