9/1/12

Paris day 1 - By Jess

We had a pretty early flight out of Rome to Paris, so we woke up and headed to Leonardo DaVinci airport where we had some breakfast and then got on a plane, landing in Paris at about 12pm. We caught the bus to the Opera in Montmatre and then proceeded, with marginal success, to actually navigate the Paris underground. A lovely Parisian man tried to help us, but with heavy luggage and all those bloody steps, it took us quite a while to actually find our hotel. Once we eventually did, we settled into our room and then went to ask our concierge how to get to all the places we wanted to go. He was brilliant and showed us on a map everywhere we needed to go. Our hotel was less than a 2 minute walk from the Moulin Rouge, right in the centre of the Red Light district (which we ddn't know when we booked it) so we wandered up to see the famous club and then we headed in the direction of the Eiffel tower.

We eventually made it to the tower just as it was getting dark, so we took some photos and then wandered back into the shopping area of the city, near the famous Galleries Lafayette. We found a restaraunt and were delighted to have some very tasty French food. As with the rest of Europe, it's cheaper here to buy beer or wine than soft drink. We finished our lovely meal and then tried to get back to our hotel. Unlike every other city we'd seen so far, Paris was really, really, really hard to navigate. This is partly because it's a confusing layout, and partly because there are so many little streets that aren't actually on any of the maps, making navigating really hard. We finally found our hotel, after many wrong turns, and got ready for Versailles tomorrow.