Yeah well I pretty much did everything in two days in Paris -and still having a ball back home in Nantes. It was amazing arriving there at night with all the lights, in the car with a whole lot of French strangers (yay carpooling!), listening to German rap, Roy Orbisson and Mika.
Got a chance to use my French (which I think I can actually tell now has improved!) in la plus belle ville du monde...
I've been living in France for two months now, and I was with Benoit, so we were speaking French, so it was with great reluctance I got out my camera like every other tourist. This shot is a bit better than your average, though: we got up at 6.30 Saturday morning (we were staying with cousins in a beautiful Parisien apartment in the 17eme so we were in town straight away) so it's still a little sombre..
There were heaps of Japanese tourists making the Eiffel tower sign so we asked if we could join in (in French, even though they only spoke English, because I am kind of language-handicapped at the moment) and then a whole lot of Tunisians joined in. Turned out to be quite the party...
The souvenir shops (and my opinion of their prices). We did get some prints of Paris: Benoit got the pretty ones in Summer, but of course I got the ones in Winter because that's how it is at the moment!
This is Benoit's future residence (as president of France)...
(don't worry, I wasn't dragged along just for this, all the monopoly streets in French monopoly are in Paris, and some of them were around here)
Climbing Notre Dame (so much better than just going inside, which is average). You get to see all the gargoyles, the architecture, the bells and the tiny staircases up close. We did this instead of climbing the Eiffel tower, because you can't actually see the Eiffel tower from there. Because of that, everything was free because we were both under 18 (and thanks Mum for the British passport that got me all the rights of a European citizen). Thanks also to the Australians who pretended to be our parents to get up l'arc de triomph..
One of the many bridges in Paris where you write your names on a lock and lock it to the mesh. Guts if you get divorced and have to come back with a key..
Mathilde, another cousin, and Leo, who's house we stayed at. We ate at a cute French restaurant Benoit and I had found the day before (and manage to find again!!) Tried French onion soup, ray with capers and we shared two creme caramels and two mousse au chocolats.
On our last night we happened to see this for one minute on our way back to the metro. This is really only a snippet (I can tell you all the rest when I get back to NZ in a few days!). Two other things that really should be mentioned was all the time spent walking along the Seine, by the second-hand book stalls, and through the streets of Paris, and discussing art like it was food like only French people can in all the galleries we visited. You can imagine I was shattered in the 'covoiturage' (carpooling) that took us back to Nantes.
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