Paris-London Trip - Final

After the day 9th, there is not much place that we visit, because most of the time we are travelling.

On the day 10th morning, we went to shopping at the Regent Street because my wife need to help her brother in law to buy Burberry for her sister. Then we went to purchase the fish-and-chip at the restaurant recommended by the local tour guide. Once again, for someone like me that can't differential the fresh fish and frozen fish, I can only say that fish is nice. We took the Eurostar from London at St. Pancras station to go back to Paris.

We reached Paris around 6pm, after having some fast food and bought some water and a box of strawberry, we went to the hotel near the airport. My wife is still worry because of the volcano ashes, all the flights have been cancelled for few days. As usual, I just told her that, she should be happy cause we can have an extended honeymoon.

When we reach the train station at hotel area, it is around 7pm++. There is not much bus going to the hotel and we waited until around 8.30pm, we manage to get our bus to the hotel. Thanks to the bus driver for giving us a free trip.

On the next day, day 11th, we went back to Paris area to do the shopping at the Galleries Lafayette, the luxury shopping mall that sell all the luxury brands. My wife promise to buy a LV purse for her colleague, and when we reached the LV store, suddenly I just want to stop purchase those items. Why?

It is not because of the price, if you follow those brands, you will find that the price at Paris is almost same but there is one advantage, which is you will get 12% discount back from the sales tax VAT (Value Added Tax), and the end, it is actually much cheaper than Bolehland.

Suddenly I just felt that I'm like being cheated by the brand, because 99% of the customer in the shop is Asian especially Chinese. People will told you that Parisian do not know how to speech English, but in this shop, they can speech Mandarin with you.

Well, feeling being cheated and the kiansu spirit always contra each other. At the end, my wife bought the purse for her colleague and me bought a purse for her. She actually doesn't want me to waste the money, but still I prefer she to have one.

When my wife still worry whether our flight still cancel or not, and as I said, I'm the luckiest man in the world, the flight from Paris finally re-open tomorrow. We finally took the flight according to our schedule and back to Bolehland. When we purchase the ticket, we actually only plan to take 10 days and luckily the agent told me that the return ticket for that date is expensive and she propose us to take the flight two days after that, and that make us the luckiest passengers.

Ok, that's all for the trip. 

My wife, she is so sweet.

Paris-London Trip - Day 5

The 5th day is Wednesday, on Wednesday and Friday, Louvre Museum will open until 9pm and for other day, it will only open until 5pm. So, today is our museum day. If you are museum maniac, you can get museum pass and enter to almost all the museum in Paris for free. If I’m not mistaken, the two days museum pass cost €32. You may check the detail here. Well, it definitely save some entrance fees if you plan to visit other museums in Paris. However, my target is Louvre Museum and the entrance fee is only €9, so not worth for me to get the pass. Anyway, it is very much depend on how you plan your Paris visit.

Actually we plan to visit Rodin museum, but I know I’m going to take few hours if I went there and I may miss the Louvre Museum. So, I told my wife that we go to visit Picasso before go to Louvre Museum because I heard they can allow you to visit the corridor for only €1, but I’m not sure how true is that cause I can’t found the detail at the office website.

We went to Picasso Museum and it requires some walking since it is located in the residence area. When we reached there, we found that the museum is closed for renovation and will only open on year 2012. Too bad.

:(

So, we went back to the metro and went to Louvre Museum.

It’s a huge place and lots of people. We took almost ½ hours to get our tickets. The ticket didn’t include audio guide and you can rent an audio guide from the counter for €6. As usual, I don’t like those guides because it’s like reading a long history book and taking lots of time to tell you the story behind those collections.

I try to search the web about those famous collections in the Louvre Museum, hope it can give some explanations on the photos I’d took.

Milo of Croton

I believe you know this, I remember that when I'm at form 3, I study about the world history and one of the most famous subject is the Code of Hammurabi and I finally saw it with my bare eyes.

