Steak or Snails...um, steak please

Becs's Dad, Garry had flown in for a two week visit and Becs had been busily entertaining him all week while Duncan slaved at the office but when the weekend came, all set off for a weekend in Paris. Becs managed to find a Eurostar deal with a travel company which included 2 nights in Paris and a bus tour of the city. Our weekend started with a train ride to London on the friday night after work. We went out for dinner with Duncans parents for his Mums birthday, then after a couple of beers at a local pub, headed off to our el cheapo accomodation. Because the Eurostar we were travelling on left so early in the morning (part of the 'bargain' tour we got) and the train from Leamington Spa didn't go into London very early, we were forced to stay in the city. The room we had was pretty amazing, crystal chandelliers, marble bathrooms, gold plated door knobs......yeah right. What you get for £70 a night (thats right, about $200) is a stinky room with no door knobs, a coat hanger holding the window closed (which didnt work), a forest of mould in the shower and a 14" tv in a cage bracket in the corner of the ceiling like in prison (not that Ive been there). We were half expecting to be locked in and a tray of food shoved in through a little slot in the door. However, we had a good laugh and were grateful for the couple of drinks we had at the pub which took the edge off the accomodation and allowed us to sleep peacefully on the marshmallow and boulder beds.

5:30am sharp we awoke, gathered our things and met a bleary eyed guy who looked like he had been at the front desk all night for a ride to the train station. The Eurostar is a fantastic way to get to Paris and is unbelievably almost twice as fast as catching a plane by the time you check in at the airport and then catch a cab to the city centre. The Eurostar is comfy and travels at over 186mph (310km/h). You can walk all the way up and down the train (pretending that you are walking at over 300k's) and even get a coffee and hot food from a dedicated cafe carriage.

Our first experience of Paris was the bus ride to our hotel. It included a ride around the Arc de Triomph, a famous marble arch built by Napolean to commemorate how awesome he thought he was. The roundabout around this thing is 8 lanes wide with no lane markings and about 10 entrance/exits. The second you drive onto this thing, you are no longer insured by any insurance company (not kidding!). Aparently its 50/50 blame no matter who is at fault. Our hotel was located in a good spot on one of the main streets near the underground so we could get around easily enough. Unfortunately there was a misunderstanding with the triple room we had booked. It consisted of a double room with a camp stretcher that made it impossible for the bathroom door to close. After some complaining, our tour director managed to get Becs and I a room in the hotel next door and Gary got to keep the room minus the stretcher.

Our first excursion into the city started by going underground to the tubes. The first stop off was the famous Louvre museum. This place was made famous in Dan Browns crap novel with plagerised material, the Da Vinci code. It is so big we could easily have spent a week in here. So with this in mind we decided sculptures and the Mona Lisa would do. What an amazing place this is. The sculptures alone were flipping amazing. some of them were so intricate that it was hard to imagine how they were made without a single chip ruining the whole thing. We saw things like horses that had individual tail hair carved out of a single piece of marble. The Mona Lisa was smaller than we had anticipated and was crowded with people taking pictures. It was inside a perspex case as it had had a few crazys attempting to deface it with acid and throwing things at it. To be honest its hard to understand why it is so famous. It is nothing special to look at but it is mainly due to it having such a controversial history.

Next on our trip was a visit to the famous Notre Dame cathedral. This 900 year old church was made famous by the story of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and sat on an island in the middle of the Reine River. It was free to enter and had some magnificent stained windows and gothic gargoyls looming on the outside. It was impressive, but not quite as impressive as the Dom Cathedral in Germany.

Moving on through central Paris we decided to head up to one of the cities famous lookout points, the Sacre Coeur Church on Montmartre Hill. We had dinner in a pub at the bottom of the hill in a kind of market part of the city. A stroll along one block from here brought us to the famous Moulin Rouge. This was a pretty seedy part of town so a few snaps of the camera and we moved on to the highlight of the city - The Eiffel Tower.

Unbelievably, we found out that this massive structure was built for some kind of tech show back in the 1800's and was only meant to be a temporary fixture due for demolition after a 20 year period. While many Parisians initially complained about its ugliness, they grew to love it and demolition never eventuated. Once stood under the tower, you get a feel for its massive size. Although it is made from huge steel beams, the design of it lends itself to be more like a piece of art rather than an engineering structure. We managed a trip 2/3's of the way up the tower which was enough for us as the queues for the top were too long and the height was freaky enough as it was.

We came back to the tower at night time to see the famous light show that took place on the hour. Unfortunately we were only allowed out of the bus for 15 minutes but we managed to hold every one up as we completely lost track of time after the complimentary French wine at dinner. Becs had to have the wine to wash down the snails she ate - yuck! I couldnt even watch her eat those things and she definitely didn't get any kisses from me that night. My steak did me fine and no amount of 'When in Rome' gestures was going to change my mind.

The next day we did lots more walking around the city admiring the river Reine River from a cruise boat and taking lots of photos of the spectacular bridges. When I say spectacular I mean over the top. Every bridge was caked in gold, covered in hand made intricate marble carvings or wrought iron art work with four poster statues on each end. And there were dozens of them all trying to outdo one another. Paris is drenched in stunning architecture and it really shocks you to know that it was all ordered to be destroyed in WWII but the orders were never carried out. Apparently the pilots ordered to destroy all the bridges after Hitler had lost never managed to do so as they loved them so much they couldn't bring themselves to do it. I'm not surprised, it would be like taking an axe to a Rolls Royce.

Bec's managed to convince us on a trip to the Opera House where many a ballet is performed. This theatre has a famous twin marble staircase in the entrance and an underground river and is the very place said to be haunted by the phantom of the opera. In fact, the stage set for the Phantom play is an exact replica of the entrance at the Opera House in Paris and we stood on the staircase for a photo or two. The extravagance didn't stop here either with massive, massive chandeliers crammed into every hallway and gold lining and marble everywhere. Bling bling.

The last activity of the last day was a nice walk to the cemetery where Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde are buried. Not that any of us were fans of these guys or anything but we had been told the cemetery was pretty fascinating. The walk turned out to be a bit longer than expected and of course Duncan took all the blame from the moaning Tranter clan as it was his idea. No sense of adventure that bunch...... I must admit, the walk was about 2 hours and even I was hurting after the long weekend of being on our feet but I couldnt say anything. The cemetery was like nothing we had ever seen. It was like walking into a miniature city. Every grave had a miniature stone structure built over it, kind of like a big tomb. There were all sorts of tombs ranging from Roman pillar structures to small castles. It was very old and had massive trees growing between everything making it the atmosphere very eerie, like finding a lost city in the forest. Well worth the walk though, even if Bec's and Gary didnt think so.

Paris is a city like no other. You could go back there time and time again. Although we were only there for 3 days, we had seen so much I feel like I have been writing this for months. I had to leave so much off too. We will definitely go back there, probably in August when Bec's mum comes over for a visit. Looking forward to it, but not the snails, no, not those horrible snails.....

Never.