Gemynd - France

Intro

2009-03-29T23:59:00.001-07:00

Herros =)

I didn't get internet my entire trip and it may be a little hard to recall some things I did throughout the days. But I'll try my best to give you a good account of what happened based on memory and a truckload of pictures. Enjoy.

Jour 1

2009-03-29T23:58:00.000-07:00

Landed. Got to hotel. Walked around looking for food. Everything in French. Gave up. Went into pastry shop near hotel. Pointed at pastries. Ate dinner. Paris is expensive. Slept.

Jour 2

2009-03-29T23:57:00.000-07:00

Sick the day before I arrived. Felt like ass. That's the Notre Dame. Wasn't that keen on going in and there was a friggin' long queue so we decided not to. Dududu.

Bit of the Seine River.

Le Panthéon. Didn't go in either :P

La Grande Arche de La Défense.

The area around it.

*shrug*.

Place de la Concorde. Ran out of battery a bit around here so there are some bad shots I have to settle with.

Bla bla bla.

Wa wa wa.

Ding ding ding.

Ting ting ting.

This was posed for. Don't be fooled.

Tour Eiffel. Yawn.

Later. Met TC and Shanneh as planned. No good pictures with us because it's impossible to get a good picture with the Eiffel Tower. Plus, it's ugly.

Dinner.

Italian food at a French restaurant.

What I came for.

TC's duck which sucked apparently. A French restaurant that cooked duck badly is epic phail in our books.

~

By this time we were convinced Paris was boring and we need better food. Falala.

Next few days' updates will be better.

Jour 3

2009-03-29T23:56:00.000-07:00

Picture of our room. Can't capture a proper shot.

View from hotel window.

Palais de Luxembourg, French Senate.

Garden around it.

Lalala.

Meow.

Stopped by at a supermarket in a train station to get food and drinks. How awesome. But it was!

We had lunch on the staircase there with lots of sunlight and wind. T'was fun.

Yum?

Felt great.

Pain au chocolat for dessert. It was disgusting because it came from a supermarket. Also those are not my sunglasses.

Street performance after our lunch. Meh.

Opéra de Paris / Opéra Garnier.

Pwetty ceiling.

Falala.

Mm.

Purties.

A very dark auditorium.

The place was generally quite beautiful but it's hard to take shots around because it was really dark. Lots of busts of musicians, directors, etc. and it had a really grand feel to it. Enjoyed this place quite a bit.

Truffine!

Pain au chocolat!

Croissant!

What do they call this? Apricot croissant?

Arc de Triomphe and a poser.

Forgot to take pictures of dinner, but it was just meh.

Porn channel. There was a lot more but putting it up would make this blog NSFW (not safe for work) =(.

~

It got better today I guess. Opéra Garnier really cheered me up.

Jour 4

2009-03-29T23:55:00.000-07:00

Musée National Picasso.

It can be alright if you:
a) have a boner for Picasso
b) have a boner for his work.

Otherwise, I suggest you skip it. Oh and pictures are not allowed. And it's not easy to navigate there. And by that I mean there's no Metro station right next to it. I love the Metro system.

Potong stim! We're in the Louvre now. Richelieu section.

So much stuff.

So much pwetty stuff.

Eh?

Napoleon III's stuff.

He's got nice stuff.

Rly. This is like the 700th chandelier I've seen in this section.

Bling.

Blong.

I would like a cuppa here.

He should seriously consider doing an episode of MTV Cribs. It would take about 70 hours.

Denon side. Italian paintings, mostly. Beautiful place.

Wheeee...

...eeeeee.

Mm.

La.

La.

La.

Why is this section so much more famous?

Ding! This is actually fine. Apparently during peak period you have to queue up to get into the room with the Mona Lisa. Goddamn.

=) to you too, Madame.

Lots of paintings but we had to skip through because we were running out of time. And we were bloody tired by now, having walked around the Louvre for more than 4 hours.

Moved to Sully for the Egyptian stuff.

Which was meh.

Mm.

Monkey monkey.

All over this bloody part of the museum. Which was fine as long as I didn't have to join in.

Meh.

On the escalator up to the roof.

It was cold.

=)

Finally got a random tourist to take a shot for us. Looked like nothing without flash, so this was necessary.

Then we had dinner. REAL dinner. Absolutely brilliant restaurant. Right next to Palais Royal - Musée du Louvre Metro station.

