World Traveler

(Photo by Eric Rougier www.fromparis.com)

Personally I hate Christmas, I always have and I always will and I will do whatever I can to get away from it! So I decided to take my mum to Paris for Christmas, ha ha, that was my excuse! I booked the hotel and flight online and it was only for five days so we would be back for New Years Eve (one of the few celebrations that don’t hate me!)

We arrived and jumped in a taxi and gave the taxi driver the address, he blatantly drove us a round in a circle three times before dropping us off and thought that we wouldn’t notice! The hotel was nice, at least that bit wasn’t a nightmare and we went out straight away to explore and set off on foot without a plan. Immediately we found shops, lots of them and the shopping in Paris is absolutely brilliant, very low cost too (in comparison to London, where wouldn’t be low cost in comparison to that!) After a great shop we needed a drink and hit the nearest bar. It was a very strange bar, like most of the bars in Paris that we came across. Ordering drinks is where the language barrier comes in, I did french at school but my pronunciation is not understood by anyone that speaks French! I managed to order a grapefruit juice and vodka; unfortunately I got a whole glass of each so I had to down half of the neat vodka so I could mix the drinks myself!

We set off to do the usually sightseeing activities; the Eifel Tower which was very small compared to how I imagine it; The Louvre which was huge and I ended up lost for hours; Notre Dam Cathedral, very nice but a lot like many other cathedrals. We ended up not taking all the advice we had been given and to check out the real Paris, which worked much better for us, and also stopped in to see a show at one of the famous cabaret’s (careful which night you go on as some are nude – my friend accidentally took her mum to one of those shows!) Paris is a beautiful city and the architecture is excellent, but something’s are very strange. You can only buy tobacco in cafes and tobacconists, not in supermarkets. When you want to have dinner, everything is shut and then opens much later in the evening and there were rarely women anywhere!

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