Day 44 & 45 - Paris goes off with a bang - Paris, France
Paris, France
14 July France turned the beautiful weather on for Bastille Day (national day here). We are off this afternoon to Paris which by itself is exciting, but even more so because of the added celebrations of Bastille Day. As most of you will know, the French are proud of their country and we could see evidence of this from the growing number of flags being flown around the place. Tours was quiet because of all the shops being closed, so our morning and early afternoon consisted of reading and chilling out by the river. We were eventually picked up around 5.30 back at the hotel for the trip north to Paris. The motorway got busier as we reached outer Paris, before stopping in a long queue caused by an accident. Paris has notoriously bad traffic so this was anticipated by our bus driver. We got a quick glimpse of the Eiffel Tower from the motorway as we approached the city which got us excited. Paris would be the largest city we had visited so far and we already felt the vastness of the place when we were dropped off. The hostel has a really good bar and restaurant so we grabbed dinner and our complimentary welcome drink before heading to the closest underground station to catch the metro to find the Eiffel Tower. The metro system here is as big as London's, but as obviously all the destinations are in French, was a little daunting (lucky Lauren is good with that stuff). We were running late for the fireworks display, but thought we should try to see some of it since the chances of us being in Paris on Bastille night were remote! We ended up popping out close to where the fireworks were being let off behind the tower which was incredible. The fireworks by that time would have been going half an hour and we saw around 15 mins worth. There were people everywhere and the fireworks sounded like bombs going off. We found a vantage point in time to see the Eiffel Tower sparking with lights, and with the fireworks going off at the same time was something both of us will never forget. We decided to leave soon after the display was over as we did not know our way around and was getting late anyway. We then had to walk quite a distance to the next station as the police were trying to organise the crowds of people to some sort of order. The atmosphere was great though, with parties going on in various apartment blocks we walked by. We eventually made it back to the hostel where we keen to get some sleep with a day of exploring Paris in front of us tomorrow! Goodnight all Brendan and Lauren xx 15 July As we would be back in Paris twice more on our travels we decided to split Paris up in three parts for each visit to explore. As we had seen the Eiffel Tower already last night we first headed to the Louvre museum. We took the touristy photos next to the famous glass pyramid but decided that we would go and see the famous Mona Lisa and the rest of the collection on a later visit. There were people everywhere and we were not in the mood to walk around any art galleries today! The weather is of course perfect and hot again today so we also thought this would be a good time to see the river and spend our time outside. We headed from the Louvre, down along the river to the bridge covered in padlocks. I had heard about this some time ago but made the mistake of not bringing my own padlock to add to the bridge for Lauren and I. For those of you who haven't heard about this - this bridge goes across the Seine river which has thousands of padlocks attached to the side (see photos below) - you write or engrave your names/message on the padlock and lock it to the side of the bridge before throwing your key into the water below. We walked across before making our way to the famous 'Notre Dame' cathedral. This took around 170 years to be built and was finished in the mid 1400's. We also took a look inside. We were actually more impressed with the view of the Cathedral from the other side of the church which we would discover later. It was now approaching lunchtime, so we grabbed some picnic items from a supermarket and headed to 'Les jardins de Luxembourg' which we had read was a popular park for Parisians. We sat on the grass with the locals, enjoying the lively atmosphere. A jazz band was also playing which made it encouraging to grab some French red and stay but we decided to move our sightseeing onto the 'Pantheon'. This was for a long time the most important building in Paris and we could see why. As Paris is very big, we were already getting tired from the walking and heat so moved onto the Bastille monument (where the prison originally stood). This was definitely not the most exciting thing we had seen (nice monument in middle of roundabout), but was nice to be in a spot so historically important. We made our way back on the busy metro and finished our day with dinner, again back at the hostel, with a beer. We decided on an early night, as tomorrow we will be on an 8 hour bus ride, across the English Channel to London. This means that we will be pausing our Busabout tour for 6 weeks while we spend a week in London before heading up to Scotland. We have really enjoyed the short time we have been in Paris and are glad we will be coming back as there is so much to see here. Night all Brendan and Lauren xx