cottleston news

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Paris


The Gare l'Est train station

St Laurence from the back entrance

St Laurence from the front




We wanted to buy this charming wee boy at the park.  Tres Bien Mamam

Yesterday we caught the Thalys fast train from Rotterdam.  I thought I would catch up on the blog but it went so darn fast we were in Paris before we knew it.  The first thing we did when we arrived was take our heavy suitcases for a walk around the block a few times before we found our hotel.  Once we found it and off-loaded our baggage we went for another walk - it was a lot more pleasant without our suitcases!


On first meeting Paris is dirty, smelly and a bit ugly.  There is a lot of dog doodoos and rubbish on the streets and we were saddened to see a number of homeless people sleeping and begging around the place.  Now I have said it and  I won't mention it again.

la Metro outside our hotel

Breakfast - strawberries with cream and macarons

Antiques at the flea market

seashells for sale

at the market

at the market




MacDonalds in Paris - we were hungry and tired and it was next to the station!

it's a bit more stylish than the Mac-ers at home


Today was Sunday and most everything is closed so we went to the flea market at Le Puces.  There is 17 hectares of markets there and I know we only saw a fraction of it but we picked up some bargains and got totally lost in the process.  I will upload some photos tomorrow.  We saw plenty of beautiful antiques, amazing furniture, Gucci knock-off handbags, jeans, overpriced junk, overpriced treasure, fruit,veges, fish, cheese, meat, 2dollar store type stuff etc etc etc.  After lunch at MacDonalds (how embarassing) we finally found our way back to the station except that when we got to the platform it was a different station to where we thought :-)

No worries, we caught the train to Champs Elysees which just happened to be on the same line.  We had a lovely walk along the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe through the hordes of tourists.  We found it amusing/amazing that there were queues to get into everything, from over-priced cafes to Louis Vuitton (check this spelling :-) .
The Champs Elysees

 People queue to buy a handbag at Louis Vuitton on the Champs Elysees
this typifies the building style in Paris

The Arc de Triomphe. the tiny specks are people on the top



 To be continued....

1 comment:

The Spencers said...

Wow! That looks like a REAL holiday you're having now! I love the pretty houses in Delft that are built right on the canal. "I'm just going for some milk darling....WAHHH!!".