 Law Code of Hammurabi, king of Babylon

Don't ask me, I don't know what is this also :p

Sarcophagus box of Ramesses III

One of the most famous collections in Louvre

Aphrodite, known as the Venus de Milo

Imperial group as Mars and Venus

Fighting Warrior

Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss

Mercury and Psyche

Dying Slave by Michelangelo

The Slave by Michelangelo

I can't remember what is this also :p

The Death of Sardanapalus

The Intervention of the Sabine Women

The Meal at the House of Simon

The Wedding Feast at Cana

This is another most famous collections in Louvre

Winged Victory of Samothrace

The Coronation of the Emperor Napoleon I and the Crowning of the Empress Joséphine in Notre-Dame Cathedral on December 2, 1804

If you read my blog, you will remember this drawing, I love it so much. Empress Josephine is a very beautiful lady, too bad is that the story about Napoleon and Josephine is not a happy ending.

Again, the most famous drawing

Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo (Used to known as Mona Lisa)

My wife ^^, she is my tour guide also

We “finished” the museum around 8pm and after took some photos outside with the pyramid.

After resting in the park, we decided to go to have a look on the Eiffel Tower at night. You maybe surprise that I didn’t took much of night photo in this trip. Well, in April, the sun come out very early, even on 6am, it’s look like noon, and the sun start to go down around 9pm. So, if I want to take night photo, I may need to wait until 9pm and to get a really dark night shot, its start around 10pm.

Eiffel at night

Paris-London Trip - Day 4

Day 4 is a very excited day for us, cause we doing to Eiffel, the icon of Paris. We wake up early in the morning to prevent jam with those crazy tourists. There are four escalator going up to Eiffel, but trust me, it is much faster going up using staircase. It’s not much people when we reach Eiffel, but not much doesn’t mean very little. We bought a ticket to going up to 1st and 2nd platform thru staircase. If you think it’s free to use the staircase, then you are wrong, because nothing is free in Paris. It cost me around €4 to use their staircase.

The Eiffel Tower

While climbing up to the tower, you can see some nice view around the Eiffel. Pity my wife, she got acrophobia :)

View from the Eiffel Tower

Talking about Eiffel, according to the wiki, it is the most visited paid monument in the world. It’s a pure steel structure tower, built from 18,038 pieces of puddle iron and 2.5 million rivets. Salute to the engineer who designs it, Gustave Eiffel. Well, he also designs the other world icon of New York, the armature for the Statue of Liberty.

Going up to the top platform can only thru the life which cost around €5. I need to pull my wife to going up there :p

After the Eiffel, we walk around the Seine River because we want to see another great statue, the Statue of Liberty. It’s replicas of the New York Statue of Liberty and located at Île des Cygnes on Seine River. Very quiet place and not much people knew that there is a Statue of Liberty on this “island”.

Statue of Liberty, opps... my wife :p

Status of Liberty and my wife ^^

The next stop is La Concorde. It’s a public square in Paris, and its full name is call Place de la Concorde, mean the harmonic square. The original name of this place is Place Louis XV. During the French revolution, it was called Place de la Revolution, and King Louis XVI was executed using guillotine at this place.

The Obelisk of Luxor is one standing on the middle of the square, and you can see the Arc de Triomphe clearly from the square. My wife notices a black shadow behind the Arc de Triomphe and ask me what is that. After looking at the map, I suddenly hate Napoleon. It’s the Grande Arche located at La Defense, which is about 7km from la Concorde.

You can see the Arc de Triomphe and the black shadow behind it is the Grande Arche 

The Luxor Obelisk and Eiffel Tower

Luxor Obelisk is a gift from Egypt by Muhammad Ali pasha, the Wali and self-proclaimed Khedive of Egypt. It is originally standing at the entrance of Luxor Temple. Muhammad Ali was offering two obelisks to King Louis-Philippe, but due to the limit of technology that time, only one obelisk is moving to Paris, leaving the other obelisk at Egypt due to too huge to move. Hope, some day I can go to Egypt and capture the second obelisk.

Next to la Concorde is the park call Jardin des Tuileries, the Tuileries Garden. It’s a huge garden and next to the garden is the one of the most famous museum, the Louvre Musuem.

