Monthly Archive for April, 2005

Yesterday and today were rainy in Paris and the ‘mal’ weather is supposed to continue all week, so we may head for the Cote D’Azur sooner than we planned. Yesterday however was a fantastic day. We started out at Notre Dame cathedral. We’ve seen a lot of churches on our journey so far but this was architecturally the most beautiful, it was also poignant as it was the day before John Paul II’s funeral and this is the spiritual heart of Catholicism in France.

We then headed north west for the Arc de Trimophe, passing this great statue to Charlemange on the way. Despite the grey skies the view from the Arc was ‘magnifique’. This sign; Paris’ logo as a candidate city for the 2012 games is everywhere, on every government building, on every subway car, etc. George loved the view as well though it was hard to keep him from imitating his cousin Kong. The Arc is also beautiful from the bottom with excellent sculpture and the French Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. If you didn’t know better you’d think Napoleon was a good guy… From the Arc we started to make our way to the Effiel Tower. Along the way we stopped for coffee and a beer and met a lady who told us the site of Princess Di and Dodi Fayed’s car wreck was across the street. The whole bridge/overpass is covered in grafitti expressing love and good wishes for Diana from people all over the world. Not sure whether you can make it out in the photos but one that I though was particularly eloquent read “You may have been England’s future Queen but you were OUR Princess”. I was never a Dianophile but you couldn’t help but be moved. From there we continued our slightly soggy walk to Le Tour Effiel. Our guidebooks said don’t bother if it’s grey or rainy but we decided to go anyway. This sign made us a little home sick. But only a little as this was the view across those 6,000+ kilometers. The rain continued but the sun poked through occaisionally. We loved the view but we were wondering how great it would be on a clear day until we saw this… Needless to say George enjoyed the view as well. After the sunset we ate dinner in the Tour’s restaurant where I had my first European oysters, they were good but the Malpeque boys have nothing to worry about. After dinner we took in the city lights. The pictures don’t quite do it justice but since we can’t invite you all along with us they’ll have to do.

After a perfect day we hopped on “le metro” back to our closet. In case you think I’m exaggerating how small our room is as I write this I’m lying on the bed and if I point my toes I can touch the bathroom door. However it’s clean and in a handy location in a great city so don’t think we’re complaining.

Today we awoke to serious rain. So we decided to use the time to plan the next leg of our journey before heading to the Musee Picasso. They don’t allow photographs in the museum so you’ll have to take our word for it that it’s a must do if you are in Paris. After that we went shopping/browsing in an area called “le Marais”, stopping for a coffee and what I thought would be a quick beer. The metric system and beer just don’t mix. A regular bottle of beer is 33cl, they also sell 50cl which is smaller than a pint (which is the perfect size for a beer) and finally a 100cl ‘jumbo’ beer. Anyway I learned that my french doesn’t yet cover ‘biere’ and wound up with the litre size. Took a while to drink but since the French don’t make much beer of their own at least it was a tasty Belgian brew. After that Italian food for dinner and back to the room to do the laundry. Anyway, need to sign off here as it’s time to wring out the socks.

Cheers,

Mark & Ali

P.S. We know you’ve subscribed, we know you’re reading the site, we miss you, so we’d love to hear from you. For our regular commenters thanks for your updates on life back at home it keeps us plugged in. Congrats to Mike and Karen on the new addition to the family, glad he’s got all the right parts in all the right sizes.