Salmon and dill appetizer.

Carpaccio salad. I'm sad I didn't order this. First time I had raw beef, just a sliver of it from TC's plate. SO. FUCKING. DELICIOUS.

An advertisement of my pate foie gras paté appetizer. Mmmmph. I paid an extra 5 euros for this in addition to my set.

Potato cod thing for main. Looked crap and texture was soft and boring but it tasted fantastic.

Steak and chips with Béarnaise sauce. Got a bit of a burnt taste on the skin but the rest of it was fine. Worst dish of the night? :P

Penne and Serrano ham. Heavenly.

Chocolate Fondant to absolutely fucking die for. One of the best desserts I've had.

See?

Dinner was 24 euros for a 3 course meal, which was phenomenal for its price. (I paid 30 in total thanks to my expensive appetizer). We actually planned to come back here everyday from then on but we got too broke. Sigh. I wish I had come here and had carpaccio all to myself. Oh well.

~

The Louvre and the great dinner made me really happy about the trip at this point.

Jour 5

2009-03-29T23:54:00.000-07:00

Disneyland Day!

We had a little problem getting in because it was like the end of the RER line and was a good hour away from our station. I think we bought the wrong ticket and we were stuck outside for a while until somebody put a ticket in to exit through the handicapped entrance (extra large area) so we just ran through. Yes, I'm a badass.

=)

=)

=)

March that began as soon as we got in. Tigger is obscene.

=)

!

Adventureland!

I love Aladdin.

I haven't actually watched Pirates of the Carribean. Any of them. But okay.

=)

Indiana Jones!

Pants!

Roller coaster!

First time I took one in like ten years. I don't even remember what roller coasters were like. But this pumped me up. T'was fun.

!

It's Ben Stiller and Stitch in a spacecraft, dancing.

Rly.

Srsly, it's Zoolander.

Space Mountain 2, the most over-hyped roller coaster ride. I got off a little dizzy but that was only because it was dark and spinny. No fear whatsoever because it was so dark. Boring. I needed more thrill.

Hee hee. I'm a Star Wars geek.

=)

Oh my =)

Poor ducks.

Frontierland! Rainy =(

Mickey Mouse Nutella brioche! Loads of Nutella.

Waiting in the rain for a parade to start.

Along with the rest of the world.

=)

Alice in Wonderland!

Baloo bear is a cunt. I tried to take a picture with him earlier in the day when he was walking around in Adventureland. I was a metre away from him when someone shouted "Baloo!" and Baloo gave him the thumbs up and ran off into the bushes. A part of me died inside.

Moved to the Studio after Adventureland, Frontierland and Discoveryland.

Much better. Still dark, but lots of loops and a lot faster. I love roller coasters now.

Lalala.

The Poppins!

=)

Inside the tower.

This is the second time we got on the ride because of its awesomeness. We were supposed to stick our middle finger out before the cameras got there but we didn't have enough time. My hand was just about to turn into the finger. Damnit.

This was an awesome ride. They bring you all the way up the tower and you see a big view of Disneyland from all the way up there then they make you plunge and even with a seatbelt on you feel like you're being forced to stand up because of the gravity. I loved it.

Crush's Coaster, our last ride because Disneyland was closing.

Was much better than expected. Very thrilling too =)

=)

Disney Village by night, where it's opened till 12 as opposed to the parks which close at 7. Obviously here we have restaurants and a truckload of souvenir shops to sponge as much money as possible from tourists =)

!

At the window of Disneyland gallery. The place for higher end Disney products. Note the price tag on the bottom left. Click to enlarge! Or just read this - 1170 EUROS (RM 5850).

I want it =(

=)

She wanted that too but it was 22.90 Euros. Fags.

=)

Racist biatch!

=)))))))

Very appropriate.

~

By the end of our Disneyland day we felt like killing ourselves because it was a really long day. Woke up at like 7 to get ready and it took us an hour to get there and another hour back. To get out of Disneyland back to our hotel we got our friends to put in a ticket through the handicap exit again and got out. Haw haw.

Even after getting up so early we didn't manage to explore all the lands very well and we didn't even get into Fantasyland. I highly recommend Disneyland. It's really beautiful and everything is done in such detail that you actually feel like you're in parts of these cartoons. You should really pay attention to the props they use like all the little items in Indiana Jones's tent and the books, vases and stuff in the Tower of Terror.

