Tuesday, March 04, 2008

okiie this is the beautiful paris entry =) *smiles* naturally i'll have deleted all the fat-looking photos.. hehehe.

we arrived at charles de gaulle terminal 2 on thurs evening =) settled in hotel de bellevue and went out in search of sacre coeur......and then moulin rouge (of course)! in the red light district. where people tried selling us tix to watch stuff like lapdancing. do i look like i like to watch sexy girls dancing? dots.

had a lovely dinner and slept!
woke up early on fri to go disneyland. haha i'm so childish. but i do love it!

of cos i took a zillion photos (though i shall not horrify everyone and put everything up here -- fret not, i'll upload to my online photo album soon! err including like last year's photos o_O i haven't had timeeee!) and a million ridess =) like the buzz lightyear one where u shoot evil aliens.
i could go on and on about disneyland and the disney studio (we went to both parks!) but paris is more interesting than that... the clock struck 7pm everything closed and we left for the disney village where we had dinner, before rushing off to the louvre to see it at night =) no slim photos so skip the louvre at night =P
slept in on sat despite all our grand plans, and headed off for arc de triomphe...
...and then to the all famous eiffel tower!
then to ecole militaire..
then to where napoleon's tomb is.... a very distinctive landmark.. the golden dome....

and i noe i should resist putting this is cos it's irrelevant but it's the most exqusitely carved chocolate... choc cows, choc babies, choc froggies. so cute and so realistic! and so costly of course =P paris has the loveliest shops, i can't possibly put down all these photos regrettably! went to a jardin (garden, more like park actually) for lunch, watch little kids sail small wooden boats in the fountain. enjoy a bit of the sun! savour the baguette and feed little sparrows. it was the jardin next to the royal palais but the photos aren't significant enough...
next we went to the pantheon... (strange how italy has one too o_O)

then to notre dame!! which i very clearly remember going few years back...


then we walked down the river seine, and sat down at yet another jardin o_O have some lovely photos of the river and its bridges but none with me inside. dot. and by chance we saw the cruise that brought me down the river few years back! i actually have a photo of it but nvm. and we went back to the louvre! it was lovely at sunset. i look fat in all the photos but how can i not put the louvre down! so here goes... (without me of cos)

went to jardin du tuilleries (i'm making up all the french... basically it means garden of tulips i think. lala) and place de la concorde and we took a photo of eiffel at sunset which is nice... and i insisted that we should wait and see the eiffel tower when it's litted up at night, cos it's glittery and alarming! so we waited by the river (and in the cold) for about an hour or so, and just as we left, the tower twinkled.

saw the grand palais and the petit palais. right opposite each other and honestly, about the same size? haha! then walked down the famous champs elysee and saw the louis vutton departmental store, yes, all 4 storeys of it. well of course i din buy anything. i'm a poor student remember?
next day woke up early again to go to the palace of versailles where we queued for an hour for the ticket, and then an hour to actually ENTER o_O which is absolutely retarded. but well worth it. the jardin was a forest. not that it's unkempt or anything but it's humongous. it's like singapore sized. ok i'm exaggerating...the following is one tiny part of it.. see how far it stretches.

the palace was amazingly grand and contained TONS (as in literally tons) of silver. much of the furniture in the palace was made of pure silver and weighed a few hundred kg. but the pictures will bore u cos we couldn't actually take much, photography being prohibitted. interdit!
took the metro back, walked along the river and i saw a one-man band! he's really cool, so we gave him some coins. and lo and behold, we walked back to the louvre. it's haunting us i tell u. anw, we walked and passed by this gorgeous chocolate shop. i mean GORGEOUS. like a tiny box of pates de fruits cost like 37euros i'm not kidding. try palm-sized box.
we went to the royal opera house, and some touristy attraction building (which i can't remember what it's called) near our place.
slept
went back to sacre coeur the last morning! it was then i realised that's where huiyan and i got cheated the last time. evil black people were still there trying to cheat me again!!! lucky i'm smarter this time and escaped their evil clutches.

and i took photos of a bunch of people in the midst of being cheated. thing is, they tie your hand with a friendship band and then demand money from u, and not just coins, mind u. notes. i.e. at least 5 euros. and they are big, many and scary so most people just give in. don't!
saw 2 moulin rouge windmill in the back streets, forgotten but are truly part of moulin rouge, enroute to montmatre cemeterie. which is honestly amazing. they look like little houses and chapels from afar, but they aren't. they house dead people :S

went to hotel de ville. which had a funfair going on in the square in front of it. and they mounted a huge fake igloo in front which destroyed the aura of the building.

and then we went for our last meal in paris... MUSSELS =) hehe!

then there're a few photos of me and some churches and then a carousel and then we went to shop at the train station before heading to the airport at last. back to edinburgh.

.. and of course, the insane turbulence greeted us as the pilot tried to land, the flight was like scarier than any ride i'd taken in paris. and blustery winds tried to sweep us off our feet as the pelting drizzle (how does that work!) welcomed us back to home sweet home. haha!
xin's blog is not as neglected as people have accused me of...
haha.. well.. barring the fact that the photo is like from at least a year ago.. and my chatterbox is gone due to bad id o_O and my links are like not updated at all. and blah and blah and blah.
well barring all that, my last entry was like (oh shit i forgot it's march already, so NOT) within the month. is it really march already? gosh.
erps.. so anw haven't been doing that much, it's the post stressful essay period =) catching up on my daily dose of TV or downloaded programmes at any rate. i've re-watched kurosagi and nobuta wo produce!! in the pretext of preparing for my japanese speech yesterday! i spoke on singapore - DUH! it's quite a funny speech i thought. oh well. except i err forgot the conclusion paragraph and spent 1 whole minute gaping at the audience. hahaa! and it was basically about the weather. i must have been influenced by the Brits. haha. What with drinking tea every morning and discussing at length about the weather. but honestly the weather here is exceedingly fickle, u can probably write a 3000 word on it.. haha and i've handed in all my essays, can't believe it! lol. and all i'm doing now is offering my condolences to the poor ppl who still have essays. wheee¬ lala. shhh. i think kenny is doing his essay now.. and william.. all my flatmates in fact. HAHA.

i've blogged! tada¬

ohh i went to paris. disneyland! haha. reminds me just a little bit of jc times. at the arc de triomphe or at notre dame or down the river seine. it's so strange. haha. everything seems different. it's like now that i've lived in the europe region for 2 years, it's not that novel anymore i guess. compared to a few years back, when i was still young and innocent o_O haha and it was my first trip to europe and first trip with my friends.. so many firsts... and everything was grand and sunny it seemed. never noticed that europe had a tragically perpetual gloomy overcast sky... haha nor saw how alarmingly dirty the metro is. never saw the dark and dodgy alleys then either. everything was jsut amazing and fun and dream-like. haha. can't believe so much has changed since. never thought i'll return to paris jsut a few years later, and all by myself at that.. it's not that i dislike paris this time, it's just that my impression of paris then was like postcard-snapshots. pretty eiffel tower; pretty notre dame; pretty champs elysee. no meaning, no history, nothing attached to it, except that it's a pretty tourist attraction.

anyway shall go cook dinner now.. will upload some paris photos later as promisedd.. it's not as gloomy as i made out la.. i'm jsut being philosophical. ERRR. okk. i was just musing to myself... ok byeee =)