Day 3 - Montmartre, UNESCO & St Germain

Today we visited:

• Montmartre, narrowly avoiding the hawkers at Sacré Coeur, followed by lunch of toasted sandwiches at our first French brasserie and a compulsory sighting of Moulin Rouge.
  

Metro station at Montmartre. What you can't see if the never-ending spiral staircase we had to climb to get out of here!

Sacre Coeur is in a great spot with views of all of Paris. It's a little gloomy inside, however.

Café des Deux Moulins, where Amelie worked.

The Moulin Rouge.

• Hôtel des Invalides where we were impressed by the grandeur of Napoleon's tomb (his sarcophagus is enormous) and the stone suits of armour decorating the garret windows.

The huge and detailed garret windows of the Hôtel des Invalides.

• UNESCO, where we joined a tour group (the only way to see this out-of-place brutalist building since September 11)

Garden at UNESCO.

• St Germain, including the old, old church and Laudurée (yes, again), where D had a chocolate religieuse and E an Ispahan (rose macaroon filled with raspberries and lychees).

A shop window in St Germain. Look at how small those dolls get!

Later we had a beautiful French meal at Le Petit Chatelet overlooking Notre Dame, followed by a browse around the bizarre Shakespeare & Co English language bookshop.

Day 2 - La Tour Eiffel & the Champs Elyses

Last time E was in Paris, he ‘discovered' a wonderful café in Le Marais called Le Pain Quotidien, so that seemed like a good place for our first breakfast in Europe. On the way there E picked up a copy of the ‘Gay Vinci Code' (with a Dictionary of gay French included & a recommendation by the Oscar Wilde on the back!) and D a copy of a French boardgame magazine. Le Pain Quotidien's breakfast consisted of huge basket of different types of breads (you could help yourself to the spreads - mostly chocolatey - on the table)and a bowl (!) of hot chocolate.

Breakfast at Le Pain Quotidien.

We arrived at the Eiffel Tower early to be amazed by the queues--it seems everyone else got there early to avoid the crowds too! The weather was also unseasonably freezing, so when we made it to the summit we quickly admired the view and descended again to seek shelter in a gift shop.

The crowds at the Eiffel Tower.

View from Eiffel Tower, towards Montmartre.

David at the Eiffel Tower.

Having done the Eiffel Tower we walked to the Arc de Triomphe. The views from the top were beautiful and the views of the Parisian traffic navigating the roundabout below truly frightening.

From there we walked down the Champs Elysées, ate bad French pizza, looked in a fragrance shop and visited the unique church, La Madeleine. To E's delight we stumbled on a Ladurée near La Madeleine, so an abundance of macaroons were enjoyed shortly after in Les Jardins des Tuileries before heading back to the hotel & collapsing.

Awful pizza near the Arc de Triomphe. We promise not to eat any more pizza in France!

Evan at the Arc de Triomphe.

Eight 'lanes' of high speed madness around the Arc de Triomphe.

Day 1 - Arriving, ice creams on le St Louis

We arrived in Paris at about 10am, feeling almost too tired to be excited. It all went a little pear shaped from there, mainly on account of our luggage. Suffice it to say we were dropped off by the airport bus at a different terminal from our luggage, and we later discovered someone had rifled through both our suitcases. Ugh!

We did manage a 3 hour walk while waiting for check-in time during which we had a look at Notre Dame and ate ice creams on Île St Louis. Walking back to the hotel to check-in to the tiniest hotel room I've ever seen, we had a browse through the Pompidou Centre gift shop and a wander through the gay/Jewish quarter, Le Marais.

For dinner we went to the Latin Quarter for an Indian meal (the fresh food was heaven after 25 hours of airline food!)

View from our hotel room.

Here goes

Welcome to our blog - this is where we will be recording our journey so that you can keep track of where we are. We'll try to update it regularly; every couple of days, hopefully.

Here's the plan:

• Paris


• Avignon


• Venice


• Vienna


• Budapest

David and Evan