When we were first thinking about going to France we were only going to make it a day trip, but then we realized the train would take half the day, so then we were going to just go for one night. In the end we worked our way up to two nights, and were pretty glad we did. As it was we ended up checking out a bit late, (but that was mostly because we got a bit lost, and the check out people were really nice and didn’t charge us extra or anything).
The hotel we staid in was the Hotel Garden St. Martin. I’m not really picky when it comes to hotels. I like clean and quiet, and the less I have to deal with the concierge or anyone that works there the better, and all in all I’d say this place was pretty good. It was about 200 dollars for the three of us for two nights. We were in one room, plus there was the bathroom attached. There was wifi and Tv (and we could hook a usb thing into the tv so we could watch our own movies) and a shower, (the only reason I mention this is that Katie and Luke don’t have a shower, just a bath, which isn’t fun more than once) also they were nice enough to lend us an adapter for the plug since I have north american plugs and Katie and Luke have UK ones. They didn’t serve breakfast, (at least it wasn’t included) but there were a couple bakeries and a bajillion little cafe/restaurant things within easy walking distance, also the metro was right there and it wasn’t far from the train station. Next time I’m in France I’ll probably try and stay at the same place because now I know the area a bit.
I was really happy to find that the Metro wasn’t much different from the Tube, so it was pretty easy to find our way around. There are day passes (or two or three day passes) but we were doing things that would take a long time, but all in one place (mostly museums) so we just got 10 tickets (and didn’t end up using two, so we left them at the hotel desk).
The first day we got there, after getting to the hotel and figured out the whole metro tickets thing, we went to the Musee D’Orsay. There was a pretty long line (and it was raining) but it went pretty fast so that wasn’t too bad. Musee D’Orsay’s not my favorite but it was my sister’s choice and there was some pretty cool stuff.
The second day was the only full day we were there and we’d decided to spend it at the Louvre. The place is HUGE, we already knew we wouldn’t be able to get through the whole thing in one day so we focused on finding stuff we were interested in. Obviously we had to see the Mona Lisa, (which, while crowded, wasn’t as bad as I was expecting) and we wandered through the big long hall full of Italian paintings. Art Nouveau furniture was pretty fun, (and some of the detailing reminded me a lot of Lord of the Rings, made us wonder if some of the inspiration for the elves furniture and buildings came from that). My favorite was the sculpture section (wing?) some of them were really amazing. We had a bit of trouble finding our way to one whole side of the building, though in our defense that was because their was a big chunk of it closed (for renovations it looked like).
I took some photos (which as far as we could tell was allowed as long as we didn’t use a flash) but I hardly ever take pictures in galleries, because you can pretty much guarantee there’s a professional picture out there somewhere that’s better than mine. I did have fun taking pictures of all the goofy little figurines, (my sister’s the art history major, not me, I don’t have to appreciate everything there).
like this guy, he looks so happy to be riding his horse!
and whatever this guy is...
After that we got some dinner and headed out again to the Eiffel Tower. I’m glad we went at night, we still had to wait in line, but given how many of those line divider things we went around I think we would have had to wait a lot longer during the day. It was also prettier at night than I expected, there are lights all over it and for ten minutes on the hour every hour they have a bunch of sparkly, (possibly seizure inducing) lights going which were cool.
We decided that we might as well go right to the summit, though Katie and I put our foot (feet?) down at taking the stairs like Luke wanted to. The view was cool, though we were surprised to learn that the CN Tower is taller than the Eiffel Tower, even the restaurant part is higher than the summit. It doesn’t really feel like it, but that might be because at the CN Tower most of it is closed in while at the Eiffel Tower you’re out in open air.
On the third day there we had to check out by 11:30, but we decided to spend the morning at the Catacombs. They were really cool, there were a lot more bones than I expected, you’d turn a corner and expect to be going back up but there would be another hall lined with bones. The brochure thing said that there were 6 million people buried, (entombed? I mean they are under ground so they’re kind of buried) there, which yeah, my head tells me is a lot, but seeing row upon row of bones filling the place was still a bit of a shock, we’d keep rounding corners expecting to be on the way out and instead find more bones. But it was really cool. There were even patterns made out of bones, lines of skulls among the long bones, or crosses made out of skulls set in the walls.
So we didn’t really want to rush through there, but we were a bit worried about checking out late. They were nice enough to let us check in early when we arrived and if someone was waiting for our room we didn’t want to make them have to stand around with their luggage. The problem was when you come out of the catacombs it’s not through the same door you went in. We didn’t know where we were, what side of the building we were on, if it was even the same building, (though we kind of assumed it was) or where we should be heading. So we asked one of the guy’s inside and he gave us directions to the metro stop, but it wasn’t the same one we’d taken getting there.
We figured it out since Katie and I both had metro maps on us, though we did have to backtrack once. In the end we were a bit late checking out, but still before noon I think, and the guys were really nice about it so that was pretty cool.
The train ride was mostly boring, though we ended up on a car with a class trip and it was funny listening to them when we got back into England comparing how many BBM messages they had waiting for them and generally doing the whole everything-is-crazy-important-right-this-second thing that teenagers do.
So that was my trip to France. I’m glad we did more than just a day trip since that wouldn’t have given us much time to do anything, and I’d be willing to go back again sometime, though it’s never been high on my list. I’m actually more willing than I was before since I’ve survived once. This was actually the first time I’d gone anywhere that didn’t have English as its first language. Though it probably helped that pretty much everyone spoke English anyways.