Paris with my parents

DAY 1 - friday 27/11/09

• Eurostar train REALLY early this morning... what an adventure to get to on time.... reminds me of why I HATE the circle line on the British tube...
• Eurostar- clean, nice, less crowded, slighly more spacious, good for sleeping (better than spain trains by far!)
• arrival in paris - I take the lead: fetch a metro map, figure out the route, just do it.
• I am now tourguide, historical expert, metro guide, map reader, interpreter, translator and.... the person who says "ou est la metro?" and "j'ai chercher pour la rue de (whatever)" and I probably aren't spelling those things right... robin forgive me
• come up out of the metro in Palais Royal/Musee de Louvre... our hotel SHOULD be in walking distance.... if we knew which direction.
• so I bought a map, asked a few people fed up with searching and walking - eat lunch in the pizza place with the sign "WE SPEAK ENGLISH)
• the man in the restaurant told us the wrong way, i eventually figured it out from the map.... anyway we eventually found it - Novotel hotel.
• Novotel - VERY nice, clean, spacious, nice view, good central location, lots of amenties, big elevators (for a european standard anyway we fit 10 ppl in it in a cozy way)
• so we crossed the sienne to see the Notre Dame Cathedral... so stunning and so inspiring
• we started to walk to the Champs Elysees but decided to skip that for now and go to the Tour Eiffel because I WANTED to be on the tower as night fell so we could see it in daylight and lit up at night... yea it was pitch black by the time we finally got there (damn did we walk like MILES to do that.... from the bottom of the 4eme to the far left corner of the 7eme!)
• it took more than 2 hours for waiting on line to get tickets, get in the elevator and go up to all the different parts... unfortinately is was icy cold and windy as all hell... but at least it stopped raining! and the view was magnificent.

DAY 2 - Saturday 28/11/09

• Bastille, metro line 4 to line 1... damn I'm getting good at this, maybe I can use the one in New York now! :)
• Pompidou Centre ... how cool! I love this building inside out... such a cool idea and beautiful construction, it was closed for some strike? I wish we could've gone in, but we didn't have much time anyway
• Louvre... yep I still love it. "winged victory" is definitely my favorite piece in the museum so far... it is just so stunning and beautiful. We only had time for two exhibits, History of the Louvre and the hall of paintings.
• Champs Elysees... beautiful, especially with all the christmas lights at night
• Arc de Triomphe - beautiful & stunning as I remember especially lit up at night

DAY 3 - Sunday 29/11/09

• tried to go to Etam but it was CLOSED :(
• but I did go to the Madeleine Vionnet fashion exhibit... it was amazing... I can't even explain how cool it was
• and it was the perfect thing to brighten my day after i was so upset that I couldn't go to Etam and buy my perfume (which I've been planning on do since before I came to london)
• over all an amazing trip... even the frantic race back to the hotel to get our luggage and get to the train because I took too long in the Vionnet exhibit... :)

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