Ashwin in Paris - 8

After spending some time taking pictures we decided we will march towards our destination next. Yes "march" ... Our next destination (let it be a surprise till the next post :-)) was about 15 mins walk from Palais de Justice. And it is a world famous tourist spot (keep up your guess work) ...

The weather was pleasant and cool. We had to walk along the river Siene to reach our destination. We took this as another oppurtunity to probe into our photographic skills. As we were walking, we found some small shops on the pavement. They were selling small souvenirs. Some were selling paintings. We stopped there for a while to do window shopping. At least I was doing window shopping, not sure about others.

There were really nice paintings at display....and then we started again to inch towards our. It was within our sight.

What it is?

As usual in my next post...Till then enjoy...

Ashwin in Paris - 7

We entered the Notre-Dame Cathedral and it was very dark inside. This was the second church that I was visiting here in Europe (in fact in my life). The previous one was also dark. When I say dark, it means that it was with limited visibility. We took lots of photos inside but because it was dark the quality of the photos were not very good. What more could I tell? I am not in a position to explain various things as I myself do not know much about the architecture and the history of Notre-Dame Cathedral. You can always refer to the link that I gave before :-).

We came out of the Cathedral. Now we had the choice of going up the Cathedral and see Paris from a decent height but then we decided against it for the following reasons:
1) We wanted to save time

2) The ticket was too expensive (around 10 euros)

3) Anyway we were going to climb the Eiffel Tower :-)

Now our next destination was "Palais de Justice". To know more about Palais de Justice, use your surfing skills...:-). Palais de Justice was closed for some reasons and thus we were not able to go inside. So we took this oppurtunity to take some snaps outside the place. After taking sufficient pictures..we turned towards our DestinationNEXT...and what was it....?

Press your guessing button...and wait for my next post...

Ashwin in Paris - 6

We reached the first destination of our Paris sojourn – Notre-Dame Cathedral.To know more about Notre-Dame Cathedral, go through the link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre_Dame_de_Paris
There are many other such links but I am a bad surfer… Check them yourself…:-).

What did we do different? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha …..We had our breakfast there … in front of the great Notre-DameCathedral. Do not curse me …Now that we were at the famous Notre-Dame Cathedral, we decided to have our breakfast here to save some precious time…yeah time is precious.

Now let me try to describe this place…I am very poor at this…moreoverI have to recall now whatever I had seen…Since at that point of time I had never even imagined that I would write something on my Paris trip I did not observe very minutely…(I am not a good observer either).

There is a large (am not sure of the adjective, feel free to correct me) open space (what do we call it? A porch… not sure) in front of the church. On the right side (when u r facing the church), there is a lot of empty space, not cemented. On your left (when u r facing the church) there is a road, on the other side of the road you haves hops. Right opposite to the church you can see a palace kind of building ... do not know what it is. That is it for the description...my memory does not give me any other details.

It was cold in the morning and the place was crowded and I could see people all over the porch…pretty much tourists like us… there were many people who were selling key chains with Eiffel tower. Some were selling 6 pieces for 2 euros and some 10 for 2 euros. I was not interested so did not bother to see what the difference was.

We decided to go inside the Cathedral.

What is there inside? What will be there inside a Cathedral??????? Do not know? Even I was eager to know that…

Keep waiting for my next post ….Happy reading …

Ashwin in Paris - 5

Must be wondering where the hell did I go...Answer is Rotterdam :-). So getting back to the business of blogging...

I woke up at 7 am the next morning…finished up my morning chores. One of my colleagues was with his wife and kid in another room. I went to his room to ensure that he has also woken up. My friends too woke up very early…yeah only after 8 am but considering that it was a Saturday… it was definitely too early. By now you would have come to a conclusion and yes your conclusion is correct that we met out target of 9 am with an Indian Standard Delayof 15 mins (ahh…that is acceptable). Then we bought some snacks and juices for our breakfast on our way to the metro station.We had the road map of Paris which had the details of the metro as well. Our first destination was Notre-Dame Cathedral. We reached our destination station. We came out of the station and that was my(rather our) first view of "day Paris". We decided to take some photos. The cathedral was about 10 mins walk from the station. So we began to walk towards Notre Dame. We walked along the Siene river(again a potential spot to take pictures).

