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Day 3 Paris
Oct. 6th, 2012 09:24 pmGot up early in the morning to catch the Eurostar from London to Paris. And then the train ended up stalling for like an hour in the middle of the trip due to...I'm not sure what cuz I couldn't understand the conductor's French accent. Wow and I thought BART could be bad.
It was drizzling the entire afternoon/evening when we got to Paris, but was still warmer than England. Higher humidity, mostly.
Immediately after we got to Paris, we were rushed off to the Louvre tour. This is apparently because tomorrow, or the first Sunday of every month, admission to the Louvre is free and open to all (except for groups...apparently tour groups aren't allowed then). So today was basically all the tour groups scrambling to get that done before tomorrow. Our bus had to circle the tour bus parking lot twice before finding a spot.
The Louvre itself is very packed, almost as much as the big museums in China. There's a lot of stuff there and since we only had 2 hours, our tour guides pretty much rushed us through and only hit some of highlights. We saw the three main attractions - the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory, and the Mona Lisa. I was not able to get any photos of the last one, not because they didn't allow photography (strangely enough this is the only museum that allowed people to take flash photos of everything, even the paintings), but because there was a veritable sea of people in front of her and I could not get close enough. This is a museum you most likely need to dedicate at least a week to seeing if you really want to get everything out of it. At the end, we also braved the drizzle and got some pics of the Arc d' Triumph at the entrance.
After the Louvre, some of the people on the tour requested to drop by the shopping district to look at all the famous brand bags or whatever. I stayed on the bus on that and dozed. Honestly, I don't see the point of shelling out a lot of money for a real Prada or whatever... or even window shopping for it if you don't plan to shell out said money.
Then, we went to a Chinese place for dinner. I don't know if it's cuz I was hungry as I skipped lunch on the train, or if it's just that the French are good cooks, but the food was pretty good. I'm not sure if it was authentic anything, but everyone agreed that it was very tasty. I'm probably leaning towards the idea that the French are just snobs at cooking and thus put more effort into making even westernized Chinese food than anywhere else.
Finally, the last event of the day was a boat ride down the Seine. It was still drizzling, but still barely bearable. However, I was fairly underwhelmed by the promised supposedly dazzling scenic sights of the river. I think anyone who's been to Shanghai / Huangpu in the evening would have to agree. The only lights that were really worth looking at was the ones on the Eiffel Tower. The only advantage that the Seine has is that the water is much cleaner and not polluted (much like the Thames in London). Oh and also there were a lot of barges lining the edge of the river. Some were restaurants and stuff but there were also quite a few that appeared to be personal lodging types. And of course every time I saw one of those, I was reminded of Duncan MacLeod and his barge on the Seine. XD
In other news... toothache still persisting. I think it's just my imagination but I feel like one of the back teeth on my lower left side is a teeny kinda wobbly at the root. I really hope that's just my imagination. And I really need to see the dentist ASAP when I get back to the US.
It was drizzling the entire afternoon/evening when we got to Paris, but was still warmer than England. Higher humidity, mostly.
Immediately after we got to Paris, we were rushed off to the Louvre tour. This is apparently because tomorrow, or the first Sunday of every month, admission to the Louvre is free and open to all (except for groups...apparently tour groups aren't allowed then). So today was basically all the tour groups scrambling to get that done before tomorrow. Our bus had to circle the tour bus parking lot twice before finding a spot.
The Louvre itself is very packed, almost as much as the big museums in China. There's a lot of stuff there and since we only had 2 hours, our tour guides pretty much rushed us through and only hit some of highlights. We saw the three main attractions - the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory, and the Mona Lisa. I was not able to get any photos of the last one, not because they didn't allow photography (strangely enough this is the only museum that allowed people to take flash photos of everything, even the paintings), but because there was a veritable sea of people in front of her and I could not get close enough. This is a museum you most likely need to dedicate at least a week to seeing if you really want to get everything out of it. At the end, we also braved the drizzle and got some pics of the Arc d' Triumph at the entrance.
After the Louvre, some of the people on the tour requested to drop by the shopping district to look at all the famous brand bags or whatever. I stayed on the bus on that and dozed. Honestly, I don't see the point of shelling out a lot of money for a real Prada or whatever... or even window shopping for it if you don't plan to shell out said money.
Then, we went to a Chinese place for dinner. I don't know if it's cuz I was hungry as I skipped lunch on the train, or if it's just that the French are good cooks, but the food was pretty good. I'm not sure if it was authentic anything, but everyone agreed that it was very tasty. I'm probably leaning towards the idea that the French are just snobs at cooking and thus put more effort into making even westernized Chinese food than anywhere else.
Finally, the last event of the day was a boat ride down the Seine. It was still drizzling, but still barely bearable. However, I was fairly underwhelmed by the promised supposedly dazzling scenic sights of the river. I think anyone who's been to Shanghai / Huangpu in the evening would have to agree. The only lights that were really worth looking at was the ones on the Eiffel Tower. The only advantage that the Seine has is that the water is much cleaner and not polluted (much like the Thames in London). Oh and also there were a lot of barges lining the edge of the river. Some were restaurants and stuff but there were also quite a few that appeared to be personal lodging types. And of course every time I saw one of those, I was reminded of Duncan MacLeod and his barge on the Seine. XD
In other news... toothache still persisting. I think it's just my imagination but I feel like one of the back teeth on my lower left side is a teeny kinda wobbly at the root. I really hope that's just my imagination. And I really need to see the dentist ASAP when I get back to the US.
