This morning marked the end of our two week Central Europe tour :( We were lucky to have a flight out at 11.40am – a nice and reasonable time that meant we didn’t need to leave our hotel until 8.30am. This gave us time for a big breakfast and a chance to say goodbye to everybody. Saying goodbye to the particular people we had become close to was really hard, as expected, and there were many offers of couches and guest rooms for everybody’s travels in the future! It is nice to have Facebook these days, keeping in touch will hopefully not be too hard :)
At 8.30am Julie and I caught our transfer taxi to the Budapest airport. Getting on the plane was one of the more annoying airport experiences I have had – a lot of lines and a lot of waiting (made slightly better by the purchase of Milka and Pringles). Everything with our tickets and luggage went smoothly enough and we were at our gate with plenty of time to spare.
The flight over was a non-eventful one - I spent most of it listening to music and sleeping. And then we were in Paris. My first impression of this city was just how many people there were – a shock after coming from the ‘quieter’ central European countries. Also, on the metro to our hostel I’d say there were equal number of African French people, which was something I wasn’t really expecting at all. The area that we are in is quite dirty and a bit run down (but this I had expected) and our hostel itself is very modern and HUGE. It clearly has a strong party vibe going on and I think we will enjoy staying here a lot.
We met up with Julie’s boyfriend Dave (he is with us for one night) and went our separate ways for a bit to freshen up. Then it was time to meet again and plan our stay here! Our plans for the first night were relatively tame – we ordered a quick snack (Nachos and Magnums, not very Parisian yet) and then headed in the general direction of Notre Dame, in order to prebuy tickets to an evening cruise along the Seine.
After the half hour+ it took on the metro from our hostel we walked out to see the beautiful church behind us, in perfect photo weather too. We didn’t go in at this point, we plan to do that later, but it was certainly very impressive on the outside. I couldn’t help but hum Hunchback of Notre Dame songs in my head the whole time.
We didn’t have a whole lot of time before the cruise so we looked for dinner at a place that was cheap and close – unfortunately our best option was a little Italian restaurant down a side street (big guilty feelings eating here). We did enjoy some very good French red wine with dinner and my Panna Cotta for dessert was amazing. I continued to attempt to speak French, abandoning most of it pretty quickly – ‘merci’ is going to be my staple word I think.
Soon it was time to head back down to the boat for our one hour cruise along the Seine. We got seats very close to the front and settled in… one thing we hadn’t quite anticipated was how cold the trip was going to be, with the wind blowing in our faces (it was only about 19 degrees during the day here). Despite this, it was quite a lovely introduction to Paris, cruising down the river as the sun set. I got my first full glimpse of the Eiffel tower, a quick look at the Louvre, the Musee D’Orsay… there were other quirky things too, like the ‘love lock’ bridge where hundred and hundreds of couples have written their names on a padlock, attached it to the bridge and then thrown the key in the Seine. I’ve seen this all over Europe, but not quite to the scale that it is here. Julie and I also enjoyed watching the locals gather along the edge of the river with wine and baguettes – we made a mental note to attempt to do this once in the next three nights here.
By the time the cruise was over we were ready to head back to the hotel and prepare ourselves for three days full of sightseeing. I think I’m going to enjoy this city very much – yes it is a big city, but it has a lot of charm, personality and history and I look forward to exploring it tomorrow!
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