Interrailing in Europe summer 2010 PARIS part2

The next morning (10th of June) we woke up at 10.20 am after GuiGui came to woke us up by saying: "Are you girls gonna sleep all day?" We ate breakfast muesli (horse food as GuiGui put it..) and left to see Paris and its sights. First we headed towards Notre Dame which was magical! I liked it a lot! Maybe the Notre Dame story (the hunchback of Notre Dame) behind it made it magical for me but anyway I really enjoyed it. It was amazing both outside and inside. The silence and the candles inside were gorgeous.

After we had had enough of the magical Notre Dame we started to look for maybe even more magical attraction: the Eiffel Tower! That too, I had wanted to see many years now. All day long we made our way to sights by metro which was more dfficult than in London when we used the tube! The signs were written in french and the arrows that were supposed to guide you made us always go to wrong direction. Well, we finally made out of the underground and started looking up the see the tower but we couldn't see anything and all of the sudden behind this one building we saw the Eiffel tower right in front of us!!! It was crazy how big it actually was! We took around hundred photos of it, we both had cameras and phones.. :D I was a bit nervous 'cause people had been saying that it takes at least one hour to wait to get up the tower. We decided to walk up the stairs and we waited under 5 minutes and paid 3,5€ each. It was so much fun climbing up the stairs. These two guys were so eager to past us in the very beginning to show us how good looking and in a good condition they are.. Well after climbing a while me and Saija past them and had so much fun looking at them how exhausted they were. :D We could only walk the stairs to the first level and then we had to take the elevator which was 5 more euros. "A picture is worth a thousand words"

The view from the first level of Eiffel

The Arc de Triomphe from the Eiffel

PARIS

Fontaine Saint-Michel

 We spent at least a few hours in and infront of the Eiffel Tower. When we had had enough for the day we made our way back to the Latin block to eat and then to Starbucks coffee where we asked this one gay guy help how to get to the Arc de Triomphe and he was so fool. :D He gave us a lecture of France's and Paris history, he just spoke ans spoke and we couldn't get rid of him. He also showed us the popular meeting point of Fontaine Saint-Michel and insisted that we gave our emails to him so he could send us info about, I don't know everything?! He wrote our emails to his cute calendar and never emailed us! :D

Completely without this guys help we found our way to the Arc de Triomphe which was huge. Surrounding that wall was huge traffic going to every direction. Near it was some street dance group giving a performance and they were really talented and to whom Saija donated a coin or two. :) After that we yet again went to have an adventure in the metro.. Once we even followed this local girl 'cause we thought it would be easier just to follow someone and let them lead us to the daylights. Well, we had followed this girl a while and she suddenly stopped, looked around like she was lost and turned around.. So much for that help.. We got off a stop too early and ended up walking through this street which was full of strip clubs, sex shops, erotic bars etc! There were also quite interesting looking people some were drunk, and we walked pretty fast... We walked a long way before we found what we had been looking for: Moulin Rouge! :) We didn't spent that much time in there 'cause there really wasn't that much to see outside. To me it wasn't that important, I hadn't even seen the movie but it was nice to see anyway. :) From there we started walking towards the Sacre Core also known as The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris. It was a long and exhausting walk there since it was on this hill and we had to climb some uphills and stairs and we had been walking all day long. It was worth seeing, it was massive and the outlook to Paris was amazing even though it was a bad weather. We went inside and there was this worship going on with nuns and a bishop. Saija's phone hadn't rang once on the whole trip but when we were walking inside the church guess whose phone rang and who at first couldn't find it in her purse.. :D 

Back at the metro station GuiGui texted us that her mother could pick us from our Bourg-la-Reine metro station so we wouldn't have to walk anymore. We ended up walking almost nonstop and visiting sights for 10 hours! At some point we tried to hire bikes from this station but it required to have a credit or debit card or whatever it is, anyway something we didn't have.

 

Arc de Triomphe

Sacre Core