Awake from sleep, we are already in another foreign land. Seeing sunrise scenery in my bus journey remarking a romantic journey I am going to expect in Paris… But, I was miserably wrong!!!!
We reach the Bagnolet Bus station at 6.00am…. Its winter time, so the sunrise time is at 5 something.. Got down from the bus, we decide to walk to the hotel we book to store the luggage before check in time. I’ve booked Hotel Mister Bed City, cost us Î60 per night.. Hotel Mister Bed City is located within walking distance from the Eurolines Bus station, next to a shopping mall call Bel Est Mall and next to Gallieni Metro station. They have some safe lockers in a room for you to store luggages, a small size cost us Î2,50.
We changed another set of clothes and begin our adventures to the designated itinerary. Like UK, Paris also come with a daily travel pass call the Paris Visite, with that one ticket, you can hope on to any metro lines, furnicular, tram and buses. Cost Î8,50 per ticket.
We walk to the ticket counter and queue up to buy the ticket. Prepared with me my French phrase book, but I just have no confidence in speaking any… Approaching the counter, I told the staff, Paris Visite and pointed my finger for 2… Sign language come into place when you come to a foreign place you can’t speak their language..
Parisian Women ask me in French : un jour, deux jours ou 3 jours
Me: (Mute) just keep quiet cause I dunno what she was saying..
The Parisian women just got impatient with me, and she shouted in English to me : 1 day, 2 day or 3 day?
Then only I realize, I quickly told her 1 day… she seems really unhappy with me speaking English and she start to talk in French to her colleagues. From her expression, I know she is scolding me…. What a bad luck bumping into woman like her early in the morning… it really ruined my good expectation about Paris… Can’t you see that I am an Asian? Is that wrong I can’t speak French????
I got a bit pissed off with her, if this things happen to me in my country, I swear I am going to complain till her management give me a satisfy answer!!!!!!!
The Metropolitain in Paris
Gotten the ticket, a funny small token… we take the metro to our first destination, Basilica du Sacred Coeur in the center of Montmarte. Montmarte is listed as the red light district of Paris… But its just dawn hours now, I didn’t spotted anything obscene!
It took me some time to figure out the exit cause everything is in French, I learn that Sortie means exit! One of the word I saw most during my trip in Paris..
The Montmatre Neighbourhood
From the information i gathered, you need to take a short walk from Montmatre Metro station to the funicular and goes up to Basilica. Again, I need to ask for direction, Oh God!!!!! This times, I just ask from a newspaper guy, he is friendly enough to point me the direction..
The funicular is a square glass cabin train accessing from Montmatre to the Basilica, just in case you don’t want to walk a thousand steps of stair case to go up.. Something like the cable car in Bukit Bendera to be exact!
I saw this really lovely carousel before entering to the furnicular.. I mean, it really brings up the childhood memory of me….
Me and the sweetie carousel
Maybe it is still early, its only 7am, Basilica du Sacred Coeur is still in the fog… It somehow gives me a very peaceful impression… Standing high in the middle of the city, the whole building was seen white in color in the day and it glow in the night…
The Basilica in Fog
The Basilica completed in 1914. it is a Roman Catholic Church. The entry to the church is FOC except for the crypt and dome which will cost Î5. It is very cold and foggy, and it does created a mysterious feel for the Basilica.. We went into the church, almost same like all the other churches and it doesn’t allow photography
Not to be deny, the early centuries building art really amazed me. We however did not go to visit the dome.. just walk around the Basilica. An hour later, the fog started to clear, we can now see a clear view and tons of tourist at the Basilica.
The clear sky and crowded Basilica
There is a point with binocular where you can view the Paris city.. This is how its like!
Yeah! A scene in The gem of life! Hahahahaha
After that, we walk around the souvenir shops; I bought 3 Eiffel tower key chain for Î2 thinking that its very cheap, but when we walk back to the furnicular station, we saw some blacks putting up a stall selling the same keychain, Î2 for 7!!!! Wah~~~!!!! Get conned!
We then take the Metro to Palais Royale to visit the famous Louvre! It’s a must visit destination for every tourist and it just got sooooo famous because of Da Vinci Code movie..
The Louvre Museum is the former home of the Kings of France and is it the lagest museum in the world. The glass pyramid is the icon of this famous museum and it is the later design as the entrance to the museum. Underneath the glass pyramid is the Napoleon Hall, it’s the reception, information and ticket counter.
The collections are then place in 3 different halls. The Richelieu on the left, Sully in the center and Denon on the right. It houses a wide collections inclusive of Oriental antiques, Egyptian Antiques, Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiques, paints, sculptures, French painting and antiques, and also the Napoleon III apartments.
