It’s true; Paris in winter was stark, bare and beautiful, but Paris in Autumn is spectacular. The temperature dropped by about 15o from Hong Kong and the city when we arrived was mostly asleep being a Saturday morning at 8am. As we couldn’t check in until 2pm we spent the hours by walking down to Notre Dame via the Place de la Republic and the Bastille. The air was crisp, the trees were changing and the place felt so much slower than Hong Kong as the streets were less crowded and there were places to stop and sit and drink in the scenery. Our plan to watch the rugby didn’t go quite as expected but we did manage to see the second half and spent the afternoon despairing at how quickly our Euros were disappearing and how much more expensive everything was – especially when compared with HK!
Sunday was (for me at least) the best day by far as we could not have asked for a better day weather wise. The walk down the Champs Elysee – after successfully managing to negotiate the Metro which didn’t end up quite as scary as we thought it would be – was wonderful and I must say both James and I felt slightly more chic today than walking around yesterday after our 12 hour flight. We walked through the Jardins des Tuileries and it was a mixture of brown leaves, colourful gardens and lots and lots of Irish Rugby fans. I learned, upon asking a couple of said Irish supporters to take our photo there, quite a bit about us from the following conversation with the guy taking our photo:
Irish guy: where do you want to stand?
James: over there Me: over there (pointing in opposite directions)
Irish guy: that’d be right he wants a naked statue in the background and she wants flowers!
Me: What naked statue? I didn’t see any naked statue.
Then again, perhaps it says more about the Irish than us!
Today we are off to pick up the car and negotiate our way out of Paris. Both James and I are a bit apprehensive about this as we have seen the map, seen the traffic and know that we have to drive on the wrong side of the road. Oh well, this may be our last entry and if so, at least I had fun in Paris. If not, then it is the start of a new adventure with (no doubt) many wrong turns yet to come! SH
Sunday was (for me at least) the best day by far as we could not have asked for a better day weather wise. The walk down the Champs Elysee – after successfully managing to negotiate the Metro which didn’t end up quite as scary as we thought it would be – was wonderful and I must say both James and I felt slightly more chic today than walking around yesterday after our 12 hour flight. We walked through the Jardins des Tuileries and it was a mixture of brown leaves, colourful gardens and lots and lots of Irish Rugby fans. I learned, upon asking a couple of said Irish supporters to take our photo there, quite a bit about us from the following conversation with the guy taking our photo:
Irish guy: where do you want to stand?
James: over there Me: over there (pointing in opposite directions)
Irish guy: that’d be right he wants a naked statue in the background and she wants flowers!
Me: What naked statue? I didn’t see any naked statue.
Then again, perhaps it says more about the Irish than us!
Today we are off to pick up the car and negotiate our way out of Paris. Both James and I are a bit apprehensive about this as we have seen the map, seen the traffic and know that we have to drive on the wrong side of the road. Oh well, this may be our last entry and if so, at least I had fun in Paris. If not, then it is the start of a new adventure with (no doubt) many wrong turns yet to come! SH
1 comments:
Hi Sharie and James
Brian has given me your blog URL. Glad to see you're well on your way. It seems so long ago that I met you at Brian's & we talked about all things foreign - and now you're there. I look forward to reading your exploits - I've put an RSS feed on you so I'll always know the latest :-)))
Cheers Carol D
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