mona lisa. garlic snails. 6 million dead people. welcome to paris

hello team. well as usual i am way behind on my blog entries, so time to fill you in on the last few weeks. as i always say- time is flying over here, cannot believe how fast it is cracking on. so january 23rd, i got up and walked/trained/bussed my way to heathrow terminal 1, where i met my good ol aussie mate kate for a whirlwind tour of paris. we had 4 days to throughly explore one of the most famous cities in the world. bring it.

so we rocked up at the charles de gaulle airport just outside of paris, and the place was deserted, there was about 10 people that i could see in total. a bit weird. bought a week long travelcard and caught our train into the heart of paris- possibly the slowest train of all time, but we got there in the end. went and dumped out gear at our youth hostel and hit the street. woohoo. first on our list was the notre dame. really beautiful building/catherdral, great artwork/scultptures all around the exterior of the building and heap of gargoyles guarding the place. you can climb up the tower and have a look around. but we didnt. off to see the most famous landmark in paris-the effiel tower- we thought youd be able to see it from everywhere in the city as its giant- but due to all the buildings when we got out of the tube station, we were virtually standing right in front of it the first time we saw it. just walked around the corner of a building and it jumped out at us. we got there at dusk, which is the best time to see it. because in the daylight, it really is just a mammoth piece of rusty metal. you have the choice to jump in the lift or climb the stairs. we climbed the stairs as it was cheaper and you didnt have to wait 30 mins with other lazy people to get to the top. as it turned out we could only go to the second level, which was a bit budget, but still a pretty mint view. i once again regretted have a budget camera, sure its small and pocketsize, and takes great photos if your 2m away, but it struggles with landscapes of cities at night. lucky katie had a quality camera. beautiful sunset while we were up there. got some wicked photos-just have to get them all of kate. as it was now dark we headed off to see the moulin rouge. we didnt see a show as: (1)the cheapest show was 87 euro and (2) i wasnt interested. so we(kate) just took a few photos of moulin rouge sign (you know, the windmill ) and that was about it had a bit of a walk around the street and checked out the area. we kind of got lost on the way to rouge and ended up at sacre coeur which is a church on the highest hill (?) in paris, so you have a great view of the whole city. beatuiful. by this time the clock was ticking over into a new day, and the tube was about to stop running so we raced back to out hostel. met a few randoms in our room, 2 aussie guys from melbourne who where a good laugh and a chick from japan, fun times just mucking around and laughing. day 1 complete.

day 2 we were up at about 8ish for our free brekkie which was tea/coffee/orange juice and a bagette with jam. simple but effective. jumped on a train to varsaille, which is town about 20km out of paris, we'd heard people raving about it, so went to check it out. theres a gaint chataeu there, which looked pretty cool from the outside but cost 15 euro to go in. no. so we had a quick wander around, nothing overly exciting to be found. so we were heading back into paris within an hour. kate is an art fanatic, she studies it at oxford. so am i. but just not on the same level. one of her favourite sculpturists(?) is auguste rodin, im not sure if you recognise the name (i didnt) but he did the scultpture of the thinking guy( hes leaning his head on his fist while hes thinking) you'll know it when you see it. theres a whole musuem dovoted to him. hes done some pretty cool work. we stayed there for about 3 hours. sure, if i was there by myself i would have been a bit quicker. but i think kate was trying to culture me (did that make sense?). while chatting to the melbourne boys the night before they said they were going to the catacombs, which is, the bones of over 6 million dead people arranged in some sort of order/artwork at the bottom of an old quarry. had to see this. it was 2.50 euro to get in (bargain!) and you walk 1.3km through this really erie quarry/mineshaft tunnel to get to the bones. then you just see bones everywhere, i cannot even begin to describe what it was like. bones stacked perfectly about 2m high and 5m deep along the walls of the mineshaft. yes it sounds like alot already. then keep that height and depth of bones going for the next 500m. i kid you not. it was unbelievable. all arranged perfectly the arm and leg bones (i work in a gym, thats the technical names for them) criss-crossed in piles, with skulls added for decoration. hard to describe. check out the pictures ill put up soon. after the catacombs, we were off to the arc di triumphe. which is the big square archway in the middle of a gaint roundabout. through which the champs elysees runs (the final straight of the tour de france bike race) we were also up there at dusk. was beautiful with all the city lights and all the headlights of the cars streaming around us. once again we got some mint photos. on kates camera. the giant roundabout surrounding the arch is great fun to watch. as its about 12 lanes wide(with no designated lanes), and theres about 10 roads entering and exiting onto it. so much of the time the traffic is at a standstill as one little car/moped on the inside lane is trying to cut at a right angle through 11 lanes of cars to make its exit. funny as, great entertainment. by this time it was about 8pm and we were off to meet one of my mates from summer camp in america. she actually lives and studies in paris, but has an american mother- so she speaks both languages perfectly. we went out for dinner where i tried some snails as a starter. actually quite nice. there are servds with garlic butter and you have special tongs and a little fork to dig the little fellas out of their shell. and really its like a piece of garlic butter day old chewing gum. yummy. actually was pretty nice. so we just chatted and caught up on the gossip from the 05 camp season (as she had gone back last year) then just went and chilled in bastille(as is bastille day), which is a section of paris(sorry thats all i remember about it-no historical facts). found a nice little chill out place and just relaxed and chatted, was great to catch up and chill. at about 12pm itwas time to say goodbye and jump on a tube back to the hostel, where once again we chatted to the wee hours of the morning with some randoms and the melbourne boys.

