I have uploaded about 10 new pictures from my trip onto Flickr
Also, I have created a new video of my Sony Rolly, dancing to Justin Timberlake’s Sexy Back:
It was nice to go through some of the pics taken during the trip and managed to find some that were rather decent, but missed the first time through.
It’s been a little while since I have left Paris so my recollections of the city aren’t as crisp as they were for my other posts, which were written as I was in the process of leaving them, but I have a few lasting impressions.
Paris is definitely a city with character. The people, the buildings and the culture are absolutely unique to the Paris. However, this isn’t necessarily a good thing.
As a tourist, it was easy to discover that there are a limited number of points of interest. We visited the Louvre, the Champ Elysees, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower. Besides these main attractions, there are little other draws to Paris. At least nothing you wouldn’t be able to find an equivalent version of in London. Why make that comparison with London? We’ll it comes down to the different experiences I had of each city.
London works, its clean, its easy to traverse (the buses and Tube are exceptional) and there are numerous landmarks that it takes more than 2 weeks to ensure you’ve seen all of them. I saw Paris in the space of 4 days and was done, I was ready to go home.
Paris is crowded, mainly due to the fact that there are so little attractions. We went to the top of the Eiffel Tower, which was a 30 minute wait to go up and a 45 minute wait to go back down again. There were so many people up there, you didn’t get a chance to enjoy the moment because you hardly got a chance to stop. The Arc de Triomphe was equally as busy and the Louvre was worse! I saw the Mona Lisa, but I didn’t get a chance to take it in and enjoy the Mona Lisa because there was an effective press scrum of tourists trying to get a look and take photos, it was hot and crowded and is a poor museum when compared to the British Museum.
The times I did enjoy in Paris was when we were eating. There is almost an over supply of good restaurants, so it was easy to find a quiet place to have a good meal. In that aspect, it was better than London, but it may be the only concession I can give Paris.
Paris was also the only place I felt worried for my personal safety and that of my belongings. I felt compelled to continually check that I still had my wallet, camera, iPhone and passport as the scores of apparently Bosnian Gypsy beggars and shady tourist targeting street venders was a little unnerving. Continually being asked “do you speak English?” followed by a request for money by the beggars was a little weird, especially as they were everywhere! Train stations and tourist attractions. If you are able to coordinate yourselves across a city like Paris in such large numbers, you shouldn’t be begging! The street venders offering cheap Eiffel Tower models (1 Euro!) were a little confronting. With half a dozen on each street corner, you are continually being hassled! If I said no to the first, why would I say yes to the any of the next 5?
With graffiti on the INSIDE of train tunnels and dog poo on the street, Paris is a city that has become worn. Where London and Tokyo have managed to re-invent themselves whilst holding on to the most important parts of their history, Paris has seemingly been left behind as a world capital, desperately holding on to the times of Napoleon and the times were they were once competitive with London as a world capital.
Paris is definitely a place you have to visit at least once in your life, but once is definitely enough.
To do Paris justice, I thought I should split up my post about it, otherwise there would be just one epic, picture intensive post to take up the whole front page of the blog, and that’s poor blogging form… This is part 1, part deux is to follow.
I’ll dedicate this first post to the pics of Paris I took.
The city of Paris from the Top of the Arc de Triomphe
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The Eiffel tower, during the day and at night.
Notre Dame Cathedral
The Louvre
The Rose Line aka the Paris Meridian
and… the Arc de Triomphe itself!
I am currently sitting in Narita Airport, a few hours before I’ll finally fly back to Australia. I’m totally spent. I’ve pretty much just lived through two days consecutively, without darkness let alone sleep, and it isn’t even finished (to give an indication of my tiredness, I am so desperate for coffee, I just spent 450 Yen ($5.50 AUD) on a Cappuccino that is tiny. I’m effectively loitering in the coffee shop, firstly because its directly across from my gate, but secondly because the gate itself is waiting to board a plane to somewhere called Guangzhou and as I don’t really feel like going to Guangzhou right now, I’ll steer clear of the gate until its cleared.
Today started in Paris, up at 6 am (Paris time) to walk down to the train station to see of my Dad and my Brother onto a train to Zurich, where they will spend about a week before heading home themselves. After that I headed to my own train, a Eurostar trip back to London. From there, I made my way on the Tube to Heathrow, arriving about 12.30 pm for my 4.30 pm flight.
Night passed during the flight, however I didn’t get much sleep due to the couple sitting next to me. I was lucky enough to get a seat behind the emergency exit, which gifts you the privilege of as much leg room as you would need, in return for being personally responsible for the safe evacuation of our section of the plane. A responsibility worth bearing. But with a British couple with no sense of respect for the cabin crew or the personal space of others, it was hard to rest during the flight. Throughout I constantly poked, prodded and bumped during the flight by the bloke sitting next to me, who had decided that his own seat didn’t provide enough room in itself, that he needed to spread himself into the seats next to him. Worst of all was their willingness to just throw their used food trays and rubbish onto the floor for the flight staff to pick up, but the same staff were whinged about privately when their English wasn’t sufficient (we were on Japan Airlines so I think they really should have given the flight crew a break …).
I’ve been upgraded to Premium Economy for the flight to Sydney, just through asking. Despite complaints about passengers, which can’t be held against them, I have really enjoyed flying with Japan Airlines. Service on par with Qantas at no where near the price.
It’s now about 5.30pm in Tokyo (Tokyo time, about 9 hours ahead), with my flight leaving around 8.30pm. I’m so desperate for sleep, but am hesitant to do it in the terminal out of fear of missing my flight. I’ve been in the airport since 12.30 and am bitterly disappointed that I wasn’t able to find a PS3 slim in the duty free shops (Wii’s and DS’s are in supply funnily enough…).
You may be able to tell that I’m just a little bit grumpy, but at least I’ll be home soon, to kick off another day by landing in Canberra at 9.30 am. Hopefully I’ll get decent sleep between Tokyo and Sydney. I feel like I’m doing a rewind of a month long trip, crammed into a period of 36 hours, with all the fun parts taken out.
I’ll eventually update on my time in Paris when I get the pics sorted out.
Tokyo.Japan
