Paris!

What a change arriving into France from Ireland– language, food, prices, population, everything. In Paris we had arranged to split our time between two Couch Surfs. Our first host, Gion Alfredo was super nice. He met us at the nearest metro station (despite us being 45 minutes late) and walked us to his great flat. He's on the top floor (8th) of a nice apartment. It's hard to see because the back of big sign blocks the bottom of his building, but it is indeed eight floors up. That's his living room with the peaked dome - it's where we slept on his futon.




He has a great view of the Sacree Coeur cathederal from his living room windows. That's it on the hill top in the background. He took us for walk there on our first night. It only takes about 20 or 30 minutes to walk there.

Gion Alfredo was great. He cooked us a dinner and then took time out the next day to show us some of the "hidden" sights of Paris. One really cool one – that unfortunately you're not allowed to photograph – was the vault of the main branch of the federal bank "Societe Genarale". You can actually walk down to the vault and see it's open door. That door is exactly like a five ton swiss watch. It has a glass back, so you can look inside and see it's polished chrome gears, rods, and other internal workings.

Of course we made the mandatory visit to the Louvre. They say if you spent just 10 seconds looking at each piece displayed, it would take you over two years to actually see everything in this enormous museum.

The crowd around the Mona Lisa was huge. Everywhere else in the Louvre was spacious but it was packed like crazy around this painting. And it's actually quite small. Sorry for the tilted angle but I had to photograph it on max zoom from quite a ways away.

Then there was the Venus de Milo...

Amour and Psyche...

And many many other famous works.

We also went to the Pere Lachaise cemetary which holds the graves of many famous people – including some non-French (such as Jim Morrison from the doors). We visited some of these graves. Maybe you'll recognize the names...

One of the best parts was meeting up with our good friends from Calgary – John and Arranny. They came all the way to Paris to visit us! Here's a nice picture of us enjoying the nice weather in Paris...

The four of us took a day trip to visit the palace of Versailles. Wow – no wonder the French revolted. While they all starved, these guys were living like rock stars...

In the middle of that hot day we rented a row boat and toured through the "grand canals". Ahhh - nothing like a slow and relaxing row...

We saw more of Paris too. Like the catacombs...

The famous Moulin Rouge

The opera house

We walked to the Sacree Coeur cathederal and listened to a really good musician entertain the crowds on the front steps.

We had our own little picnic on the banks of the Seine with a view of Notre Dame and the "restaurant boats" passing us by.

We walked along the wide boulevard of the famous Champs Eleysee where the Tour de France bike race ends every year.

One cool thing is they have an "almost free" bicycle rental system in Paris. It reduces traffic and downtown is even faster than driving, so we tried that out. Here is Amanda at a bike stand getting her bike.

I had to take a picture of this McDonalds restaurant. It's not exactly the way you'd see it back home in Canada.

I also got a kick of someone's idea of a parallel park. I guess if you have a Smart Car, a perpendicular park is just as good. I'll have to try this technique some time!

Anyway, that's all for Paris. Next was Geneve, Switzerland. Stay tuned...