day 3. coffee/tea/orange juice/ bagette. again. now this was the day i had been waiting for. the day of art. we started off at the musee' de orlay (i think) which is art from a certain time period displayed in the old train staion which they had done up quite well. we walk around for ages, it was amazing how much art kate actually knew, pretty much all of it. i was happy for her that she could see all the stuff in real life after seeing it in books. so we walked around and saw everything. there was even a sculpture of a guy feeding a crocodile (random) steve irwin. its the only one i took a pic of. we only found out that you could take photos when we were nearing the end of our walking around. so then we had to backtrack and kate took a photo of all the ones she liked. which was all of them. except the steve irwin one. the only painting that i knew was of whistlers mother. kate was very impressed. until i said that i only knew it because of the mr bean movie. i did my best. had a lunch of a bagette, cheese, water and some little deserts. they make the best pasteries and deserts in paris. went for a nice walk along the river. saw an aqua car, a convertible car which you can drive through the water using the little propellors on the back. cool! then it was time for the louvre. luckily for us it was late night louvre night, so we could stay until 10pm. goody! as soon as you step inside. it just overwhelmes you. it is rediculous how much stuff they have put in there. they say that if you look at every art piece for 30 seconds, itll take you 30 years to see everything in the museum. thats rediculous. we were there for just over 4 hours. and we didnt see everything. but kate saw the stuff that she really liked (carvalho, i think). so that was cool. i didnt recognise anything, so i just followed kate around as she knew what she was doing. got out at closing time, 10pm. and made our way back to the hostel. legs tried, and brain fried from looking at more art than id seen in my entire life. there was a new aussie dude and his german girlfriend in our room, and also a kiwi chick. chatted to them for a while (the melbourne boys had gone to amsterdam). slept like a log.

january 26- australia day- wallabies jersey on. the final day of our tour of paris. after taking in all the history, art and other random stuff. we needed to have a bit of childish fun. so we went to disneyland. mate it was ace. had heaps of fun, just running around going on rollercoasters, the teacups, cinderellas castle thing, getting a photo with micky (he was an angry french micky) it was cool as. i somehow got in for a students price, which ended up being cheaper than the childs ticket. how does that work? it was a great day, and there were no queues, the longest we had to wait was about 7 minutes. but it was -3 degrees outside, bitterly cold- and a thursday. it was ace. got some ripper photos which ill put up soon. and that was it. back to the airport and back to heathrow at 11:30pm. got back home at about 1am. and had to work at 6:30 the next morning, absolutely shattered. not productive in anyway. but it was a great trip, had so much fun, saw a colossal amount of stuff. as you can tell because you are now extremely bored after reading all of this (good work to those who made it this far). ok ill finish up. winter olympics are on right now. so cool having it in prime time. im possibly getting a ticket to the chealsea v barcelona champions league game on wednesday (very slim, but ill take it) and im off to egypt for a week on friday with a few mates. cant wait. its gonna be mint. and warm. woohoo. hope life is great where ever you are. til next time. seeya