I honestly wonder why my parents told me Disneyland would be boring. I'm so grateful that Michelle made me go :P

~

I LOVE roller coasters now.

Jour 6

2009-03-29T23:53:00.000-07:00

Chinese food for breakfast (first time we didn't have breakfast at the hotel). 21 euros. Hm.

Musée d'Orsay.

Lots of naked sculptures and paintings.

=)

Ouch.

That was entirely her idea.

!

Cross-section of the Garnier Opera House we were at before. Very detailed.

Painting on the ceiling (cross-section)

Painting on the ceiling (real)!

Cool eh?

Auditorium cross-section.

!

!

!

!

!

!

Eh?

!

!

!

=)

!

!

Oo.

Woo!

This is long overdue. Every pastry shop in Paris looks as beautiful as this.

This one was especially nice, though.

=)

I enjoy drooling at windows.

Went back to Place de la Concorde for some pictures.

!

?

We walked around Champs-Élysées for a bit which is a crazy place filled with rich people and a looong ass row of designer clothes stores. I'll take a moment here to tell a story.

We walked and were nearing a huge Louis Vuitton store when a Chinese lady came to talk to us. She asked if we were Chinese and started speaking in some language I couldn't understand but Michelle could (it's Mandarin, I just wanted to make it sound weird). Suddenly after a bit of talking and showing us some bags she took out like 700 frickin' euros from her purse and handed it over to Michelle.

Right here I didn't know what the hell was going on. I knew she wanted us to buy something but goddamn? Why can't she do it herself? It was dodgy. She passed it to me and didn't say anything so I put it in my wallet and began walking very, very slowly because I was afraid something was going to go wrong. So I kept asking Michelle to explain what was going on.

She said it's because the sort of purses she wanted were limited to only 2 per person or something and she needed us to get it. I didn't feel calm at any time during this. I was fucking freaked out that an absolute stranger just passed me 700 cash (RM 3500) and we were walking away (she didn't even follow us). I still didn't accept it. There was no way I was doing it. I didn't know what exactly would have gone wrong because I was too busy freaking out and wasn't considering any possibilities. We just passed it back to her as soon as possible and apologised.

Here a lot of things ran through my mind as soon as I became calm, letting go of the lady's money.
1. I had enough money to fund my entire trip in Paris for the week including flight, hotel for 6 nights, food, souvenirs and every other little expenditure I had, in my hands, staring at me, handed to me by a complete stranger.
2. I still looked around to see if anything was gonna go wrong like someone beating the shit out of me for messing around.
3. The most likely event was that the money was counterfeit and I was running into a death trap.
4. If she WAS genuine on the other hand, we were (a) assholes for giving her false hope, (b) going to have about 90 extra euros (RM450) to spend because she gave us 700 euros when the price of two bags was I think 610 (I'm assuming she'd ask us to keep the change because she did have change but she just gave us more money for the hell of it).

I dunno. It's a legitimate story and it sort of makes sense because LV does do that sort of thing and some people do want to get as many bags/purses as possible while they're here because they're relatively cheap. But no way will I risk putting myself in that kind of situation. I wouldn't even have handled that money if it was up to me, let alone talk to the woman. That was an experience.

Oh well.

Went up Tour Montparnasse which has a 360 degrees view of Paris. Perfect for the last night to see everywhere we've explored.

=)

I'll be honest, those are the only 2 buildings we recognized. This is a widescreen shot. Click to enlarge!

Paid a visit to TC and Shanneh's hotel area. Moulin Rouge like 100m away. GODDAMN it's small. The movie gave me unrealistic expectations.

And naturally a lot of these shops along the street. And I do mean a lot, like a kilometre down it's still the same sex shop after sex shop.

Got to their hotel.

Then I touched Chanel. Woo!

Mmm. I hope my flash photography didn't spoil the bag :P It has an estimated value of more than my life.

This too.

Crazy biatch!

~

Musée d'Orsay is a must see as well and will take a while to explore. Montparnasse Tower is fun just to be there because you'll be on top of it all. It's a bit cold, though, being 300m up. Moulin Rouge is tiny. Sex shops are funny.

Don't take 700 euros from strangers, put it in your wallet, walk 5 steps, turn back, and pass the money back to them.

Jour 7

2009-03-29T23:52:00.000-07:00

Bye!

Bye!