And most importantly, it houses the world most famous master piece of Leonardo Da Vinci, The Monalisa.
The queue to enter the Pyramid!!
It was a long queue to entry to the Louvre via the pyramid. Lucky thing is, in this kind of global recognized tourist spot, they speak English! At first, we carefully walk into every hall; study every piece of arts here… The museum is really humungous… I think you’ll need to spend a whole day to explore it. What do you expect? It’s a ex palace of the king.
There are local artist who draw in front of some paintings, of course they will not allow you to take photo of them… Tired of walking around endless painting from I dunno who draw it… I then come across a hall displaying Picaso’s pieces. Then my second mishap happens, I trying to snap a photo of one of the paintings and suddenly there is a security officer confronted me and wants me to remove the photo in front of him or my camera will be confiscated!!
After a 3 hours of overwhelming in arts… we at last give up to explore the whole museum, before leaving, we drop to see the Monalisa! I was shock! Its just a small, something like A3 size… and so many people gather in front of it to take picture… I thought it was as big as shown in the Da vinci code
So, I zoomed and take a photo of it and there fulfill my mission of going to Louvre. Can’t blame me, I am just not an art person!!!!!
Got out from the crowded Louvre, and mum start to make noise for lunch…..
We walked around the Louvre and try to find a restaurant to settle down for food. There are bunch of French Cafes near by, I got a tip from Lonely Planet do go for set meal and avoid ala carte as ala carte can come out times more costly… They have set menus written on the board in front of the restaurant and it cost from Î15 – 20… But hell, I’m can’t convince myself to go for luxurious lunch and don’t even know what will be serve to me later!
We gave up on the idea of having a French style meal at the roadside café… Take the metro back to Gallieni, there is a giant supermarket called Auchan at the top floor of Bel est complex. So, it’s a lot safer to buy food from there, even if you can’t speak French. We bought some packed sandwich, tartlets, and fruits and bring back to our hotel room to eat. Upon paying at the counter, we were lucky that the cashier is a Chinese who work in France then we have no language problems… I passed by a fashion boutique call “Jennifer” and can’t help myself from going inside and got a pair of skinny jeans at a real bargain price… Î15!!!!!
Check in to the hotel at 2.30pm and we had our lunch in the hotel and take a good rest. We haven’t been sleeping properly in the bus last night…
We started our journey to the Eiffel Tower again at 4pm after some rest. Toke the metro again to Champs de Mars, Tour Eiffel and had a short distance walk to there… we’re just too exhausted for walk after many hours of walking in Basilica and the Louvre…
Eiffel tower can be seen from far and its already dark.. we can see the Eiffel from far shines in blueish lighting… So beautiful!! Can’t wait to reach there fast…
The weather in Paris is indeed colder than Britain… We are freezing walking on the streets~~~!!! Again, there is a long queue at the Eiffel tower ground to take the lifts up to the tower… We, who can’t read and speaks French, just follow the queues… There are one strange things about the people here, they are not so well discipline to queue and they like to cut into yr queue when you are not aware…. Even if I am aware, I can’t do anything… cause I can’t speak their language!!!!
When we were almost reach to the counter, there are one of this young guy, should be at student age, told us in broken English we are in the wrong queue for ticket, that is the lane for ticket holder to get up to the tower…. We then left the queue and search around for the ticket booth and got to know from an American tourist we were fooled by that kid! Curse you!!!!
At last it reach our turn to take the lift up to the top of the Eiffel tower for a great night view of Paris. It cost us Î9,50 for the lift ride…
Every insulting and bad experience worth while when you are up to the top of Paris… let the cold wind, a really really cold wind blow on your face… I’m a bit trembling standing so high… quickly take a photo of the night city view and got back inside to have a cup of steaming hot coffee to warm myself!!!
Checked another tourist spot of Paris. We toke the lift down to the ground again and have some photo shooting session in front of the Eiffel. We actually thought of take a night walk at the branded street of Paris, Champs Elysees but we can’t find the correct directions… Gave up at last and toke the metro back to the hotel. We reaches at about 9.30pm and find a Chinese food shop. As expected, we were not scolded for speaking English with them… We order some oriental fried rice, fired noodle, sweet and sour chicken and gyoza… all in small portion…. These common food somehow make a lot of satisfaction for us after a day of tiring journey….
We forgotten that Paris time zone is one hour earlier than London, we thought that its still early and decided to have a walk at Auchan again before going back.. And another mishap ended our day as we got scolded again because the shop is closing and we still taking our own sweet time to walk around!
Conclusion – Paris is definitely not a tourist friendly place for non-French speaker like me! They don’t give a damn for you contributing to their government via tourism!!!!
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