19.07.2007

Weather is perfect here. Sorry to everyone in Adelaide. We are enjoying a comfortable 27C. We both got our first sunburns of the trip, tsk tsk. We firstly started walking north on Rue La Rome when we thought we were heading south, but happened to get a tour of an area that seems to be devoted to musicians. I am not exaggerating to say that every second or third business either sold sheet music, pianos, wind instruments, guitars or violins etc, for about 3 blocks! Anyway, we toured that a second time once we realized we were on the wrong path.

We had a look in Madeleine Church. It is different to any church I have ever seen. It has a rectangular base, with columns all the way around, with a blunt rectangular roof, kind of like the old roman buildings (my layman’s architectural appraisal). Inside the altar was simple yet stunning with awe-inspiring winged angels as the centerpiece.

We headed down the Av de Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. I was surprised by the size, the shots in the movies don’t do it justice. We entered and started up the 284 steps to the top, stopping at the small museum. From the top there are some great views of Paris, especially because the Arc sits in the ‘Place Charles de Gaulle’ which is like the centre of all these major roads that are like spokes from it, so your view from the top is straight down each road. This was my first view of the Eiffel Tower. Neda has seen pretty much all of this before on her last trip and so was a decent guide :-)

You get a lot of beggars in the Tourist areas, mainly gypsies. The main ploy we saw was a girl who stops you and asks “speak English?”. If you stop they will show you a piece of paper with a sob story and press you for money. After the first, we knew to ignore anyone holding a piece of paper asking “speak English?”.

From Champs Elysees we walked down av George V which has some beautiful and strange buildings. I managed to steer Neda away from all of the expensive shops that line the street, all of which do amazing designs I am told. She did get one pair of earrings, and Sarah you scored a pair too. :-)

We walked to the Eiffel Tower next. This is where a great portion of our day was spent due to the enormous lines throughout the experience but as is a theme throughout this blog, it was well worth it. The views from the 2^nd level were great, and the height dwarfed the Arc de Triomphe in the distance. We took the final elevator to the 3^rd level. Mum, you would not have liked this, everything looks small from up there, but you can see forever.

From here we strolled through the area called St Germaine in search of a shoe shop that Neda had to see. We didn’t find the shoe shop but we stumbled across a restaurant in the middle of an expensive residential area next to a church. A huge church, but in Paris so insignificant it doesn’t show up on the tourist maps. Upon securing a table at La Basilic, we learned from a fellow diner (some Americans who were kind enough to translate the menu) that this restaurant is very old and very famous, especially for its meats so it was a lucky find. After a great meal, we made our home around 11pm.