Short post for right now because our new hostel's computers are iffy at best, I've already had a long post erased by bad technology.
Anyways, Paris has been an absolute whirlwind. Honestly, we're all pretty ready to be moving to Switzerland, we're in dire need of a little break. Bring on the shining waters of Lake Geneva.
Talking about that, our travel plans have changed a little bit. We were originally supposed to leave for Lausanne on Sunday morning but the only trains available on Sunday are 1st-class trains.
That presents a problem because our Eurail passes are 2nd-class only. Luckily, we were able to get tickets on a train tomorrow in the afternoon, so we'll just get to Switzerland a little early. It's kind of a bummer because the whole reason we extended our time in Paris was to see the Fete de la Musique tomorrow, but like I said, we've been going full throttle for three day, a break is necessary.
Anyways, after visiting the Musee d'Orsay, we went out for dinner and afterwards took a walk down the Seine towards the Notre Dame. This is when our night got a little interesting. We arrived to an absolute crush of people from the Netherlands visiting Paris for the day. Their soccer team doing as well as they are, they were in a highly celebratory mood. After watching them play soccer with some French guys and checking out some fire dancers a bit further on, we caught the eye of a couple of the Dutch girls. We had a nice little chat ; )
After that, we went to an Irish pub and listened to this fantastic musician for about an hour until a large group of American college girls walked in. Being the friendly gents that we are, we talked to them for awhile and generally had a good time.
The next day was our Louvre day, so after a nice sandwich from a street vendor, we made our way to the monstrous art museum. That place is so massive it's mind-boggling. We walked around for 4 hours, checking out the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and all the other masterpieces along the way. After our trek through the halls of the Louvre, we need a little nap to recuperate.
After our nap and a great dinner (doner kebap from a street vendor, some of the best food you could ever have), we headed over to the Eiffel Tower when it got dark to see it light up. Again, absolute mayhem. The fields around the Eiffel were overflowing with people and when it did light up the crowd went wild. We navigated through the throng of people drumming, dancing and partying and hit one of the hottest clubs in Paris, Le Mix.
It was International Night at Le Mix, so anyone with an international I.D. was spared the €15 entry fee, which was fine by us. The club itself was crazy. Over 2000 people, all on the dance floor with the music being pumped by live DJ's from all over the world. Needless to say, we had a good time. We met some cool girls (including 4 models) and danced for a couple of hours before walking home.
Now, there we were, just walking and minding our own business, when all of a sudden a car came screeching to halt so fast you could smell the burned rubber from the tires. Three cops jumped out and came running towards us. We were slightly confused at this point, but none of us were too worried because we knew we had done nothing wrong.
They pushed us up against the wall, patted us down and checked our pockets, asking us if we had drugs. Apparently, three guys on cocaine had been walking around vandalizing motorcycles in the area. Suddenly, one of them put his radio up to his ear and said, "We found them". They let us go and said good night. Ironically, we saw the three guys being arrested a block further down the road.
After such an interesting night, we all slept like logs and managed to oversleep a little bit. We managed to check out by 11 and were off to book tickets and check into our hostel. All that went relatively smoothly and after dropping our bags off in our room, we set out onto the streets of Paris to do a bit of wandering. On our way we watched a group of old men playing bocce ball. They were really intense about it, it was pretty funny.
Anyways, Paris has been an absolute whirlwind. Honestly, we're all pretty ready to be moving to Switzerland, we're in dire need of a little break. Bring on the shining waters of Lake Geneva.
Talking about that, our travel plans have changed a little bit. We were originally supposed to leave for Lausanne on Sunday morning but the only trains available on Sunday are 1st-class trains.
That presents a problem because our Eurail passes are 2nd-class only. Luckily, we were able to get tickets on a train tomorrow in the afternoon, so we'll just get to Switzerland a little early. It's kind of a bummer because the whole reason we extended our time in Paris was to see the Fete de la Musique tomorrow, but like I said, we've been going full throttle for three day, a break is necessary.
Anyways, after visiting the Musee d'Orsay, we went out for dinner and afterwards took a walk down the Seine towards the Notre Dame. This is when our night got a little interesting. We arrived to an absolute crush of people from the Netherlands visiting Paris for the day. Their soccer team doing as well as they are, they were in a highly celebratory mood. After watching them play soccer with some French guys and checking out some fire dancers a bit further on, we caught the eye of a couple of the Dutch girls. We had a nice little chat ; )
After that, we went to an Irish pub and listened to this fantastic musician for about an hour until a large group of American college girls walked in. Being the friendly gents that we are, we talked to them for awhile and generally had a good time.
The next day was our Louvre day, so after a nice sandwich from a street vendor, we made our way to the monstrous art museum. That place is so massive it's mind-boggling. We walked around for 4 hours, checking out the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and all the other masterpieces along the way. After our trek through the halls of the Louvre, we need a little nap to recuperate.
After our nap and a great dinner (doner kebap from a street vendor, some of the best food you could ever have), we headed over to the Eiffel Tower when it got dark to see it light up. Again, absolute mayhem. The fields around the Eiffel were overflowing with people and when it did light up the crowd went wild. We navigated through the throng of people drumming, dancing and partying and hit one of the hottest clubs in Paris, Le Mix.
It was International Night at Le Mix, so anyone with an international I.D. was spared the €15 entry fee, which was fine by us. The club itself was crazy. Over 2000 people, all on the dance floor with the music being pumped by live DJ's from all over the world. Needless to say, we had a good time. We met some cool girls (including 4 models) and danced for a couple of hours before walking home.
Now, there we were, just walking and minding our own business, when all of a sudden a car came screeching to halt so fast you could smell the burned rubber from the tires. Three cops jumped out and came running towards us. We were slightly confused at this point, but none of us were too worried because we knew we had done nothing wrong.
They pushed us up against the wall, patted us down and checked our pockets, asking us if we had drugs. Apparently, three guys on cocaine had been walking around vandalizing motorcycles in the area. Suddenly, one of them put his radio up to his ear and said, "We found them". They let us go and said good night. Ironically, we saw the three guys being arrested a block further down the road.
After such an interesting night, we all slept like logs and managed to oversleep a little bit. We managed to check out by 11 and were off to book tickets and check into our hostel. All that went relatively smoothly and after dropping our bags off in our room, we set out onto the streets of Paris to do a bit of wandering. On our way we watched a group of old men playing bocce ball. They were really intense about it, it was pretty funny.
From there, we took a gigantic walk that spanned what felt like all of Paris and ate dinner. As the sun began to set, we decided to go to Montmarte and visit the Sacre-Coeur. The amount of stairs was breathtaking, literally, but once we reached the top we were treated to one of the best views in Paris. We enjoyed the view and some more fire dancers before heading back and calling it a night. The Paris chapter was finished.
-Charl
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