Insight Vacation Select Choice Tour – Paris – July 22nd 2011
Today is my last day in Europe. With the night before being a late evening my mom and I decided to sleep in little bit so that we could be well rested for a busy day.
The morning started off with a metro ride to a Harley Davidson Store to get some shirts for my brother and father. We then took the metro to see the Arc De Triomphe.
I took a video of the traffic driving around in a circle because I was shocked at how insane it is. All you hear is car horns. It’s very nerve racking. There are no lines on the road and the cars drive and change spots so often that I got stressed just watching. We decided that we didn’t need to climb up to the top, so we decided to walk down the road instead. We stopped into Swarovski and I purchased a ring.
These stairs lead up to the second floor in the Swarovski store.
The rings I purchased. I gave my sister the blue one.
After that it was another metor ride to the Musee Du Louve for some photos. I wasn’t interested in going inside, so we didn’t.
Instead my mom and I made our way to the Pont Des Arts Bridge which is famous for being covered in locks.
My mom and I even put our own lock onto the bridge.
Afterwards my mom and I decided we should probably have something to eat. It was about 2:30pm by this point so we stopped into a little shop called Le Relais Du Pont Neuf. I ordered a Hamburger with fries and a salad to eat and a Sprit to drink. Price wise the food wasn’t too bad at 10 Euros, however the sprit was 5.50 Euors. The food sucked though. My burger was pretty raw in the middle, so I didn’t eat all of it. There was also cheese on the top and bottom of the burger, which I had asked to be removed when I ordered the burger.
My mom and I walked around a little shopping area after we ate. It started to rain so we ducked into a store and I ended up purchasing 2 pairs of earrings.
We then caught the Metro and were back at the hotel by 5pm. We decided to eat dinner at a cute little Italian Restaurant later in the evening across from our hotel.
After dinner my mom and I started to pack up our belongings. Our luggage was due at the front desk for 9:15am tomorrow morning.
Insight Vacation Select Choices Tour – Paris July 20th 2011
Today was a very early day. My mom and I had to get up at 5:30am. Our luggage was due at the front desk by 6:30am and we were to be on the coach bus by 7:30am. Everything went according to plan and shortly after 7:40am the coach bus was on it’s way to St. Pancras Station for us to board the Eurostar to go to Paris.
During the train ride I tried to sleep, I was pretty exhausted from the busy day before but I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I was glad that my last day in London was spent with Damien, I just wish that we had more days. There is still so much I want to see in London. It’s given me an excuse to go back now.
When we arrived in Paris we all de boarded the Eurostar and tried to stay with the group. Thankfully my mom and I were up at the front so it wasn’t to hard to do.
We were taken to where the coach bus was and while walking there we got to see 2 Romanian Gypsies getting arrested and being walked to the police van.
Once we were all on the bus we started the orientation tour of France. I got to see a ton of sights. Here’s just a few of them. Keep in mind it was somewhat difficult to snap photos while on a moving bus, but I did manage to get a few good shots.
The Academie Nationale De Musique
Front
Back
The Ritz Hotel
Place de la Concorde
The best photo I could get of it.
Once the bus tour was over we made our way back to the hotel, where we had some time to unpack and get somewhat organized.
Later that evening was the first of one of the extra excursions that my mom and I signed up for. It was a visit to the Notre Dame Cathedral and a Boat Cruise on the River Seine.
Notre Dame Cathedral was amazing.
We went inside, while a mass was going on, and were able to walk around while snapping photos.
This is inside the cathedral, standing at the back taking a photo looking towards the alter
You can see mass going on in this photo
This is a photo of the back of Notre Dame that I took during the orientation tour.
After our visit to the cathedral, my mom and I found a restaurant called Le Quasimodo Notre Dame where I ordered au chocolat banane crepes which in english is a pancake with chocolate and bananas so imagine my surprise when this comes as my dinner.
Not really the pancake I was thinking of. It’s basically a crepe filled with nutella; which I despise and bananas. My mom’s order was a crepe filled with whip cream. Not really a health dinner.
After dinner we walked around and popped into a few tourist shops. I ended up finding a purse and key chain that I liked. My mom picked up a key chain for my sister as well.
We met back at the couch bus and then made our way to Bateaux Parisiens which is a boat cruise on the River Seine.
Basically we got to see all the main sights while on the boat. It was beautiful however prior to the boat cruise we had to deal with seeing these guys when we got off the coach bus which was not so beautiful. They basically crowd around the bus waiting for you to get off and then ask you to buy their Eiffel towers
The boat cruise was over shortly after 9:30pm and everyone boarded the bus. Our tour guide told us that he had a surprise to show us. We ended up driving up some hill and at 9:55pm in the pouring rain he let us off the bus. We had an amazing view of the Eiffel Tower. Shortly after 10pm the tower went all sparkly.
Once we were back on the bus our tour guide started talking about Princess Diana. He ended up taking us through the tunnel where Princess Diana died but we were on the other side of the road, so you didn’t get the full effect, but it was still somewhat creepy. Then we headed back to the hotel and called it a night.
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