Paris

The Arc de triumphe
The Champs Elysee

the Catacombs

the double stare of death

La Rotonde cafe was a popular hangout for the likes of Miller and Dali

I was looking forward to Paris, and it was the last stop on the Contiki before we headed back to London for a week of more of our own stuff.

The first night was a nightmare. we headed into town to see Montparnasse, the adopted home of Henry Miller, the home of the only skyscraper in Paris(because once they built it they thought it was so ugly for the landscape they passed a law to not build anymore apart fro in the financial district of course, says it all). The bus driver was awesome, the attendant at the subway was appaling, and with a couple of shady characters floating around us we wondered why we'd stuck ourselves in the paris metro without being able to speak french an not really knowing how to get where we were going. We quickly got ourselves sorted and headed into town. The next change over seemed sweet and we were doing nicely untill they booted everyone off because the next 3 stops were under maintenance. we then spent the next 50 minutes going in a loop round the metro stations to get to the next stop which should have taken minutes(here is where I point out we are not morons, but also not the most metro savvy, considering we don't even use the busses in Wellington). Anyway, we finally made it to Tour Montparnasse to go up for a view over Paris at night after our nightmare metro escapade, which took nearly 2 hours from the campsite(probably about a 45minute trip) and walked in to get tickets to be told it had closed 5 minutes ago, I pointed out my brochure which said 11.30pm and was told tickets close half an hour before that. Awesome. So we walked out to Rue de la Montparnasse and strolled down past the cafes which were once haunts of Henry Miller and Dali and Picasso. We then proceeded to have another nightmare trip home, which ended with us leaving a suburbian metro station, asking for directions to the taxis(the buses had closed for the night) and the guy only spoke french and walking aimlessly down a god knows where suburb at 1.30 in the morning wondering how long it would take to get robbed. Luckily we found a stray taxi after a few blocks and got home.

the next morning we headed into town with the group and had an awesome day to make up for last night. We got off the bus and strolled down the Champs Elysees to the Arc De triumphe from where we caught a metro to the Eiffel Tower, and another to Montparnasse and went into the Catacombs, which you end up above ground 4 blocks away from where you went in after walking past the remains of 600,000 people! We then had to skip the panthenon (or does paris have the Pantheon? i'm pretty sure it's not the Parthenon, it's all too confusing, we had seen one of the 3 in Rome anyway) and headed to Notre Dame, and amazingly detailed gothic church which didn't have any hunchbacks.From there we headed down for a quick visit to The Louvre(not the best kind of visit for such a huge museum) and popped into say hi to the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. Then we headed up to Montmatre and saw the Sacre Coure(spelling?) and went to a nice french restaurant for dinner before heading to La Nouvelle Eve for a cabaret show(not far from Moulin Rouge) involving dancing, breasts, acrobatics,comedy, and more, i was sceptical but it was amazing and we had a ball, I'm off to the next Cirque de Soleil or any similar show that comes to town next time.