I lost track of what happened when and where, I can summarise a few events but as for chronological order- it’s just beyond me. I’m listening to tiny dancer - the 'almost famous 'version and I hear the quote "I have to go home" and then penny lane says "you are home". I’m not sure; i’m back in UK now and excited to go home but also loving travelling and never wanting to leave. I think I last left this blog in Belgium headed back to the dreaded Paris - i’m not sure what put me in such a bad frame of mind about Paris but whatever it was it soon wore of and looking back it was great, but Paris is a city of great expectations and in many ways it failed to live up to these - we went to Belgium with a open mind knowing little about the country and so everything was a surprise, I wont go as far as to say Paris is overrated because its worth going but it was the unexpected small events that I treasure most. we arrived back in Paris late at night and headed to a new hostel in the montemare district - i.e. the red light district, we got so lost and it was not a good place to be lost in the middle of the night with a big suitcase each, eventually we found our hostel and made our way into the smallest room in the world. we had wondered on our reservation how their could be a uneven number of beds in a room , I had my suspicions but couldn’t believe it - 3 story bunks , me on the the bottom bed on the floor literally and lili sleeping somewhere up near heaven , I had to yell up to her. The hostel is one of the worst possible and actually most expensive, the door doesn’t lock, close, or have a key no hot water it’s a mess we were scared to go out at night. luckily we were here just three nights, we headed to Versailles for a day trip and its the highlight of my trip ,the palace of Versailles are somewhat mediocre after the Vatican but the gardens are to die for , i’m saving up to buy a little patch somewhere. You can get completely lost there, all the grass trees and ponds were frozen it was a winter wonderland. the palace tour is reasonably spectacular , we were not a serious as we should perhaps have been in such a historical place but we had been given the most hilarious audio guides which were extremely pompous and had a overdose of the word 'sumptuous' it was the sumptuous tableware in its sumptuous surrounds covered with sumptuously decorated lace coverings ... you get the drift , they also spontaneously broke out into re-enactments of what the king ‘might’ have said here or what visiting dignitaries might have seen , its really very hard to observe seriously with such comedy in your ears. The next day we went to the Louvre - the Mona Lisa is a let down, tiny and miles away behind a glass wall and a crowd of people. Other paintings with spectacular though, we also visited the grand palace and the mode exhibition. About this time we changed hostels returning to our first Paris stop - aubergine international - very cheap very good. we went this day to the Notre dam and had a hard time avoiding all the fake begers who ask innocently - "do you speak English" I wish like lili I could just pretend I spoke Chinese , I tried to put a sort of confused look on my face - it wasn’t hard, I've had 20 years practice. Inside the Notre dam are spectacular glass stained windows and candles galore. next we headed to the Pompidou museum , i’m not sure what this is,we were very confused , the architecture is a eclectic futuristic mess and the only art we saw was a video with subtitles in which a polish guy yells to a empty stadium that he wants 10 000 Jews to return to Poland , i’m sure it has cultural significance but i’m unsure what it is, we made some friends in the hostel that night in discussion about this video which they didn’t understand either , two guys and a girl one guy from Poland one Ukrainian &one Turkish , even the polish guy didn’t get it.
The next day..... I think was xmas - yay we had a party of two and all the restaurants we closed so with the hostels meagre recourses - a microwave- we had snails- escargots and what I thought was French champagne but due to a language breakdown was actually apple cider, we ate some of our xmas presents - (toblerone). we explored the shops and took all our photos of shop windows for our assignments without the hassle of pesky security guards.... who cares about intellectual property... the shop displays at printemps department store are works of art , they move and hundreds crowd round to see them , they are like live puppet shows.
Next day we went to the museum de orssay - the museum of modern art which was more interesting than the Louvre, lots of my favourite artists and works, the huge Toulouse lautrec's were the highlight, van gohs portrait - the crowd puller paled in comparison to Monet’s waterlillies. We next visited the Luxemburg gardens which are very tranquil and in the same area the pantheon, which is a roman rip off.
we went to the new arch - a big metal square which apparently is a window to the world and sits on a axes that runs from Paris to new Zealand , whilst here we went to a giant mall and got lost only to find Europe’s biggest supermarket - its big really big! We visited a market that was full of Christmassy stuff and I bought real (expensive) French nougat which is heavenly worth every Euro (there was many). Fashion student highlight – we went to all the designer stores and accidentally stumbled across the workroom of comme des garcons, we slipped past the security and peered into the windows and took a few sneaky pics.
we climbed the Eifel tower around 4pm to get the best view at day and night, its a hike but well worth it for the views, we could see the whole of Paris lit up and there was snow all over the first and second floors of the tower so snow shoes were available., our last night in Paris we went for dinner locally at a wonderful Italian restaurant where I had the best chocolate mouse ever! My favourite, we had learnt it was easier to go for Italian than attempt to decipher a French menu only to discover you had ordered sushi or something and not a French meal at all. Italian menus are universal. our last day in Paris we took a lazy option and spent a relaxing few hours on a river cruise up and down the seine seeing the Louvre Notre dam Eifel tower , concord and orsay from the river. it was very relaxing as we ached all over from our hike up the tower the night before, we revived enough to drag our suitcases from the hostel to the train station and then up and down and up and down and up again all the metro stairs, we arrived in London at 11pm and had a hour to catch the last train at nearby Victoria station. however London transport spited us and half the lines were closed, the Victoria line didn’t stop at Victoria and the ticket machine ate our money, and so we arrived in time - to see our train leave, and spent a very cold night sitting outside the station until it opened at 6am and then a further 3 hours sitting in the cold station waiting for the first train back to Rochester, we were needless to say - over it. I am not tom hanks I do not make the best out of living in a terminal.
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