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Monday, January 29. 2007Knee: Jerk
Those who've known me for a while probably are aware of the generally crappyness of my knees. On the weekend, after an intensive gardening session (yes, we're getting old...), I didn't quite step properly on a raised concrete section of our backyard and ended up with nasty sounds and much pain in my right knee.
I've pretty much learned in every day life what not to do to minimise the occurrances of this problem, resulting in this being the first time this has happened since Paris. I attempted to walk up to the shops yesterday but only made it about four houses before giving up, and as such yesterday and today I'm working from home. It's nice to have that option, but it doesn't take long to miss being out and about cycling. Tuesday, February 28. 2006A New Blue Car
Paris, France
(written 3/3/2006 08:51 CET in Blois, France) We fronted up for our final hotel breakfast and said a heartfelt thanks to the owner - we can certainly recommend Hôtel de Nevers as a great place to stay with helpful owners if you are in Paris. He told us about plenty of interesting places to see as far away as Greece, including plenty of places we have already been. Shouldering our rather heavy packs we trudged down to the Metro and caught a train to Europe Metro (it's tiny, no idea why it gets such a big name), and walked about ten minutes up Boulevard Constantinople to the Citroën dealer. The girl there was very helpful and there was some minor half-hour delay while they changed the battery on the car, which she compensated is with by giving us a meal voucher for! Didn't expect that kind of service. After plenty of paperwork she led us around the corner to our shiny blue Citroën C3, with 5 kilometres on the clock! The mechanic half-told half-mimed to us about how all sorts of gadgets inside the car worked, and then when we felt brave enough we drove off. Or, I should say when I felt brave enough - Liz had given up on her idea of driving the car first after seeing what the Parisian traffic was like. Since we were on the outskirts it wasn't that bad, although learning the deep-end way how the big roundabouts work was a highlight for me. We found our way to the ring road, and then we were moving onwards towards Versailles. Monday, February 27. 2006Pain and Bookworming
Paris, France
Another day, another attempt not to walk all that far failed. Late last night on the home stretch my knee finally gave out on me, plus Liz's feet are killing her (she's wearing boots she hasn't really warn since last Europe trip) so we didn't make it all that far actually. After another great hotel breakfast, we set out on the Lonely Planet Paris "Left Bank Bookworming" walking tour. This started at Cardinal Lemoine Metro and wound its way past the huge Panthéon, via Jardin du Luxembourg (where we detoured for a rest in the nice sunny weather), then north back to the Seine where we looked into Shakespeare and Company English language bookstore for things to buy. Rather expensive unfortunately, but we did spend an hour or so most enjoyably wandering through the impressive and sometimes ancient collection. Back to a little heavily touristed but actually very cheap and impressive bistro for lunch, where I had Terrine (paté) and Liz a rather chunky onion soup as starters. Along with the chicken mains and cremé caramel / cheese desserts, we washed the lot down with a half-bottle of red. Eventually convincing ourselves to start wandering again, we detoured north to Notre Dame and place Dauphine (where our hotel we stayed in last time was), before rejoining the tour heading south once again. Despite passing some interesting old churches and literary highlights (places where famous authors slept, ate, wrote about, etc.), we didn't really have the heart or the bodies for it so we jumped off the tour at St Sulpice and caught the Metro back to the hotel, stopping briefly to stock up for a cheap in-room dinner at the supermarket. Sunday, February 26. 2006Arrondisment 15e
Paris, France
(written 27/2/2006 5:30pm CET by Liz) Yesterday was very cold. A message from my Mum said it was -2 degrees C in Paris, and it certainly felt like our coldest day here so far. It snowed lightly for most of the morning. After breakfast at our hotel, we caught the Metro to Trocadéro near the Eiffel Tower, and spent a while looking around. We decided not climb up part of the tower, and instead headed into the backstreets of 15e to wander around. We stopped in a little bar for coffee and hot chocolate to warm up, wandered some more, bought baguette and cheeses for our lunch, and then caught the metro from La Motte-Picquet Grenelle back to République where our hotel is. Lunch was in our nice warm room, and we devoured baguette, cheese, olives and red wine - very French. We lazed around in our room for the afternoon feeling a bit worn out and footsore. In the evening, we went to a nearby Belgian restaurant and had beer, frites and moules (chips and mussels), another very tasty meal, and then end of another great day. Friday, February 24. 2006St. Martin Canal, Montmartre
Paris, France
(written 27/2/2006 5pm by Liz) On Saturday, we weren't going to do quite so much walking due to our big walking day on Friday. The only problem is that we keep finding more and more places that we want to spend hours exploring on foot. Our feet are starting to protest loudly. Anyway, we started out by walking along the St Martin Canal, which is not too far from our hotel. We spent quite a while looking at pretty views along the water and taking photos. At Place de la Bataille de Stalingrad we turned off to the left along Boulevard de la Villette, and more towards Sacre Cour. This was a very busy street market, crowded with saturday shoppers buying all manner of fruit, vegies, fish, poultry, meat, cheese, odds and sods for the home, and just about anything else you could think of. We came across an olive store, and after explaining to the man that we don't speak french ('Je non parle pa Francais'), and attempting to ask for what we wanted in french, he beamed at us and chucked in a whole load of free goodies for our efforts! After more wandering through busy shopping streets, we turned our heads at one corner to find ourselves looking up the green grassy hill that Sacré Coeur sits on top of. We stopped and sat halfway up the hill to munch on olives and enjoy the view, and stopped again at the top. I love the views from here (although it was a cloudy and grey day), and I think the Sacré Coeur is one of my favourite buildings in Europe. After a look inside the church, and a look inside the smaller one next door St Pierre de Montmartre, we spent quite a while walking around Montmartre, stopping in a great little café for coffee, then more wandering, and then stopping in a wine bar for lunch and a bottle of wine. We were surrounded by friendly locals, and had a really nice lunch, not to mention the good french wine :) A couple of hours later, we decided we should start making our way back to our hotel. We were going to catch the Metro, but started walking and just kept going. Sometime later, with protesting feet, we arrived back at our hotel. We were feeling really tired and worn out, so dinner was at a nearby Chinese restaurant, where I thought I was getting chicken something or other for entree and ended up with fish soup! Have to say I love ordering things off a foreign menu and really having no idea what you are getting a lot of the time, but nearly always enjoying whatever it is that turns up :) Thursday, February 23. 2006A HUUUGE wander
