London one-way!

Both Lija and Lis were sickies this morning so I left them to sleep it off and trundled off on my own.

It took half an hour in the queue at le post to send several parcels that luckily weren’t that expensive. I was trying to offload some of my pack, then ended up shopping more today hehe oops!

I visited a few of the non-famous but still just as important relics around Paris, like Gare de Lyon, the huge international train station, and St Augustine church, fascinating story behind it, blown if I remember what it was! I met Lija at the Opera House and we went in to discover a really pretty old place.

Some parts weren’t kept in repair, but the great gall shone with the chandeliers and the museum had some amazing pictures and scripts and pieces of music. The auditorium was red velvet and gold balconies, and they were in there practicing for Wuthering Heights. Laying stage props, working out lighting. Lija said she’s sure the story of the phantom of the opera was based on or came from this building – spooky!

From there we metro’d over to le Arc de Triomphe, but couldn’t be bothered paying to have to climb 400 steps, so we sat on its steps watching the traffic. This one army bus kept driving around the circle which was a bit strange unti lwe went to cross back under the road to find 20 French soldiers sitting on either side of the tunnel with their machine guns, not actually doing anything. Lija and I laughed cos a couple of them were flirting towards us.

We walked down de Champs de Ellesses (damned if I remember how to spell it), all expensive shops and boutiques, with a view to the bottom square which now houses a ferris wheel set up for the rugby, but used to be where thousands of heads rolled, including that of Marie Antoinette.

I ended up spending my money in the Disney store on a snow globe of Minnie and Mickey Mouse having dinner in front of the Eiffel Tower awww so cute! We realised Paris has this cool system where you either use your credit card or transport card and can ‘loan’ bikes to move around town and return it to any of the special bike racks when you’re done. It’s a 150E deposit, even though only 2-4euros to rent, but we couldn’t read the French terms so we didn’t want to risk losing so much – next time!

We metro’s back up to Montmarte, the sex shop district and went past the Moulin Rouge, packed to the brim for the 7 oclock show and dinner, up past the Sacre Cor and meandering through the souvenir shops. It was 8pm and we had to settle our hotel bill so we went back and Lija mostly, although we all put in our two cents, told them we wanted a hefty discount after that shit room. Sorted in no time, you don’t mess with three angry girls hehe.

Lija and I went to La Marmite and had a 3 course meal for dinner. We shared apple and goat’s cheese pastry and a serving of escargot – snails in garlic sauce which were really quite nice, then duck with beans and potatoes, and I had a banana split to finish and Lija her creme brulee. Did I mention we then had to literally roll home afterwards and really were’t feeling too crash hot – kinda ate too fast because all the meals came out within minutes of each other. It was a nice restaurant with good waitors though. We watched a bit of ‘Lost’ in French before bed. That was pretty funny!

 

Tags: Travel

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