30th July – London to Paris

We caught the train from London to Paris – it was so fast it was amazing. I thought most of the journey we would be in a tunnel, but the tunnel part only lasted about 40 minutes at the most. Just like that, we were in a different country! We caught a taxi from the railway station to our hotel, and he took us on the scenic route – not quite by request, and we didn’t really figure that out until we did a little night tour of Paris (more on that later).

From zis point forward, you must read zis blog with an outrageous French accent… jus pretend you are Pepe LePew talking….

Our hotel is down the road from the Eiffel Tower, about a 20 minute walk. So we high tailed it down there. It’s beautiful, in fact the whole of Paris is beautiful. But the Eiffel Tower is amazing! Photos do not do it justice, and you really MUST see it at some stage in your life (I am certain).  I am pretty sure I took at least 300 photos of it. It is bigger than you think, both taller, and wider – at least bigger than I thought and I thought it was pretty humungous. There were people everywhere, but I kind of expected that. (Are you keeping up with ze outrageous French accent?). We wandered under it a few times, took photos from this angle, and that angle (zis and zat) and then headed over to the Plaza du Trocadéro with their lovely fountains. I should add here, Paris is laid out beautifully in that everything frames everything – you look down this row of fountains to see the Eiffel Tower, and then down the grassy avenue past the Eiffel Tower to just more amazing buildings. This is the most beautiful city in the world.

We sat down looking at the fountains for a while, enjoying the fabulous summer day Paris put on for us. Then we got pretty bloody hot so we went and bought an ice cream (glacé) and wandered up to the buildings which lead down to the fountains which lead down to the Tower which leads down to the grassy bit…. Seriously, how many photos can one girl take in a day!

All over the place are guys selling little replicas of the Tower – I think you can get six or seven of them for a couple of Euros. They sell the same replicas in the souvenir shops for 6€ & 7€ each. These guys are everywhere, and I mean they all stand only a couple of feet from each other. As we were wandering down, all of a sudden they all grabbed their stuff (made easy due to ‘handles’ on the edge of the sheets they lay it all out on, which they just pull and it becomes like a drawstring bag) and took off running. We looked around, and there was a guy walking down the street with a cap on that said ‘POLICE’. All afternoon, we watched them quickly pull up their stuff as the real police wandered down the street. They would be up and off in five seconds flat, and back just as fast again once the police had passed.

Well, I am a little tired from typing with this outrageous French accent, so more to follow later!

You can look at ze photographs 'ere though!