Skip to main content

Euro Adventure Pt 4 - And Then, There Was Paris

When an alarm goes off at 3am a few things go through your head... What the bloody hell! Is this a joke? Did I put in the wrong time? AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH! The 3am wake up call was definitely not fun. But we were determined to make it to Paris - which we did. 

After putting on our faces and our best we are not zombies from the walking dead impressions - we headed down to our buses and piled on for our drive to Portsmouth (2 hours outside of London) one of the few ports that ferries were crossing from. We were there by about 615am and found out we couldn't catch a ferry until 9am... OH NO NOT MORE WAITING AROUND!!! At least we weren't waiting around for nothing. Today I woke up feeling a little unwell - a sniffly nose and a tickle in my throat - that cannot be a good sign... 

So we waited. And waited. And waited a little more. We waited in the line of a coffee shop and we waited in line to get through security. We even waited at the entrance of the ferry for the rest of our tour to finally show up. But alas. We were on and then we were off. Now I have never been on a ferry like this before but I never excepted to feel sooooo nauseous and unwell. Alysha very smartly took some kwells and felt mostly fine - she even tried to sneak in a little nap. We ended up sitting in some reclining chairs watching Geordie Shore.

Finally we had made it to France!!! Bonjour France! VIVA LA FRANCE!!! Had to go through customs and got my first chance to dust of my very rusty high school French. Bonjour Monsieur - I said! Bonjour, ca va? - he asked. Bien - I replied with a smile. Then i didn't quite catch what he said (which was in English so I got confused and just waved au revoir with a pathetic wave. Darn. Oh well - better luck next time Tegan. 

We took our suitcases out to where the Topdeck bus was meeting us - YES! It was finally all starting! 



We met out driver Greg who is from Krakow in Poland and has a thick Polish accent - he seems like a lot of fun though. We began our long drive to Paris - about 4 hours with a toilet stop at a service station in the middle. We started to get to know our fellow travellers with introductions and a little game of two truths, one lie. 

Mine were:
- I studied at uni for 5 years and never got my degree
- I have a three year old son called James
- I have been kicked out of a music festival after 15 minutes

Alysha's were:
- I'm dating a surgeon
- I've seen 6 child births
- I've done a volunteer trip to Vanuatu

It was a lot of fun - some people have done some amazing things in their lives. Just wow.

Ah Paris - where have you been all my life. My absolute favourite place in the whole world. It was just as I remember it 7 years ago (wow has it been 7 years already?), so beautiful, so French. The breathtaking architecture, the River Seine, the shops, the cafe's that face out onto the road (for people watching of course), oh and that tower. That glorious iron tower that makes Paris what it is. Amazing.



We began our driving tour of Paris with Noddie pointing out all of the sites and giving us a brief history lesson of Paris and France. Just to name a few, we saw; the Champ de Mars, Napolean's Tomb, Museé Rodin, Place de la Concord, Arc D'Triomphe, Musee Du Louvre, Musee D'Orsay, Notre Dame, the Champs-Élysée and finally returned back to the Eiffel Tower where we had an amazing Parisian picnic dinner. It was very delish, antipasto platters, Camembert, macaroons, eclairs, fresh fruit, salad, frogs legs - no I wasn't game enough to try one. 

We had some free to explore or climb the Eiffel Tower - Alysha, Taylor and Sam were brave enough to climb all 700 stairs of the Eiffel Tower and enjoyed the sweat and magnificent views from high above Paris.



I was still feeling pretty crook from my imminent cold and my cough was slowly getting worse so I took a pass on the climb and walked around on my own, enjoying the delightful view of the Eiffel Tower - even had a lovely chat with a Frenchman who tried to sell me champagne - I may have convinced him to visit Australia haha. We all met back up for the prime time viewing of the Sparkle. 



I have no words. What a great way to end the day! 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Euro Adventures Pt 28 - Our Last Day In London - Let's Visit The Queen!

Our last day in London - where has the time gone?? It seems like only yesterday we were packing our bags, getting on the planes, meeting out Topdeck family... It's all gone so fast!! I'll try not to get all emotional for all my blog readers out there - but it may be inevitable. I really am such a lucky person - I never thought I would be able to see the world once, let alone twice - and with one of my closest friends as well. Very lucky indeed.  Today we are off to visit the queen!! We want to see Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard. We caught the underground and walked across Green Park to where this massive golden and black gates were - then we saw it. Just like in all the movies we had seen and exactly how I imagined it... Buckingham Palace. The majesty and beauty of this building was like nothing I have seen. Plus the queen lives there! How cool is that?!  We were typical tourists and took lots of photos and then found the prime position to wait out the morning...
Post a Comment
Read more

Euro Adventures Pt 22 - Eat, Sleep, Beach, Repeat

Another day in paradise, Mykonos you beautiful place. I woke early with a coughing fit to find everyone was home and in bed - absolutely dead to the world. Once a couple of the girls woke up we headed down for some brekkie - the included brekkie was absolute shithouse so we ordered from the breakfast menu at the restaurant. Such a good life choice. Plus the view!  Noddy joined us for a chat and a coffee - Greek coffee is pretty different, very very strong - I was kind of in love with it. Delish. We headed back to the room and the girls had naps while I caught up some overdue blogging - even though without wifi I couldn't post anything. The camping ground did have wifi but it was so bad that you could only connect of you were standing right next to the bar and even then it dropped in and out. LAME!  When everyone was awake we changed into our swimmers and headed down to the beach at our back door. The beach was absolutely spectacular. For once it wasn't all pointy sharp rocks t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Euro Adventures Pt 18 - A Very Long Day

Oh dear... 5 hours on the bus... 15 hours on a ferry... Then we will be in Greece. This will definitely be a very very long day - and that's only if the ferry isn't delayed. We had a very early start this morning with bags on the bus  at 6am  and brekkie at 630. With a long drive ahead of us we began our journey to the ports. I've never been on a proper cruise ship before so I was pretty excited.  We had a toilet stop and were informed that the ferry was running about 4 hours late, oh dear. But Noddy said we could find a great beach and just chill for a couple of hours - rather than waiting at the ports. I am feeling really really unwell today, light headed, dizzy, headaches, fever... Not a good sign. It also made the bus ride pretty unbearable.  But we made it to a beach resort type of place and it was WAY to hot to be by the water. There was a bunch of shops with tables and chairs so we just sat and talked and had gelato. Alysha and I bought Turkish towels for the ...
Post a Comment
Read more