We arrived in Paris on the 4th of March after almost 24 hours of travelling from Kathmandu via Hong Kong and London. We were staying with Brendan, an old friend who I’ve known for about 20 years now, back in the London days as a kid! It was cool to catch up with him and his girlfriend Gabrielle – thanks again guys for having us! We had 3 days in Paris, and visited all the usual touristy places. As Brendan lives so close to the centre of Paris we decided on the first day to walk everywhere…. so we walked and walked, and visited the Centre Pompidou, Ile St-Louis and Ile de la Cite (the home of Notre Dame, no hunchbacks though), Pont Neuf and Pont du Carousel (famous bridges across the Seine), Le Louvre (although we didn’t go in, all that artwork would be wasted on me!), Jardin des Tulleries and Place de la Concorde.
On day 2 we’d had enough of walking so caught the Metro (subway) to the Arc de Triomphe and Avenue des Champs Elysees, and then to the Eiffel Tower, and then to a lesser known attraction, the Catacombes. The Catacombes is a disused quarry created in 1810, 20m underneath Paris, that was later used to store the bones of thousands of Parisians when overflowing cemeteries created hygiene problems. It sounds a little creepy to be wandering the corridors underneath Paris looking at bones but it was pretty interesting. Some of the corridors were pretty small, it was like being in airleg workings in an underground mine which made us feel very much at home! After that we chilled out in Jardin du Luxembourg which is a very pretty and well groomed park.
On the last day we visited Montmartre, which is a gorgeous part of town with cute laneways and architecture, and full of cafes, creperies and boulangeries. That evening we caught the overnight train, which was packed due to it being a long weekend, and arrived the next morning in Florence, Italy!
