October 10 - Paris

J'adore Paris, elle est tres jolie! I freaking want to move to the city and study at the Sorbonne or something for a year. Spent the day retracing my steps from 10 years ago with Andrea. We started at the Opera house and made our way to Place de la Concorde (where the guillotine was set up during the French Revolution) and had coffee on the way. I had real Parisian coffee which I ordered in French and Andrea had Starbucks. Haha. We walked up the Champs Elysees from Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe and went up the Arc to the top. There was a staircase inside and it was a really narrow spiral one and going up it kind of did my head in, but there was a shop and some nice peace looking palm fronds thingies inside, and then the viewing platform outside. It was a bit foggy so you couldn't see much since it was early, so we went back down and metroed our way to Les Invalides (where Napoleon is buried inside SIX tombs - a bit redundant?) and then to Denfert-Rochereau for the Parisian catacombs.

Twenty meters of teeny spiral staircase down below the city surfaces makes me dizzy. The Catacombs were really interesting, and Andrea and I were kind of spooked (I think in a good way), until you got to the point where they had all the bones of all the people from the French Revolution all set up in shapes with their skulls and femurs and stuff. At first it was kind of cool, being almost touching so many bones, but after half a kilometer of dead people (and there were a LOT) it was rather disturbing how many people died and stuff. Ugh. When we got back out onto the street (and it could not have happened early enough) we went to Chinatown and had noodles!! Yes, Chinatown in Paris, where the restaurant people spoke Thai, Mandarin and French!

After that we went to the site of the Bastille but couldn't find the memorial, although we did find another nifty column thing. Then we metroed up to the Louvre and walked around the courtyard near Jardin des Tulieres and then onto Pont Neuf (i.e. "the new bridge" even though it was the oldest bridge in Paris). There were shops along the Seine and I picked up a copy of "Le Petit Prince" which really was the only souvenir I wanted from France. :) We crossed teh bridge and made it to Ille de la Cite (the island in the middle of the Seine), walked past the Palace of Justice and then to Notre Dame. TRES JOLIE. We didn't get to go up though because we had to meet the other girls for dinner. There was also an altercation with a cigarette, a cheesy souvenir vendor (who was Kelie's new friend?) and stupid Americans.

For dinner we went to St. Michel and the Latin Quarter - it was near the Sorbonne and supposed to be the student area but there were 100s more tourists than students. We had dinner which I ordered en Francais because I could, ha. After that Andrea and I took the metro over to Montmatre, where the Sacre Coeur cathedral is. It was a bit of a hike but I wanted to show her the view since it was the highest point in Paris. I'm not religious by any stretch of the imagination but after going to so many gorgeous churches and cathedrals and mosques on my trip, I have a new respect for people who will take the time and effort and money to do such things as build this kind of stuff for their beliefs. We took in the sight of Paris at night and then walked down to the foot of the hill which was effectively Little Amsterdam! Sex shops and Doner places abounded. We found the Bal du Moulin Rouge and then we had to meet the other drunken Contikiers. Since it was the last night everyone went out but I couldn't be bothered and had to pack anyways.