Paris Day 1-3

28 - 30 May 2013

Day 1: Amsterdam to Paris
I booked a ticket on the high speed Thalys train to get to Paris. I laughed when I read the ticket and it said you must be on the platform at least 2 minutes before the train departs because for an airline it's more like 3 hours. All I can say about the train is "I'm converted". It rocks up at the station and loads everyone in under 10 minutes, then it's off exactly on time. The ride is great, there's enough room in the seats, it's quiet and you can get up and walk around if you like. I'm definitely going to choose a train over a plane any day.

Pablo
My train buddy was a Canadian/Frenchman who happened to have a deck of cards on hand. We played a game called pablo, which is a game of memory where you have 4 cards that sit face down and you swap them around to reduce the face value.

Paris Metro
My Dutch(ish) cousin was kind enough to give me some Metro tickets before I left so I didn't have to figure out the ticket vending machines but I did have to learn how to navigate a big (but fantastic) transport system. Gare Du Nord, one of Paris' many international railway stations, is huge so you have to find the right line (I think there's 4 metro lines that come past) and then get the right direction. I got it right the first time but the whole underground thing made it seem so dodgy that I thought everyone was out to get me. At the risk of sounding like a wimp, I did feel a bit scared of the metro and the general shady feeling of the city but I put that down to being night time and a new place because I was fine the next day.

St Christopher's Inn Hostel
I found my hostel and got checked in without any hassles. I think I picked a pretty decent hostel because it felt new and clean and the combo of being big (300 beds) and having a bar meant that it was really easy to meet people. I met two Canadian brothers in my room and went for some beers and food before hitting the sack. The lights in the room stayed on until just after midnight but being a hostel newbie, I wasn't game to just turn them off because I was unsure of the etiquette. By the way, it turns out there isn't any because numerous people would burst in at any hour and turn the lights on.

Day 2: Walking tour
Yes, there's a walking tour but first, breakfast. I paid for breakfast vouchers but it seems it was in vain because breakfast was free! Not making that mistake again. I spotted a few people embracing the cheapo backpacker spirit by flogging sandwiches for later in the day and I followed in suit; every dollar saved extends the trip longer :D The walking tour starts in town at 11 but because they figure no-one is capable of actually making it there, and rightly so, they send a guy to pick people up from the hostel at 10.

The tour starts from St Michels and goes past the skinniest street in Paris, Notre Dame, a police station with bullet holes from WW2, a statue of Louis XIV, Pont Neuf, the courtyard of the Louvre (with the pyramid), a statue of Joan of Arc, the gardens in front of the Louvre and finishes at the obelisque that Napoleon stole from Egypt.

Lunch
After the tour, a bunch of us went to a nearby French restaurant to sample some local cuisine. I probably should've been more adventurous but I had a baguette and a beer and it was good but pretty pricey. We had a good talk and I added some more possible destinations to my list. Barcelona seems super popular by the way, everyone is either going or has been.

Arc de Triomphe
With my new found friends, a Canadian and a Texan, we wandered further down the Champs de Elysees looking at the (super ritzy) shops and at the end, the Arc de Triomphe. This round-a-bout is seriously crazy by the way; it doesn't even have lane lines so it's a total free for all.

Sacre Cour
We hopped on the Metro and went up further north in Paris to see the Moulin Rouge building; it's smaller than I thought it would be. Then we walked further up the hill to see the Sacre Cour (big ass Basilica) that's built on the highest point in Paris. The basilica itself is impressive but the view is even better; you can see most of Paris from up there. On the way down we met some of the super pushy scammers that were trying to do some trick where they tie a string around your finger... nothing suss :S We also grabbed a crepe because I'd heard they're the shit; it was pretty good but it wasn't fresh so I did get another a few days later and it was much better.

Being a Gentleman
The metro has lots of stairs, which makes sense because it's underground. Anyway, the point is that when we were coming out of the station near the hostel I helped a girl carry her bag up the stairs. Turns out she's an Aussie, but she's from Melbourne so she says weird things like parma.

Pub Crawl #1
The group that ran the walking tour also do a pub crawl so I jumped on board. There's not too much to say about it other than it started at an Aussie bar, go figure, and went to 2 other pubs then to a club. It was relatively small, only 8 people, but it was a good night out.

Day 3: Louvre
I was back with the Texan again plus the Aussie chick and another American chick joined us too. We headed out to the Louvre to see what all the fuss was about. There's a few ways into the Louvre; the well known and super busy one that goes in under the biggest glass pyramid and the lesser known one that goes in under the mini Arc de Triomphe, which was naturally the one we took. The line was still pretty big but it moved fairly quickly so it wasn't that bad plus we had a chance to talk shit.

The Louvre is a seriously big place and in 3 hours we saw the Egyptian collection then went over to see, you guessed it, the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa wasn't really a let down because I had low expectations but you can't go to the Louvre and not see it. The really amazing thing was how it gets its own wall that's covered in protective glass and the whole room is swarming with people try to take pictures of it. I grabbed an audio guide, which was actually a Nintendo 3DS and it was a smart move because almost all the information plates were in French.

Arc de Triomphe, Again
We walked back down the same street again but this time there were two new people with us so that makes it Ok, right? We stopped for a pistachio macaroon too but because I've never had one in Australia, I can't compare. It was pretty nice though. We made it to the Arc again but this time we actually saw the eternal flame that's under the Arc itself.

Pub Crawl #2
Apparently the pub crawl was going to be a lot more popular tonight, some new friends wanted to give it a go and my hangover from the previous night was pretty much gone so that's what we did. It was a lot more popular this time with 33 people and we stayed out a bit later to something like 5:30. The club at the end was awesome too because they served cheap beer and played dubstep (yes, I was rocking the dubstep t-shirt). The taxi ride home was interesting because it took a lot longer than it should've (we didn't really know where we were going) and there was way too much drunken French. We made it in the end though.

Pictures
-Notre Dame
-Pont Neuf covered in padlocks
-Arc de Triomphe
-The view from Sacre Cour, the highest point on land in Paris
-Sacre Cour itself (the basilica)
-Moulin Rouge
-The largest glass pyramid at the Louvre and the finger thing that you do when taking a photo
-The inverted pyramid in the not-so-secret entrance to the Louvre
-How stupidly busy the Mona Lisa was
-The smallest elevator I've ever seen