After almost 10 mins of walk exclusive of the 10 mins of photo session, we reached the "Destination First" of our tour… Notre-Dame Cathedral.

What did we do there? You must be thinking what special we could have done there. Yeah nothing special but something different …
What???????????? Keep checking this space… The Paris sojourn has just begun…:-)

Ashwin in Paris - 4

Yeah of course we did find our "Hotel Modern". No pleasant surprise….they did confirm our booking…:-). But yeah, surprise was due….our room was at third floor…and there was no lift…:-). You would be wondering, is this worth calling a surprise…sometime yes…

The room was small but enough to accommodate three of us. There was an attached toilet too. We had provision for hot water too. What else do you need? It was already 00:30 am. We quickly went through the Paris map to decide the "Destination Next"....rather "Destination First" for the morning. We set ourselves an ambitious target of 9 am to leave the hotel for our tourist endeavour. After the rapid discussion and quick decision we went to bed around 1 am (don't remember the exact time and I know you are not bothered too…:-)).

Did we meet our ambitious target………….??????? Keep checking this spcae….

Ashwin in Paris - 3

We finally reached the Galeni metro station. From there we boarded the metro at 2305 hrs. The destination station was the third from Galeni. I was telling you about the metro. After seeing the metro map attached earlier you would have understood how complex the network is. The stations cannot be branded as very clean but they were ok. The one thing that I liked about the stations was that there were plenty of signboards to direct you. The basic word with which you should know is the French word for exit---"Sortie". With this word and the metro map that I attached in my previous post, youcan roam anywhere in Paris........:-). I hope I am not exagerating :-).

The metro trains are also good. Each compartment (bogie) lists all the stations that comes in that route (u can see this in the photo attached). I have a few pics that we took in the train. These photos will not help you in forming any opinion on how the trains are. But these are the only photos that I have.

Then we reached our destination station "Pere Lachaise". With the help of "Sortie" we came out of the station. Now the challenge at 2325 hrs was to find out where our hotel is. The temperature was low and no one was there on streets (their presence would have also not helped as we did not know the local language :-)). We had the street name where our hotel was and thus two of us went in different directions to find out where that street was.One thing that I like about Brussels and Paris is that they have a name for each street, however small or narrow the street is. The most important thing being that they have the name of the street written on both ends of the street.

I managed to find out the street where our hotel was. It was very near to the station. Then we all started towards that street.

Did we find our hotel? Was there any surpise in store for us?

To get answer to these questions and many more keep watching this space :-))))))))))

Ashwin in Paris - 2

We reached Paris (rather the outskirst of Paris) at about 2245. This is a place called Galeni. People at south India can compare it to CMBT andpeople at north India can compare it to ISBT...So finaly we reached Paris..........

We had already booked a hotel. It was in a place called "PereLachaise". Since we were reaching Paris late in the night, we thought it was wise to search for a hotel near Galeni. We booked it through internet. This was the nearest, cheapest hotel available.

You can search for ETAP hotels and IBIS hotels. These hotels are really cheap and are almost everywhere in Paris.

Once we reached Galeni we had to hunt for the metro station. That was not difficult as we had a metro station in Galeni too. Moreover there were directions everywhere to facilitate us to reach the metro station.

One of the main mode of local transport here in Paris is metro. In fact we used only that during our stay in Paris. Once we reached the Galeni metro station, we purchased the metro pass for the next two 2 days.

For me, the metro network is the lifeline of Paris. It is spread accross the whole Paris. To understand how complex the network is see the photo attached.

I think I have written too much........It is time for me to take rest.........So keep waiting.....