Paris Take Two

22.01.2002 12 °C

I am back in beautiful Paris _ co,plete with strange keyboard configurations!

We decided on a whim to come here from Madrid on an overnight bus......sure; it got us here, but 16 hours on a bus qlmost completely full of skanky and smelly (or are the two mutually inexclusive?) men is not recommended.

Flicking through my travel guide we found a place on Rue de Rivoli, which is where the Louvre is, and connects onto the Champs Elysées and Arc de Triomphe. It is about as central you can get and is super value. We can see the Hotel de Ville from the window to our room. There is also a gorgeous carousel there and an ice_skating rink. Lots of streetside vendors selling crepes too....banana and nutella heaven. The night we got here we visited Centre Pompidou, a zanily designed building equipped with colourful pipes, a brilliant modern art museum and shops and restaurants.

The next day we visited the catacombs where some 6 million Parisiens were buried after the cemeteries became overcrowded. It is truly bizarre walking through corridor after corridor of bones and skulls! Also visited Saint Chapelle, an incredibly beautiful stained glass window rooved church, wandered up past the Louvre onto the Champs Elysees, back to Notre Dame and the island on which it is situated and visited the Australia shop where they sell Vegemite and Cherry Ripe bars.

Spent Saturday in Brussels - contrary to what i had been told, it is auite a beautiful city but it rained most of the day which was a pain in the butt!
Sunday I was back in Paris....visited Hotel des Invalides which houses the French army museum and is adjoined to the over the top tomb of Napoleon in the Eglise de Dome. We came across the sewer museum but it was closed!

Today we went up to a huge big market place just north of Monmartre. It was full of interesting clothes and a fantastic antiques section but it is in one of the seedier parts of town and was pretty shabby. This afternoon I wandered through the passages of the Right Bank - all the old 19th century shopping arcades with vintage clothes, antique shops, old postcards and Toulouse-Lautrec posters, and lots of sweet little cafes. Also wandered about Royal Palace gardens and saw the room where the revolutionary plans were born.

Tomorrow is more sightseeing, then on Wed I am off to Basque country to have fun with the ETA separatists.

Ciao
Belinda x