This was from the pastry shop just a few steps down the pastry shop near our place. It was so brilliant. It didn't look as great as the ones we had a few days ago but damn it was some spectacular pastry.

Ahh. Sigh. I can't believe I only bought one of these back. It had to be only like the best pastry I've ever had. *sniff*

We threw all our euros together and got lots of chocs at the airport. We pooled like shitloads of coins to buy that little box of chocs. They were fantastic. I love Lindt and Godiva so much.

Ahh. Was glad to be back in Reading. Everything's in English again =)

Overview

2009-03-29T15:54:00.001-07:00

In the 7 days we managed to explore some places quite thoroughly, namely:

Arc de Triomphe
Avenue des Champs-Élysées
Disneyland! (Disneyland Park, Walt Disney Studios and Disney Village)
Galeries Lafayette
Grand Palais
Jardin des Tuileries
Jardin du Luxembourg
La Grande Arche de La Défense
Le Panthéon
Moulin Rouge
Musée d'Orsay
Musée du Louvre
Musée National Picasso
Notre Dame
Opéra Garnier
Palais de Luxembourg
Palais Royal
Place de la Concorde
Restaurant Ragueaneau. Yes it's important.
Seine River
Tour Eiffel
Tour Montparnasse

..and a lot of other unrelated places (Metro stations) that we stopped at and got off for the fun of it.

I wish I did have the chance to check out Chateau de Versailles, but that was pretty far off Paris and quite impossible to get to and requires a whole day. Do check it out and tell me how it goes if you're going to Paris and have a chance to visit it.

The Louvre is not to be underestimated as well. If you do plan to go, leave an entire day for it from morning till night and try to choose where to go while you're in there. Plan ahead too. Know what you want to go for or you'll be really tired walking around and navigating your way around. Visit the website linked for some pretty detailed information on each section. And museums are a must whether or not you're a museum kind of person. If you really hate them, just at least go to the Louvre/d'Orsay. They're fantastic.

Don't be intimidated. Sure it's sometimes hard to get around when you don't speak French but try anyway. Point at food if you want to order. Force yourself to get used to formalities like bonjour, bonsoir, s'il vous plaît, pardon, merci. Learn to read certain stuff on menus like boeuf, poulet, poisson, and of course escargots ;)

It's easy to get around thanks to the Metro and RER. There are so bloody many stations close to one another and there's bound to be one right next to famous places. Get your day passes in advance. That way you can really explore at your own pace. Plus, it's a lot cheaper anyway. I found the ticket for zones 1-3 was enough (and significantly cheaper than the ticket for zones 1-6). The only stop outside of zones 1-3 was Disneyland and we cheated out of that :P

If you have the time, take a little off to just chill. Pick a random garden (jardin) to just stroll around and for lunch, grab a few pastries and sit at some grand staircase of some random building to eat. A lot of locals do it and it's easy to see why. It's a great feeling. Also try as many pastries as you can :P I know it hurts at about 1 euro per piece (RM 5), and some fancy ones even 3 euros (RM 15) but it's so worth it. Plus everything is expensive in Paris so get ready to spend some cash, especially for food.

Try some form of raw beef. It's excellent :P

Disneyland is at least a one day thing if you're interested. The food and souvenirs are not too bad in comparison to their high cost of living. They didn't con tourists as much as I'd expected.

What I'll miss:
1. Musicians in train stations and trains. Sigh, I wish I had the chance to tip at least one of them. Random man on saxaphone was especially good.
2. Food, of course. And little pastry shops while we're at it.
3. Being able to get up, read a book, and plan like 5 places to walk around for the day. It was tiring, but exciting as hell.

What I won't:
1. People who read poetry on trains. There was this one particular one that made the entire train stink when he stood there for just 30 seconds and left. That was really bad.
2. The cost of everything! I spent today getting groceries and stuff again and couldn't help to think how cheap everything was again. You know it's bad when you think Reading is cheap.
3. Not being able to understand anything you read / hear.

What I got:
1. A week of not washing dishes, cooking, etc. That was good enough for me.
2. Some very nice bubble baths.
3. A chance to visit one of the greatest places to explore. (To explore, not to live. I'm actually glad to get out of there after I was done exploring.)
4. Some time away before I come back to the reality that my EXAMS ARE IN A MONTH.
5. Some quality time spent with my awesome girlfriend after 5 months of being together.

Thanks a lot for being willing to sponsor the trip, dad =)