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Thursday, July 20, 2006

Romantic Paris?? ......NOT!!!


Well, I have just been branded the new Queen of Torture. Immediately after mon amour arrived, I took him to the hotel. Though he was quite happy to see me, he was not at all pleased to find that it was not air-conditioned. Anyway, I told him we won't be spending too much time in the hotel because I wanted him to see as much as possible of Paris during his short 4 days stay. And so, we started on our journey immediately with Versaille.

Day 1

At the Chateau de Versaille, though I thought it would be nice and romantic to walk in the gardens, my darling thought it was too hot to walk in such a BIG garden, and we ended up driving around in an electronic car instead. There were long queues everywhere; ticketing booth, entrance into museums, toilets, etc. It was certainly not as pleasant as it was when I was there end of May, although there were less restoration work going on, and lots of beautiful flowers nicely planted in all the gardens with magnificent fountains shows. Then I was guilty of starving him - we had our lunch really really late, coz I was being such a miser and refuse to eat within the Chateau, and we only had one ice cream each as lunch. After spending close to 5 hours at the Chateau and the parks, we finally had our meal in a Tex-Mex restaurant next to the train station. Then we headed straight back to Paris and decided to have an early night rest (here I'll skip the details :P)

Day 2

The very next morning, I made TW walk again, this time to the Office de Tourisme. He was practically whining all the way, thought it was probably just a 15 mins walk. From the tourist office, we got our Museum Pass (2 consecutive days of visit), Disneyland tickets (this was on his MUST-DO list) and Moulin Rouge performance + River Cruise tickets.

I made a lists of museums to visit on Monday, and another list for Tuesday. He was not too keen on museums, neither was I, but there are some that you just can't miss while you are in Paris. We made our first trip to The Louvre, which he had absolutely no idea what it was about except that it has that transparent pyramid thingy. When I explained that Mona Lisa was part of the exhibits, he showed a little bit more interest. In fact, that was his ONLY objective, as after we found our way to Mona Lisa's, he already wanted to leave. I made him stay a little while more, then we went over to Centre Pompidou to see displays of modern art. There he was nauseous when he saw a video clip of gays making love to each other.

We didn't visit any more museums after that as we needed to do some shopping. There was a dress code for the Moulin Rouge show. No jeans, no sneakers. I reminded him to bring shirt and slacks in case we needed to be somewhere formal, and so he did. But he forgot about the shoes. Being particularly picky about shoes, we spent few hours looking for a pair that pleased him. He finally decided just to randomly pick one from Zara because his feet was just too sore to walk anymore....(more whining about the heat)

After the dinner, we took a metro to the meeting point for the cruise and Moulin Rouge show. The cruise was really nice, and when the sun set, the view was breathtaking. No offense, but the Moulin Rouge show which took place after the cruise was a BIG disappointment (ok...not completely, certain parts e.g. the acrobatic show was quite alright). You get a glass of champagne with the show, then you cramp into a small hall with the rest of the tourists. While the women danced half naked on the stage, the men were fully clothed from head to toe. It could have been that both of us were tired from a day's walk - seriously, we almost nodded off during the performance. I guess I don't find bouncing breasts on stage at all interesting, although credit must be given to the costume designer; they are really EXTRAVAGANT! As the show ended very late, we were sent directly to the hotel by a coach, which was perfect, we would have gotten a taxi anyway.

Day 3

More museum visits. But I kept it to a minimum as TW was getting blisters on almost every single toe, and instead of shopping for Louis Vuitton or Gucci, we were shopping for Hansaplast. We went to see Eiffel tower, he can't leave Paris without having climbed the Eiffel tower (we took the elevator lah.... I am not really that MAD). We also went up the Arc de Triomphe at the end of Champs-Elysees street, but we skipped Musée d'Orsay. I had to reserve our energy for Disneyland the next day.

Day 4

I guess this was probably his happiest day in Paris. We went on kiddy rides, watch Winnie the Pooh and his friends performed, took pictures of Mickey & Minnie, Pluto, the princesses, Chip & Dale (they are call Tic and Tac in French....how cute) and many other Disney characters whom I didn't recognize. Because it was so HOT, we probably spent more time in the souvenir shops than outside because the shops were air-conditioned. What I couldn't stand was, every shop he entered, all he thought of was what to get for my brother!!! "I think he will like this mug... I want to buy this Chicken Little for WL... This is cute, shall I get it for your brother???" Heyyyyy!!! He was suppose to reserve his baggage space for me, not fill it up with presents for my brother! :( Anyway, we stayed there until about 7ish, that was after the parade of the Disney characters. By the time I got to Paris, it was too late to meet up with Dita, she was already at the train station. So we spent time packing for the trip down south, while exchanging stuff. I gave lots of books and brochures and stuff for him to bring home .... including the bottle of Limoncello that I have been carrying from town to town since Perugia, while he gave me packets of Indomie, sambal goreng, and asam jawa, an apron, my yoga mat, and some additional shirt and shorts. Phew! A pleasure doing business with you! Hehe...

Of course, every fairy tale must have a happy ending :D. Especially one that takes place in Paris. We had someone take this photo in front of Eiffel Tower after the climb to the top.


Here are the rest of the photos taken in Paris, Versaille and Disneyland.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

wahhh.. hahaha.. yealah yealah... very sweet n romantic at the end... :P:P

Your yigajie... :D