Paris, France
We absolutely adored Paris the
last two times we were here, so much so that it was a no brainer deciding to return for the "proper" bit of our Honeymoon.
The flight overnight from Bahrain was ok, but neither of us slept due to jet lag, the noise around us and the over-sized guy behind me who thought that my back was a great place to store his knees. Perhaps if he doesn't fit into cattle class he should consider a different means of transport? Or is that discrimination?
Anyway, we made it into Charles De Galle quite early due to a great tail wind and it was zero degrees out on the tarmac. Brilliant! The inside of the airport is amazing in a space-station sixties achitecture kind of way, and there were no issues getting through passports, customs or locating our specially packed bags due to the Bahrain stuff-ups.
A bit of wandering around later and we found our way onto a bus to terminal 3 where the RER (above ground trains in and around Paris) go from. Some rusty French bought us tickets and we were on our way into town. Of course, since we had flown in so early, by this stage we were in prime commuter time.
A few stops down the line towards Gare du Nord where we needed to change, and the train started to get very very full. We had seats but no clear way to get out when we were going to need to, due to the rather large set of packs we had to manouver with us. In the end, a bit of pushing and shoving saw us through, smattered with plenty of "Pardon" and "Escuse moi"s.
Next trek was on the 5 (orange) Metro line a few stops to Republique, where our hotel is located. Not as packed, but some amazingly cute French voices asking us to "Pardon missoir" in their up-and-down way started to finally drive home that we had made it.
Out at Metro Republique, we wandered out the first exit we came to, which turned out to be in the middle of the Place de la Republique itself, and we walked into snow fall. We couldn't have asked for a better welcome to Paris. Not much snow mind you, but the point was made. We weren't in Kansas/Sydney/Bahrain any more.
The snow wasn't exactly what we wanted right at that point due to large packs and me only partially remembering where our hotel was, but that was solved with a quick bit of looking in our Lonely Planet Paris. A few roads crossed later (slowly getting used to looking the "wrong" way for oncoming traffic again!) and were were there.
Hotel de Nevers was recommended by Lonely Planet and actually have a website for us to look at rooms, as well as being located where we wanted not far from the Canal St. Martin and happening nightlife areas,
and was within our budget, so we booked it a few months back for five nights.
Alain who runs the place was at the door with a friendly smile and lots of helpful info and seemed genuinely suprised when we told him we had (effectively) just come from Sydney. He also had no problems in letting us into our room very early - a great relief to dump our packs.
Since then we've been out once for lunch at a brasserie next to Oberkampf Metro which was fine if not amazing and to grab some wine from the supermarket and of course some yummy things from the local patisserie.
Liz is now asleep on the bed - perhaps preparing for a bit more trekking around in the cold (lots of warm clothing required!) to find some dinner in a few hours.
(
Continued 4:59am 25/2/2006)
I did some blogging and photo editing (not a fast process on this little computer unfortunately), but the rest of the afternoon was pretty much a write-off as I joined Liz sleeping until about 8pm, when our stomachs prompted us to get all our warm gear on again. Wandering semi-randomly we found a nice little kebab joint and stocked up on cheap satisfying food.
Despite sleeping much of the afternoon we were soon back asleep again, helped by the fine French wine we had purchased earlier.