Marts finally finished all of her conferences and lab visits and we met up again in Paris, very ready to begin our holiday together! Paris was amazing! We stayed with Alli and Daz which was fantastic! They've got a great apartment in a fun part of town, which is right across from the Metro which was a saviour given the size of the packs we were carting around! We were in Paris for about 4 days. It's such a pretty city, with it's yellowy-golden buildings, the green Seine running through (much nicer than the brown dirty looking Thames), and the many monuments and churches. We climbed the Eiffel Tower which was surprisingly unscary given Marts' fear of heights and you get a truly fantastic view of Paris! We visited the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysees where we met Nick (a friend from WEHI who now works at the Pasteur) who took us for a picnic in "the best park in Paris". We went on a boat cruise along the Seine, caught the underground to Montemarte where we visited Sacre Coeur and walked around the gorgeous little streetways. Both Ange's and my favourite part of Paris was Ile Saint Louis. It's the oldest part of Paris and is a little island in the middle of the Seine. It's just gorgeous there. There was even a jazz band playing on the bridge that connects Ile Saint Louis to the island that Notre Dame is on. Ange visited the Musee d'Orsay (but unfortunately Marts couldn't make it as that was the day she had to go back to the Pasteur Institute). But we went to the Louvre together which is overwhelmingly massive! We saw the Mona Lisa of course (along with 1000 other tourists) and the Venus de Milo. But the Wings of Victory (or something like that) was much more impressive than Venus, we thought. And some of the paintings by Panini were quite cool. There were a couple of massive paintings by him that were like you were looking into a big room of a big house which had paintings hanging on the walls and all these paintings were of famous Italian monuments and places such as the Colosseum. Perhaps these painting are like an old fashioned postcard or photo album :) The AFL grand final was on when we were in Paris and for some crazy reason we were possessed to get up at 5am and go to Cafe Oz to watch it with a few hundred other Aussies! But it was great to see the cats win by so much and we knew Morgs and Jay would be jumping out of their skins!!
After our very busy time of sightseeing in Paris, we picked up our hire car and set off for the North. Well, driving on the wrong side of the road in the wrong side of the car is very interesting! But we have done surprisingly well so far and have narrowly escapes 2 pile ups which happened right behind us (one which may or may not have been a little bit our fault). We drove to Saint Malo which was recommended to us by a few French people during our travels. And now we can see why! It's a gorgeous beachside town, and the beaches really are lovely. The water is turquoise and the sand is fine and white, not the typical rocky beaches that you come across in Europe. There is a walled city which we are yet to fully explore. And about 20 minutes away is Le Mont San Michel, a spectaculat monastery that is perched high u^p on an island just a couple of 100 metres from the mainland. At low tide the island and the mainland are connected. But you have to be careful because when the tide comes in, the car park gets submerged and apparently there is always someone who forgets and returns to find their car floating out to sea! Our visit to the Mont was perhaps one of our best days yet. We took a big picnic and some French wine and found a fantastic spot on a ledge, overlooking the villqge and the ocean. Here we sat for about 6 hours, indulging in foie gras, fresh baguettes, vin rouge and camembert! We were the topic of many a Japanese tourists photos and were greeted with "Bon apetit" by the French passers by (a little more subtle than the snapping cameras of the Japanese bus loads). Still it was kind of fun! We felt a bit famous and when we finally did go for an explore of the island we realised that the spot we picked for our picnic really was one of the best views out over the ocean from the island. After walking around for awhile we stopped in another spot to have a drink and some dessert. Here, we were looking over a lovely manicured courtyard garden which was graced by a big statue of Jesus. Everything was calm and tranquil until everything suddenly turned pear-shaped... Marts knocked over her cup of water which, when she went to grab it, resulted in the picnic bag falling, which resulted in food going everywhere and a whole bottle of read wine smashing on the ground! Marts' reaction was "Mon dieu! Ooh La La" which made it even funnier to the French on lookers who were laughing at us trying to clean up the red wine (... the blood of christ) and the soggy baguettes (the body of Christ) in front of the statue of Christ himself!
We went to a bar in the walled city one night and met some locals which was fun! We also met a rather rich man who has apartments all over Europe and has offered the ones in Rome, Nice and Barcelona to us. We'll see what happens but it could be quite a profitable meeting! We've also spent a day at the beach and are geqring up for another one today! We decided to stay put in Saint Malo for a 5 days even though we've got the car as it's so nice to finally relax and really feel like we're on holidays. The big European cities are fantastic, but they're hard work. Tomorrow we'll probably heqd off though and spend 2 nights in the Loire Valley before driving back to Paris, dropping off our car and flying to Croatia!