Paris, France
(written 25/2/2006 5:04am) Even though it's 5am the day after, my legs and feet are still very sore. Liz and I are awake due to the jet lag still having our body clocks a bit confused - she's reading up on more things for us to do. Perhaps I should be scared because she chose the target for yesterday's main wander - the Arc de Triomph. We were up early then too, and decided that going out to watch Paris wake up would be better than just lazing around in bed. Outside the door of the hotel, the snow falling reminded us just why most of Paris was still asleep - it was cold out there! Unfazed, we headed south with the vague target of the Seine (river through central Paris) and the islands upon them where we stayed last time. We wandered around Place de Republique to Boulevard du Temple which you should note is not Rue du Temple - which would have been the most direct route to Ile de la Cite, but we didn't note the difference and headed south the long way. It turned out to be a great walk anyway, as does pretty much any walk in Paris. The half-light coupled with street lighting, joggers, little traffic and people slowly starting to go about their business made the wandering a most enjoyable experience. Twenty minutes later we we at Place de la Bastille, which I wrote a little about last time we were here and given the length of time the place has been in its present form nothing has changed since then really. At the south end of Bastille the metro (underground train, although this station was uncovered) Opera de Paris Bastille gave us our first glimpse of the very strange contraption that the Paris Metro is - it runs on tyres like a car! Relatively quiet, once you get used to the idea. It also ducks and curves far more than any other I have been on, as if dodging underground basements, cellars and sewer pipes. Wandering then down Boulevard Bourdon which lined a canal packed with houseboats (a nice way to get a central Paris address, I guess - they are certainly peoples homes as some had book cases and fireplaces in them) we crossed under the road and Metro and found the morning's target - the Seine. Ugly and brown yet amazingly beautiful at the same time, we wound north-west with it until Pont Marie, where we crossed south onto and then across Ile St-Louis to Quay d'Orleans. This nice piece of real estate has views across to the next island and the imposing Notre Dame, which we soaked in for a few minutes. A lady opened her shutters behind us - what a view to wake up to every day. Across Pont St-Louis onto Ile de la Cite, we had a quick look around the Notre Dame area before crossing south off the island, jumping on the Metro at St. Michel and riding it back to Republique and our hotel. We charged up for the rest of day with the hotel's breakfast - a simple yet amazingly tasty combination of coffee/tea, croissant and baguette, all of which disappeared very quickly. Heading west along Boulevard St. Martin, we took in plenty of the "real" Paris well off the tourist trail - amazing old buildings with such character everywhere, peppered with huge old Arcs that the road network has been built around, and little galleries full of amazing shops selling strange collectibles such as used postcards. On seemingly every block there is a huge old Opera or church, and eventually our wandering brought us the granddaddy of the former - Opera Garnier. We had a bit of a look at the impressive architecture inside but didn't want the guided tour this time around. We pulled into a random little brasserie for a coffee called L'Arcade Haussmann, named after the road it sat on and which we were now following. Boulevard Houssmann took us on a beeline for the target of our little walk - the Arc de Triomphe. This of course sits in Place Charles de Gaulle, where we watched about fifty near-miss traffic incidents in the space of the few minutes we sat there eating our lunch. Basically the traffic coming onto the roundabout has priority, which sounds crazy and it is, but if you have the guts it works very well. We'll see how Liz goes when I direct her through there after picking up our hire car in a few days! Next we went up the Arc, which we hadn't done before. Amazing views all across the city from the top (possibly even better than the Eiffel Tower as the roads are all built around the Arc), and only a few school groups to contend with both up the top and traversing the lengthy spiral staircase you use to get up there. My knees were well and truly protesting so we headed back, along the Avenue des Champs-Elysees this time. Through some nice gardens lining the Avenue and then Place de la Concorde, before hitting Jardin des Tulleries (where kids were playing with sailboats in the pond) and The Louvre. We used Rue de Louvre and Rue de Turbigo to get home, which took us past the market street Rue Montorgueil where we grabbed some strawberries and raspberries for afternoon tea. When we made it home, we slumped in pain on the bed and did very very little. Sleep came easily before we woke around 7pm and went hunting for dinner. We had no intentions of wandering far so picked the nearest recommended French restaurant in Rue Amelot. It turns out that it wasn't open yet (sorry Parisians, we are jet lagged so need to eat when we are hungry!), but we had passed a great looking wine bar a bit earlier in the street so went back there instead. This turns out to have been a great choice, as L'Auberge served us up a great deal of food and wine we hadn't tasted before for not a lot of money. They even put up with our absolutely horrible butchering of the French language to order things. I had "Les six escargots" for entree (yummy!) and correctly guessed that veau might be veal for mains which turned out to be great. Liz went for "Brioche de saucisson lyonnais, pommes sautees" for entree which she reported as an interesting array of flavours, before greatly enjoying an "Onglet de boeuf" as a main. Slightly more understandable desserts came in the form of ice cream and white chocolate mousse. This was about all our bodies could take, as we retired again to our room and slept most soundly, well at least until now. Another day awaits shortly - hope get online at the internet cafe across the road this morning. Back to Paris
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.
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