Yes it’s Aaron again.
I have been incredibly lack and slazy, or slack and lazy for those without an imagination, and I haven’t bothered to post a blog about something we did ages ago until NOW! BOOM! here comes the…
Anywho, Paris was stacks better than rome. rome sucked. I hated rome. I’m not even going to give it a capital letter. Pawwy was supposed to be just as bad/worse, luckily enough for us though, it was actually quite good! I’m not sure if the French have learned manners or the people we spoke to were just really nice, but everybody (save one bus driver and a few other people on the roads) was really nice! Smiles for everybody!
We started off by plotting a course for a caravan park with a good proximity to paris/traffic ratio and everything was going smoothly as a babys bum. Then we went to exit the freeway as instructed by our drill sergeant GPS and were met by some ugly looking height restrictions. UH OG! Yes, ug og, I though that typo was funny. I think they had height restrictions up so that those pesky truck drivers couldn’t use their fancy gold paved road or something equally is prejudiced. Unfortunately France seemed to think that our cute little camper van was a semi (we got charged as a truck at EVERY. FLIPPING. TOLL. hundreds of dollars we won’t get back right there) and this height restriction was probably going to rip the paint off our camper if not the entire roof. We decided the best option was to scream at the GPS and ask it to recalculate a new route for us, which she didn’t for at least 20 mins, it simply kept telling us to ‘perform a u-turn where possible.’ Helpful. When Serena (the GPS, for those who just tuned in) did actually change courses, we were overjoyed. Then we watched in horror is we involuntarily drove straight past the palace Versailles! Our attempt as missing traffic failed to say the least. The rest of the trip to the camp site was relatively uneventful for a drive in Paris, just 3 lane unmarked roundabouts, people specifically trying to drive into us for not giving way to them even though we didn’t really have to and other things they don’t teach you in driving school.
Several near misses and girlish screams later, we reached the campsite.
Our stay at the actual campsite was nice and relaxing so that’s a bit boring to write about.
We spent our first sight seeing day in Versailles and looked around at all the wonderful paintings and rooms and pomp and stuff. We caught public transport here though, which was far less interesting than driving. The palace had fancy gates which I guess was nice and the gardens looked pretty impressive when I peered out at them through the fog and rain. We kind of just went home after visiting the palace, that was enough excitement for one day!
Following that adventure, we went and visited the Louvre art gallery, which was alright too I guess. We had a look at the Mona Lisa from about 100 meters away, as we weren’t interested in cutting a path through the human sea that had engulfed itself on the little display of the Mona Lisa. The painting itself is actually tiny. Apparently you are supposed to come up with a theory on what she is smiling about. I think she was just being polite, or maybe she had the hots for Leo, who knows. We spent quite a while looking at all the Egyptian history stuff which I actually really enjoyed! I’m not actually being sarcastic this time, history fascinates me a huge amount. The rest of the museum was mainly only stuff that interests artsy people though, and we aren’t really artsy people.
That was our 2nd day in Paris.
Our 3rd and final day in Paris involved hopping on one of those Hop on Hop Off buses, and hopping on and off at places we wanted to see. It started at the Arch de Triumph which has an amazing roundabout going around it. We then got off at the Eiffel tower and climbed all the way to the top! via elevator. Unfortunately the view was not great from up there as the weather was just a bit foggy, as you can see by this picture.
Here’s me with *some* of the Eiffel Tower.
After seeing this important landmark, we basically just sat on the bus until Notre Dame, had lunch nearby then had a look inside the Church for free! sweet!
After scrambling to the top of one of the towers and bellowing ‘SANCTUARY!’ at confused passerbys, I climbed down and we got on the bus again.
We didn’t really do much after that as the weather was a bit of a bad sport and made it a bit difficult to do anything without getting drenched. We did thoroughly enjoy our stay in Paris though, it is actually quite a nice city and is very easy to get around, unless the trains break down and you have to catch a bus that’s been loaded like a cattle train. We would recommend Paris to anybody who wants to visit it, it is probably one of the best capital cities we have been to.
I’m sorry I haven’t written anything since forever, I have actually had lots of assignments to do and writing a blog felt too much like work to me and I refrained. I am getting closer to finishing everything now though so maybe I will write some more.
I…I hope we can talk again soon.
That would be nice.
Aaron.