Eurostar
Less than 12 hours after we arrived London, and we were on the move again, to Paris.
After wasting some time at the train station, we got our subway daypass and started getting around Paris. Most subway trains in Paris have this European feel, i.e. old. Actually it feels more like a streecar. They do have some nice new trains around. Subway stations were fine, not unlike the ones we have in Toronto, maybe a bit older. And because there are very few washrooms (coin-operated) in the stations, we always thought there was this strange odor…
First area we visited is Montmartre, highest point in Paris. The only “attraction” I heard of in that area is Moulin Rouge (but it was early in the morning, so nothing going on) But the real attraction is Basilica of the Sacré-Coeur, a Parisian Roman Catholic church.
We probably spent a little too much time in Montmartre, pretty much the whole morning. We had planned to go for a boat cruise around 1pm, so we went for a quick bite, naturally we picked a sit-in restaurant, Les Deux Palais, having the “Tourist Menu” (Should’ve seen it coming…)
We barely made it to the boat cruise on time. I’m sure the boat cruise was fine, but I was half asleep most of the time. We were sitting on the top level open to the sky, but it was getting cold with traces of drizzle. We saw quite a few famous landmarks in Paris, but with such overcast sky, they don’t look much interesting; even the Eiffel tower looked dull.
We knew all along that we wouldn’t be able to spend much time in the museum; we just wanted to check out the area and the gift shop (I don’t think we bought anything there) Oh, that’s right, free washroom! That was unexpected surprise.
This is where the guys and gals spliting off; while me and Thomas went to do some more sightseeing, the gals did something more romantic, shopping… I guess Notre-Dame the building itself is more impressive, but I get this same feeling from the big church earlier.
Original plan was to meet up with the gals here at Arc de Triomphe (because it’s close to where they shopped), but there were some complications, so it was just me and Thomas again. We were really tired and cold, so we spent no more than 10 mintues in that area; we went for McDonald’s for some snack.
After being revived by McD, we went to our last attraction of the day: Eiffel Tower. Me and Thomas made it just in time to see the “light show”; basically it makes the tower more sparkling.
The later or darker it gets, the more we appreciate how beautiful the tower is. We didn’t realize how big the tower is until we get to the bottom of it. The area under the tower is actually one big open space. Just when we thought we might go up the tower, the gals came calling: it’s time to go for our train ride back to London. And it’s the last train of the day, so we could not afford to miss it.
End of Day 2
Everything looks nicer at night in Paris, do they have special light bulbs to make everything more romantic? Departure time of our train was 8:43pm, and we got back to London around 10:30pm. (Gained the one hour back from the time zone difference) We were tired, hungry, cold, not feeling too well with this Amazing-Race-style of trip. I was thinking to myself, we got to take it easy, to make this trip more enjoyable.
