Paris

30th January 2013
Paris was my last European city and Sunbear's father dropped us off at the train station so we could catch the train from his hometown to Amsterdam and board the Thalys train to Paris.


Our room's balcony.










Sorry what?


Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris



The church was quite nice although by this stage I was a little sick of churches.




Dinner was terrible. We were starving and couldn't find anything so we settled on a dodgy looking Chinese restaurant. This was how it worked. You ordered by 100 grams of the side dishes which they then proceeded to scoop onto a plastic plate and then heated up in the microwave. Seriously. After the disappointing dinner we turned a corner and then, lo behold, all the restaurants appeared. The most annoying moment. We then bought an amazing burger from this little stall and decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower. That was a bad decision since it was quite a long walk. It was a 7km walk. Whoops. Honestly, the Eiffel Tower didn't seem too far way hence why we decided to not catch the Metro.










31st January 2013
For breakfast the next morning, we popped into this cute little bakery and purchased some croissants and this amazing snail. I also found this ginormous rubbish bin.


















'They had jet-packs back then!'

After a while,we got bored of all the artworks and sculptures and headed to Sacré-Coeur Basilica.






On the way up, we stopped at a little cafe for some hot chips and the ceiling was covered with bank notes from various countries. I also spotted the Henry Parkes $5 bill and I was tempted to swap it with note that I had in my wallet. When I was working at my old place of employment, it took me so many years to finally get my hands on some of the bills and now I have 2 of those bills.

Walking down the stairs, I noticed -albeit a little too late- that a few African men were approaching us and actually surrounded us and the guy was trying to make us bracelets ~for free~ but I refused and Sunbear refused but somehow they took his finger and made one for him and the other guy tried to take my hand but I pulled away and made a bracelet for "the lady too". Actually the guy asked if we were from Japan and if we were on our honeymoon. My face must have been something along the lines of, "are you kidding me" because he suddenly stopped. He wanted money (d'oh) and asked for €1 originally since he 'made the bracelets for us and we therefore had to accept'* but when Sunbear opened his wallet he had hundreds of Euros (since I had paid him back in Germany, in hindsight I actually don't know why he didn't drop off most of the money at his hometown) and the guy started to demand for €20 per bracelet. In the end, we paid €5 for both and walked off. How annoying.

* I really wanted to tell him that he actually said the bracelets were free therefore he couldn't suddenly claim otherwise as that would make him a liar. But I also didn't want to cause trouble so I just kept my mouth shut.












We had a three course dinner at one of the streets that we found the first night. The waiter was interesting. He asked where I was from and I told him and then he said, "I am from Woy Woy! Do you know where that is?". At this point, I told him that yes I did, and it was north of Sydney. He then claimed "no, you don't know where it is. It is south west of Sydney". Ummmm. No.