Tuesday, June 7, 2011

First 24 hours in gay Paree.

After travelling through the Euro Tunnel with absolute ease, we found ourselves driving on the right hand side of the road and then 3 hours later we fell into the love capital of the world. It was exciting to see the architecture change to the handsome 5 story stone buildings only ever seen by us on the TV and then to get an eyeful of the Eiffel Tower as we left the perfect motorway and entered the city. We found our apartment that is located in the 16th arrondisement in the middle of Paris and unloaded the car, then to go in search of where to park it for the next 10 days. 390 Euro (about $550 dollars) was the first place but found another for 214 Euro. Ouch, welcome to Paris. 








With a day full of travel in us we wanted to go for a walk to see what was in our immediate neighbourhood so off we went. 100m down the road turned into fantastic coffee shops, patisseries and yes, a McD! It was also clear how close we are to the Eiffel Tower as it loomed at the end of the avenue but decided to touch it another day and head off in the opposite direction. Another 200m we found the beautiful Arc de Triomphe in all it’s glory and  the fabulous roundabout surrounding it, WOW. Too many iconic buildings for 20 minutes so off for dinner and then to bed.

What is really apparent apart from the beauty everywhere is that this is a very expensive city. $15 for a bunch of grapes, $160 per kilo for smoke salmon and we paid a whopping $26 for 2 cups of coffee. Time to watch the pennies, which doesn’t help as Lee and the girls drool over Gucci, Channel and some bag shop called Louee Voitonee that they had me go in for a look around. The surprising thing was the amount of people actually buying them. Mind you, this is Des Champ Elysee, probably the most fashionable road in the world where ever-one would like to be seen. It is quite beautiful as the trees line the very wide avenue with fantastic buildings either side to hug the “pretty people”. The French are beautiful people, slender in stature, wearing designer everything, perfect hair and amazing accessories, whether it be one of the million Minis on the road or a pretty little pooch they walk, they do look perfect! Well almost, as most of them smoke most of the time which is one of the reasons they are not packing on the kilos.










Paul

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