The Kiss by Rodin

We walk along the Seine River and reached Pont Alexandre III, there are two sculptures located at two side of the bridge. Next to the bridge is the Grand Palais (Big Palace) and Petit Palais (Small Palace). Grand Palais is an exhibition hall and Petit Palais is a museum. Didn’t enter to both of the building because it’s already 5pm and most of the Paris museums close at 5pm.

The sculpture at Pont Alexandre III

The another sculpture at Pont Alexandre III

The Petit Palais

Further walking down the street, we reached to Avenue des Champs Elysees, where LV building is located. Better use some excuse to divert wife’s eyeing. So, I suggest to my wife that we going to look for China town in Paris.

Maybe I should call it Asian town, because that area is basically mixed of Chinese and Islamic shops. The area is near Belleville. There is not significant demarcation of the China town but you can see lots of Chinese writing shop lot around the area, and also lots of halal food, Indian food around that area. At that area, we discovered the sister of Statue of Liberty, the Statue of Democracy.

We bought a box of strawberry and it’s so cheap. The only food that I think worth to buy in Paris is the strawberry, for only €1.50 , you can enjoy 500g of fresh strawberry, much much much cheaper that those strawberry at Cameron highland.

Paris-London Trip - Day 3

We wake up quite early today to go to the very famous cathedral – the Notre Dame. Notre dame means our lady in French. You can follow the wiki to know more about this beautiful cathedral. The beautiful painting of coronation of Napoleon and his beautiful wife Josephine by Jacques-Louis David took place in this cathedral.

The entry to the cathedral is free; however you need to pay for the audio guide if you want to know about the building. Like other cathedral, the interior is beautiful and spacious. The area is quite dime and no tripod is allowed in the building, therefore it become very difficult to take photo. Flash light is not allowed in most of the building although some peoples still pretend do not know how to read.

After visit the cathedral. We went to the outside to take some photo. The weather is so chill until I can’t hold my camera.

At the left hand of the building, you can climb up to the Notre Dame tower and have a nice bird’s eye view. The fee to climb up to the tower is €6.50 and there are lots of people queuing. Due to my injured legs :_( I can only see people queuing to go up.

After the Notre Dame we walk around the area. There are few famous building around the area. The Hotel de Ville is the city hall of Paris. La Conciergerie, the royal palace and prison in Paris. The most famous prisoner is the Queen Marie Antoinette (the one that we visited at Versailles). The La Sainte-Chapelle, the holy chapel. All those places need entry fees between €6 and €10. Due to time limit and we are not a history mania, so we didn’t enter to those places.

After walking around the Notre Dame area, we went to Pantheon. Pantheon mean Every god. Marie Curie is buried at Pantheon.

After walking around the Pantheon area, we decided to visit Disneyland because I can’t walk anymore. So we rest in the train that go to Disneyland.

Disneyland is located at east Paris at zone 5, and there is a Eurostar stop. Lots of European brings their family to have day trip. We only took some photo in front the Disneyland Park since my wife already being to Disneyland at USA and I’m not Disney fan, but most important is that the ticket is around €60 per person :s. I heard that their Disneyland is worst than Sunway Lagoon theme park. I still not yet went to Sunway Lagoon before although it is so near to me :p, maybe I will find one day bring my wife to have some fun while my heart still can take those challenges.

So, after Disney, we went to a mall nearby. There got a factory outlet, but the price only allow me doing window shopping.

The next stop, we went to La Defense, La Defense was build to commemorate the soldiers had defended Paris during the Franco-Prussian war. But now, it is a business district. You can see all tall buildings around this area. One of the most beautiful buildings that you wouldn’t miss is the Grande Arche. As an engineer, I hate this building, but as a tourist I love it.

After visit the Grande Arche, we went to visit one of the must visit icon of Paris, the Arc de Triomphe. It was builds on a 12-ways roundabout. It’s a great building.

Next to the Arc de Triomphe is the very famous street called Avenue des Champs-Elysees. You can found almost all luxury brands along this street. One of the wouldn’t miss brand is the LV. It has its own building. For those who going to visit to Paris, remember to bring more money or get a higher credit limit credit card.

We went to Hard Rock Paris to get t-shirt for my wife and have a dinner there before went back to hotel.