This trip was pretty spontaneous. Lc and I went for an orientation talk, and the Dean told us about some places to visit when studying in Mannheim. He happened to mention that Paris is only 3 hours away by train, and I was like... really?!?! And yeah, we checked the DB website, and sure enough, it was really pretty damn fast. But because we booked it pretty last minute, the trains were soooo expensive. 99€ for single journey I think. That was when we found out about the 4-months Bahncard 25 that costs only 25 Euros and gives 25% discount to all train tickets. Such a worthy deal.
We headed to Paris on the ICE train to Paris Est, scheduled to arrive at 4.50pm. But the train screwed up and we only arrived at 6.30pm! We even had to change a train in the middle :/ We checked into out hotel - yes, stayed in a hotel because we booked so late but it wasn't too expensive - and then had dinner nearby, then headed to the Eiffel Tower!! I thought it was too late because it was already 8.30pm but lc said that Paris is awesome at night so we went.
And it was awesome indeed! The whole place was flooded with couples and the brightly lit Eiffel tower in the distance was like a lighthouse. Enjoying the cool breeze, we slowly descended the steps, hand in hand. The carousel was spinning round and round at the base of the tower. It felt surreal.
On the other side of the tower was a huge patch of grass. And people were just sitting there, smiling, talking, taking in the sight. Regrettably, we didn't bring a mat to sit on (the grass was wet), so we could only stroll around. All of a sudden, the tower started to sparkle and everyone frantically took out their cameras and snapped pictures of it. Apparently, the tower does that every hour at night until 1am for 5 minutes.
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30th August 2014
When we woke up, it was almost noon! We headed to the Louvre Museum. So the famous pyramid is actually one of the two entrance to the museum. And for some reason people love queuing up to go in from there, for whatever reasons. You could also just go in from the basement entrance, which is much less crowded.
I got free admission (YAY) since I'm an EU resident (for a while) :D We only visited 2 out of the 3 halls, because the heater was so strong and I felt extremely hot and suffocated after visiting 2. Anyway, I'm not such a big fan of art. We exited the museum from the pyramid, and there's a cool lift that you could take instead of the stairs (or was it escalators?).
I had the best macaron I've ever had in there. And guess what, it was from McCafé. Hahaha.
La Seine, 塞纳河, was not too special during the day. I think the ambiance is better in the evening or night.
We went to the Tour Montparnasse to get a panoramic view of the entire city! I think the money was well spent. It has a total of 59 floors and is 210m tall. The only drawback was that the viewing area was surrounded by a panel of glass (with metal pillars every 3m or so), which would be quite annoying if you wanted to get a good picture.
We had our meal at this restaurant that ran out of all the things we wanted to order from its menu :/ We got a free cocktail though. The appetizer was a salad with bacon, which was pretty nice. But the mains were really.. bad!!! I can't remember how many steaks I have ordered in Europe, and I have officially given up on them because I haven't had a single nice one!! Lc got this dish that was supposed to be baked fish, but it just ended up as mashed potatoes with maybe tiny bits of fish in it -.-
Fortunately, there was this fabulous fast food place near our hotel where we kept buying fried wings for supper haha! My appetite was always sooooo good :P
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31st August 2014
We took the RER to Château de Versailles, or the Palace of Versailles. I remember how much my History teacher talked about it and Marie Antoinette in Sec 3.
The whole palace was very extravagantly and exquisitely designed. It had gold gates!
There were free audio guides at the entrance. I don't remember anything that we learnt in History... So the audio guide was helpful, but now I've forgotten everything again :P
On the left is the famous Hall of Mirrors, in which there are 17 mirrored arches and a lot of chandeliers. On the right, if I do not remember wrongly, is the King's chamber. See the work of my shaky hands haha.
After touring the palace, we waited till about 6.30pm to go into the garden for free. Actually you could pay to go in earlier to see the fountain show, but we had already missed it, so might as well wait for free entry! Anyway, it's free for EU residents as well, but lc didn't have any visa stamped in his passport so he couldn't go in.
In the garden, you get to see the back of the palace! Really beautiful. The garden is huge too!! We didn't even get to walk one round, since it closes at 8.30pm. We walked about 1/3, then turned back. I really really liked the garden. The ambience was awesome. It's a pretty romantic place. Marie Antoinette was so lucky!! Haha.
Super beautiful right? I think Versailles is a must visit if you're in Paris!! Even if you don't understand its history, or are simply uninterested, do visit the garden, have a picnic, a jog, or even take a boat ride! You won't regret it :)
Oh yeah, there was this guy, who seemed to be stalking us, or me, since we were waiting for the free entry into the garden. And he just kept appearing around us wherever we walked. Even when we were leaving, we thought we got rid of him, but there he was, right behind us. -.- But throughout the whole evening, he was at quite a distance, so I'm not sure if he's a professional stalker, or we just got the wrong idea? But anyway, I just really freaked out and we didn't have our dinner near Versailles. We went back to the city centre, and roamed around the cold dark streets for a long time, before settling for a pizza, because everything was so expensive. And the waitress didn't let us buy 1 pizza for 2 persons. We almost left and I had to say I wasn't hungry before she let us order just 1. Whatever. How could anyone finish an entire pizza... That said, we had the best pizza ever! It was so delicious!! Haha.
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1st September 2014
Well, that concluded our journey in Paris. I wouldn't say it's a top-tier city to visit. I didn't love it very much, partly because it was so expensive, and partly because the city was pretty dirty. Oh, and I lost the bracelet that lc bought for me in Venice!!! D:
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