Days 4 - 5 Paris

Day 4
After our long flight we finally arrived in Paris, we went through customs and it was very different to the customs in Australia and Singapore. All they did was stamp your passport. No checking your bags, or asking what the purpose of your visit was, just a quick stamp of your passport. We caught the RER train into the center of Paris, and began our search for the hotel. We got lost a couple of times while trying to find our hotel, and I was tired and frustrated so I decided I hated Paris. After we finally found our hotel we dropped off our baggage and went in search of lunch! In the afternoon we caught up with some friends, Deborah and Steve, and had drinks by the Seine. Everything was very expensive, with a glass of basic orange juice costing 4.50 euro, about $7 or $8 Australian. Everything is very expensive in Paris as it is such a touristy town where the main way of eating is at restaurants. After having a quick dinner, we were both very tired (I was starting to feel dizzy while sitting down), we went to our hotel and slept.

Day 5
I was amazed when I woke up, I had slept for over 12 hours! We decided to go to the Louvre and left early, we bought a museum pass which gave mum free entry to most of the museums. As I was under 18, they were almost all free. We wandered around the Louvre as there was nothing in particular that we wanted to see. The highlights were the ancient Greek statues. It’s hard to comprehend the age of these statues. Some of them are many times older than Australia’s history. I also saw the Mona Lisa, and I must say I was not hugely impressed by it. It’s in a beautiful room filled with paintings much more beautiful than it.

After the Louvre we wandered down the Rue de Rivoli and looked in all the shops. They were all very western shops, with a few small tourist shops in between. After a while, we caught the metro up to the Arc de Triomphe. The arc was swarming with tourists; there was no way of looking at it without having someones head in the way. After seeing it from afar, we took the public subway underneath the Champs Elysees to the bottom of the Arc, then walked up a winding staircase of about 250 stairs to the top. The view from the top made the long walk worthwhile, you could see all of Paris, and the sunset. When we had finished walking around we were so tired that we got a light dinner, then collapsed in our hotel.