First Day in Paris (Part 1 of 3)

And today I will finally talk about my trip to Paris! I unfortunately, won't talk about all of it today, but I will go over some of it today, some tomorrow, and maybe a 3rd day. Maybe 1 post for each day I was there, that sounds pretty good. So, I guess we should start at the beginning; leaving Clarence Dock.

So we initially walked out of Clarence Dock. As you can see, Steven was a gentleman and actually carried our luggage for me. We walked all the way to the bus stop and took the bus to the airport. Here is myself and Steven getting ready to get our tickets. Around now is when they told Steven it was not allowed for him to take pictures. They were very funny. Then we sat and watched as the planes took off, and were generally bored until we took off. It was Steven's first airplane flight so it was bound to be super exciting for him and he could not stop staring out the window. It was super cute.

So after around 2 hours in the plane we land in Paris! And of course what is the first thing we do? We take the train to the city centre! The trains were really cool and took us about an hour to get to the city centre. Our hostel was really cool. We got to meet this awesome Canadian named Brian who was from Vancouver! This was my first hostel so I was partially scared, but it's like a simplified version of a hotel. Totally worth it, and I will totally be doing my travelling in hostels from now on. I was fortunate enough to get the top bunk. The best spot in the house. We also had reading lights so I could read before I go to bed! And that is the end of Friday since we got there so late. The next day would for sure be much more exciting!

On Saturday we ended up walking EVERYWHERE in Paris. In the end we walked a little over 20km! We did get to see some random things in the city because of though. We got to see a building that's called telephone [on right]. Our guess was that it was called telephone because back in the day it took the whole building to run just one telephone. We also saw a random cathedral [below] that I loved. Because we walked the whole day we didn't take the metro. But because we were tired of walking near the end I took a hopeless picture of the above metro in hopes that eventually we may not have to walk. At the end of the day we decided not to walk all of Paris again. It was an 8 hour walk from one side to the other; on the way back we took the metro and it only took 30 minutes!

So while walking we did end up finding the Louvre. Our main attempt was to know where the Louvre was so that the next day (when the entrance was free) I could easily find my way over there. Since I have over 60 photos to share, I will be saving the Louvre pictures for tomorrow, but there are some pictures we took from right outside the louvre. The one underneath is a picture from the louvre. You can obviously see the Eiffel tower in the background and a statue of a spider in the foreground. The picture on the right is me eating the spider. It was a very big sculpture and was actually really cool. From the Louvre we went to the Champs Elysees which again I will cover in the monday edition since there are so many pictures to go through. The Champs Elysees was beautiful though. The other picture is an arc that is in front of the Louvre that I liked a lot.

So after walking to the End of the Champs Elysees and Seeing the Arc de Triumph [below] we decided it would be fun to actually make it to literally the other side of Paris. So we walked all the way to La Defense which was another 3 kilometers away. By the end we were pretty exhausted, but we did get a nice view of the two art pieces to either side of this section. Personally, not much interested me at La Defense, but Steven really liked it and so we went there. The only part I liked was that there was a shopping centre there. I personally would have gone shopping and spent tons of money, but Steven was tired so we sat down instead. Probably better cause I may have spent all my money way too early!

On the way over to La Defense we were able to cross over a river that runs on the edge of Paris. It was very wide and partly reminded me of Leeds. I may have been homesick, but I sure as hell didn't want to go back. Also, once reaching the edge of La Defense I turned around and took a picture of the Arc from it. If you look really really closely at the picture you can see a tiny Arc de Triumphe. Thats about 1/7 of what we walked that whole day! Crazy right? If the image is too small, you can view it again here without it being scaled down. The image to the right is Notre Dame. I personally think it's very postcardesque, but thats just me trying to make myself look good.

So of course, the last thing we did that night was go and see the Eiffel Tower which was amazingly gorgeous. I personally thought I wouldn't be impressed by it, but it actually was very impressive. We actually even just sat and stared at it for a while. I really wanted to go up to the top and eat at the restaurant they have there, but Steven didn't want to so we decided not to. It was a very beautiful day, and I enjoyed our first day.

Tune in tomorrow to see what we ended up doing Sunday and Monday! I am hoping I will have time to actually put them online. This one post took me over 2 hours to complete cause of the complexity with trying to get a nice view of all the pictures, so enjoy them! I will give a link for all the pictures and some extras on Monday! Once my final installment is in, I will also update the photos on Facebook. I'll catch up with you all on Tomorrow at 8pm again!

Tired from Typing
-Aram the Garmo