Paris

For Dima's last trip in Europe we went to Paris. Our trip started off by getting to the airport in Basel at around 11:30 and sleeping there for the night (flight was early next morning and the train wouldn't have made it in time). We actually found a pretty good place to sleep. 2 leather benches on the top floor with no one around so it was ok. I think this flight was the first time i've slept through take off, about an hour in i woke up (didn't know i was sleeping though) and told dima the planes been delayed for so long (since i thought he hadn't moved yet). Needless to say, he thought i was nuts.

After arriving at Paris we dropped off our stuff at the Hostel (managed to get the whole room to ourselves) and headed off.
The first place was the Paris Catacombs. It used to be some underground passage for the people but when the plague hit there wasn't enough graves for newly dead so they removed all the old bodies and threw then down in the catacombs. There's about 6 million bodies here, it was definately an experience. They used the bones and stuff to decorate a bit, but it was quite interesting.





After the catacombs we took a quick look at the Eiffel tower before deciding to save it for later.


We went to check out a few churches next, Sacre-Coeur and Notre Dame Cathedral. Sacre-Coeur had a nicer interior but i couldn't get a decent picture, they got mad at me a lot. Notre Dame was much nicer outside but a little plain inside (no hunchbacks though).





The next stop was the Louvre (free enterance). We didn't want to spend too much time here (i'mm be back in paris in 2 weeks or so, so i'll do it in more detail then) so we just ran to the biggest attractions, the Mona Lisa and the Venus di Milo. They were guarding the Mona Lisa so we couldn't get a good picture, but we tried.





After some pics of the louvre, we were off.


The next stop was the mini statue of liberty that's here in paris (apparently there are 3). On the way there we say hte Eiffel tower blinking like crazy, so we took a pic. We later realized it does this every hour for 10 mins.


after checking out the statue of liberty we called it a night and headed home.



We go up nice and early the next day to go to Versailles. It was busy but pretty nice. The only disappointing things were the hall of mirrors was under restoration, so only 1/2 of it was shown, and the fountains weren't turned on. It was still a nice palace (cool place to live).













I had a big craving for Viet-Noodles (Pho) and managed to find a place here, so we got some. Not as good as calgary but it was good enough.

After getting back to Paris, we went to hte Arch de Triomphe. The this was pretty big and we walked around it for a bit but didn't go to the top, maybe next time. The tomb of the unknown soldier is also here.





At night we walked around the Champs de Elysees for a bit.



Along the way we found a cool Toyota concept car store. It was pretty cool, had all these neat cars and stuff.





In another car dealership we found an xbox360, so we played that for a bit. Maybe i'll get one when i get back.

We also saw a huge LV store was a pretty big line just to get in, crazy stuff. We also saw a ton of nice cars, ferraris, lamborginis (a suv/hummer thing), aston martins...ect, was sweet.






After a couple more pics of hte Eiffel tower we went to check out the Bastille (the Prison where the villagers stormed, store of the french revolution or something like that). The prison isn't there anymore though, just a pilar.





after getting some french crepes we wandered around and eventually got home.



On our last full day we first went to Euro Disneyland, or Disneyland Paris, whatever the name is.






There was a wall with a bunch of celeb handprints like Bruce Willis and Johnny Depp, so Dima and I added ours to the wall as well :)




We actually didn't go in to Disneyland, just wandered around the edge trying to get in for free (was 2 expensive) but we were there long enough to get the disney experience :).

After we got back to paris, we took more pics of the tower (common theme) before climbing up.




We opted to walk up instead of taking the elevator since we're poor (it was much easier and shorter then I thought). We walked up to the first 2 floors before taking a lift to the top (can't walk it or I would have). The view for the top is nice but it was pretty foggy so it wasn't as good. It seemed pretty high but considering i'm bungee jumped this height, it didn't seem so bad. We stay until after dark to get some nice pics before heading down.









The last place we went to check out was Place Concorde and La Defence (business sector, place where grand arch is) before heading to the airport to sleep there for the night (didn't want to pay for another night).






The airport wasn't as comfortable as Basel but we made do, but we did see a concorde (not flying). We caught the plane home and it was straight to work for me.