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.

Paris-London Trip - Day 2

Day 2 is Sunday, so we went to one of the must visit place in Paris, Chateau de Versailles, or in English, the palace of Versailles. Going to this area is very easy, just taking the RER line C until the last stop and there are very clear road signs lead you to the palace. If you plan to visit this palace, few things you should take note.

1. Only Saturday and Sunday the park will have fountain show. Therefore, on weekend, the palace will charge you if you want to go in to their park.
2. There are three areas in this palace; the main palace, the palace’s park and the queen’s park. You need three different tickets to enter these areas, or you can purchase the full ticket which cost €25.
3. Go there early, because it may take up to 1 hour to purchase the ticket if you go there late. You can pre-purchase the ticket in Paris tourist center, or the tourist center near to the palace to prevent jam with people in the palace’s ticket hall. Trust me, go there as early as you can.
4. Prepare your energy.

Once we reach there, we went to the ticket hall immediately, and lucky enough I manage to get my ticket around 20 minutes and once I look back the Q, I believe those people going to wait for another hour to get their ticket :p

So, we went to collect the audio guide and proceed to the palace. Well, if you love art, you will love this palace. Lots of drawing, status, art piece in this palace. The audio guide will explain every single corner of the palace and you may spend 1 whole day if you plan to listen to all the guides. So choose those interesting item and listen cause I think the guide is too long :s like reading the whole history book.

Can't remember the name of this painting, but it's very famous. Will try to recall, old man poor memory :_(

I love mirror trick :p

I love this painting, you will see this painting again in Louvre museum.

I'm tired of listening to the audio guide, photograph my pretty wife more fun :)

Again mirror trick.

^.^ my lovely wife

Once finish visits the palace, the second part of the visit is to enter their park and once I enter I start to hate the king. The stupid Louis XIV build suck a huge park in his palace and unfortunately, my leg is not yet recovered from the 21km marathon run. I don’t know how I finish the park, but I just hate the king for building this stupid huge park.

I start to hate the king after I see the map :(

The park.

^.^ my lovely also my pretty model

There are lots of fountain in the park and there got timing for the fountain show. If I’m not mistaken, morning section is between 11am to 12.30pm and the afternoon section is from 3.30pm until 5pm. So plan your visit.

One of the most famous fountain in the palace's park.

At the other corner end of the park is the road to the queen park, Le Domaine de Marie-Antoinette. It is around 1km away from the park :s and you can choose to take the train which will cost you few euro or you can rent the bicycle which also cost you few euro. Nothing is free here.

The Queen, Marie-Antoinette, is wife of Loius XVI, and she builds a small palace near to the main palace. The palace is slightly small as compare to the main palace, but the stupid garden is again, very very huge :s. We can’t finish going round the park because time is not enough and we can’t walk any more. If you went there on summer, try to take bicycle and cycle around the area (no in the queen’s park :p)

Taken at the queen's park.

There are some food stalls in the main palace’s park and on the way to the queen palace. You can try to bring your lunch box and enjoy your meal in the park with your love one and enjoy the beautiful scenery and imaging you are the king and she is the queen. A must visit place if you visit to Paris.

^.^ me and my wife

So, we went back to Paris city with very tired body and my injured leg :_(

Paris-London Trip - Day 1

The flight landed on Paris CDG airport safely around 7am in the morning. We make a transit at Abu Dhabi and lucky our flight to Abu Dhabi is on time and we only have less than 2 hours of transit time. Everything just goes smooth and we boarded the plane to Paris around 1am in the morning.

The first thing that needs to do after we had passed the immigration gate is to think how to get into Paris. There are few ways to go to Paris from CDG airport. We can choose bus, train or taxi. Because we will using the train and metro service in the Paris, so we choose to get a 6 zones 5 days pass from the RER counter. There are lots of signboards leading to the RER station and the days pass can get it from the counter very easily. The price for 6 zones 5 days pass is €49.40 (about RM200++ O.O).

Once we bought the pass, the first thing need to do is take a copy of their train and metro map. Very useful when you needs to find your way to any corner in Paris.

We took train line B (blue) to the Paris and transit at Notre Dame and continue proceed to the hotel using line C (yellow). When we reach the hotel around 11am and the room is not ready. We left our luggage in the hotel lobby and go to walk around the hotel area. There is a park and we sit there relax for a while. Ya, before continue, about the weather. In the morning, the temperature is about 5-7 deg. C, and in the afternoon is about 15-20 deg. C and in the evening is around 10-15 deg. C. So, morning and evening is very cool and afternoon is actually very comfortable.

After sitting in the park for awhile, we decided to go town to start our Paris trip. The first stop is at the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur. Seriously, I don’t know how to pronounce that. You can follow this wiki to know this church.

Basilique is located at a slightly higher place and the church is white color and from the church area you can view the whole Paris town. You can see the very nice Paris skyline from this area.

There are some street performances in front of the church and the some flea markets around the street. If you would like to get yourself painted, here you can find lot of painter that can do the job for you.

After visited the church, we went to find the Moulin Rough. I haven’t watched the movie so I didn’t know much about the story behind this Moulin Rough. All I know is that the ticket for the show is damn expensive, I think around €120.

If you would like some night life when you in Paris, you can come to this area at night and there will lots of people will ask you “Do you need a lady?”. Pigalle is the red light district. How I know that. Well, when last time I’m transit at Paris, a monkey bringing me to this area, that why I know that.

Ok, after visit the two areas, we went back to hotel because we are very tired since we didn’t sleep much on the plane.

To be continue…