Wednesday, January 03, 2007

after a long long winter holiday in the northern hemisphere, im back! the christmas and new year wasnt that exciting as expected. now i do feel that the singapore tourism board is trying to do a hundred-and-one things to celebrate the holidays over here.
i was expecting a massive countdown at one of the downtown squares in the touristy paris and rome, but there was none.

in 5 days i will be in shanghai for the next 6 months. its gonna be a busy 5 days. meeting up with friends, spending time with family, attending a relative's wedding, doing last min GIP stuff...

back to europe, there are countless things i can say bout my experience. but im just keeping it short cos im lazy.

Paris (23-26 dec) Day 1
its a different place compared to what u see in the media. a beautiful, romantic city with lots of couples displaying affection on the streets.
not that romantic i think, and its kinda dangerous cos there are lots of 'shady' people hanging around near tourists attractions.

ok, enough of my little complain. photos next.

The paris metro station:
there metro system is extensive. stations are almost everywhere. you are just at most 10-15 mins walk to a station. JR and i even timed how long it took to get to one stop to another, its only 1-2 mins!

you can get 'discount' on your metro fare too. just get one pass, it admits 2 and nobody cares.


went to the louvre museum on day one. the is one of the most recognisable thing in the world. every tourist would go visit this when they are in paris and we are no exception even though we are not art fans.
there's magnificent architecture and its a massive building, but it only took us around 3 hours to finish our tour there cos it got boring and stuffy after looking at art and statues.

That's the pont neuf bridge behind me.

Notre dame cathedral, a church with a gothic exterior and took an extremely long time to complete bulding. its the most beautiful cathedral i've visited so far.

Arc de triomphe. we didnt go up the arc just walked under and around it. i think most of u should know that this thing is in the middle of a roundabout. extremely busy traffic around there. its almost impossible to jay walk to the arc in the middle. you have to take the long route by walking through the underpass to get there.


went to take a walk along champ elysees after that. its a major shopping street in paris. flooded with tourists and local shoppers. the LV shop is along that street and you have to queue to get in. A cheena lady approached us and asked us to help her queue to buy the limited addition LV wallet cos each customer can only buy one. the tourists seemed like they had so much money to splurge on luxury.



That's all for now. Im still jet-lagging, got to go to sleep. i'll blog the rest when im free.
Au revoir!

belle * 7:15 PM