Ah, Paris!

Actually, we're in the Czech Republic now, but I haven't talked about Paris yet (or Belgium for that matter). Now that I mention it, I forgot about Le Palais des Arts in Lyon. It was really cool. Right in the middle of downtown, you enter through to huge doors into an enclosed square, (there's no roof just open sky). It's wonderful as it blocks out all the city noise, so all you can hear is birds and wind and the murmur of some people talking. To compliment nature there are 7 or 8 Rodin statues in the square. It had been totally restored in the last couple years so we were lucky to see it in it's near original state. We also went to see my cousin Karim and his wife Monique in the country. This is where we got to meet my latest 2nd cousin Anthony. He took quite a shine to Sally. I'll have to watch out for him when he turns 17 in ten years!
On to Paris!
I had the pictures processed "The kodak way" which stripped all the info from them and changed the filename format, so now they're out of order. Piss me off. Anyway, I've put them in a seperate gallery until one day in the far future I have time to rearrange them all manually.
We got there last week Monday by TGV (Train de Grand Vitesse). In other words, very fast train. It travels at an average of 325km per hour and is capable of 550km/h!!! Anyway, in line with our previous travel experiences we managed to get on the wrong car, and as we were unable to get through the train to ours, we were condemned to bounceing from seat to seat as people returned from the washroom or bar-car. Fun. Why didn't we just go to the bar car ourselves? Because we had huge bags on our backs and we didn't want to piss off the entire train... Anyhoo, we finally reached Paris and had an uneventful Metro ride to our hotel.
Paris' metro is awesome. It's designed with the idea that no point in Paris (which is huge and home to 10 million people) should be more than 500 meters from a station. We were able to get around easily, quickly, safely (you should see them drive) and cheaply. I wish we could have a system like that at home instead of the 8 billion dollar concrete scar that blemishes our otherwise beautiful city. I know it's nice for those who ride it, but have you seen an aerial photograph of Vancouver lately?
We went straight to the Eiffel Tower after dropping off our bags at the shoebox hotel. On the way we picked up some crepes to authenticate our presence in Paris. After convincing Sally to walk up the first half of the tower we started our upward trek of 1652 stairs, (to be honest though, I believe to the second stage there are just over 600, but the public is forced to take the lift from the second stage up). After about 4 hours of upward travel (JJ) we reached the top. You can actually feel the tower moving on the last section of stairs. Not too good for an overactive imagination... Stunning view from the top though. It was a little cloudy but not overcast so we got to see both sunny and cloudy views of the city. I stuck my head out of the security grate to take a couple of pictures, but lost my nerve pretty quick. A base jump would be kinda cool though! Need to buy a chute first...
The next day we went to the Basilique Sacre Coeur, another facinating architectular accomplishment, but the cool area was a square just around the corner called Montmartre. The square was filled with artists selling their paintings as well as artists peddeling caricatures and portraits.
We walked alot that day. All the way down to l'Arc de Triomphe and l'Avenue des Champs Elysees. There was a marching band and a group of veterans there which was neat but we weren't able to hang out too long as there was a ceremony commemorating soldiers and whatnot. We did get the unique experience of crossing the street around l'Arc de Triomphe. I mention this because if you've ever seen it, you know you would have to be out of your mind to cross that mad-house of a street. Of course it was blocked at the time to let the marching band through! Les Champs were great, but we were exhausted, so we agreed to return the next day.
Another beautiful day in Paris. We've really been lucky in terms of the weather. We got a late start but a nice walk along les Champs des Elysees in search of the "real Notre Dame" (not the one I mistook for it the day before that Sally won't let me live down). Along the way we were "accosted" by some caricature artists who said they needed a Mona Lisa (Sally of course) to attract customers. No obligation to buy, and only €10 each (regular price €30 each if you want to believe them). They were funny guys, so we said fine. After a short time we had a good crowd laughing at our caricatures (we both thought it was going to be portraits). The end result was quite hilarious, and since I showed the guy I only had €15 in my wallet (Paris is really expen$ive), he gave us both for €15. !We had a great time. Then a pigeon shit on our portraits. Hahaha, fortunately they were rolled up, but still... The only free souvenir! We had a great walk that day wandering through unknown areas, and seeing things we wouldn't have seen if we had used a day pass for the metro and gone directly to all the sites. We came across the Pont Alexandre III. A bridge crossing the Seine beautifully adorned with gold capped carvings and a picturesque Eiffel Tower in the background. Notre Dame was nice too, but I think we've had our fill of churches. No disrespect intended, but there's so many awesome cathedrals that we've seen that they start to lose their lustre. Around Notre Dame is a great area filled with all sorts of shops and retaurants, a crazy greek guy breaking plates, and jazz bars. We hung out there until our night cruise of the Seine. The cruise was nice. It afforded us some great views of Paris lit up including the Eiffel Tower. Next time, I'd like to be on top the tower at night to see Paris. It must be awesome. The boat moved too quickly for good shots unfortuneatly, but I tried none the less.
To save money, we ate a lot of bread and cheese, and bought French wine from the market. It's a rough life. We did splurge on some Indian food (cuz we're crazy like that) and it was awesome. Until Sally found ants in our cafe sugar. Oh well. More protein. Over all, Paris was really great. It was Sally's favourite city and also by far the most expensive we've come accross! We left Paris by high speed train for Brussels. That's another story though!