An evening in Paris!!

My trip to paris was a last minute decision on my business trip to Germany.
Soon after arriving at Colgone Airport (Germay) I took a sub-way to the central train station. I had around 3 hrs at the station, hence decided to have some food.

Language for food!

The Koln train station had a pretty decent food court. But the problem was language. Everything was in German. After looking around all the restaurants I decided to use my sign-language. I found a spinach strombolli at one of the restaurants, but it was sitting between lot of meat stuff. So I asked the guy out there
Me: English?
SK: Neigh ( No)
I said shit.. it is going to be difficult... I pointed my finger to the stuff I wanted and said
“Vegetarian”
The guy said something which I did not understand.. so tried my luck at another place…
Finally at one of the restaurants there was a girl who was ready to speak in English…
And I found a piece of bread ( one used for hot-dogs) with tomatos and big pieces of mozzereala cheese. .. Looked wired but was ready to experiment! The cheese was some different kind of cheese but somehow I managed to finish the stuff.


Trip on Thayles

Seeking advice from my roomi.. I had booked tickets on a super-fast train. The Thalys ( Can call it a sister train of the much popular TGV)
This was by far the best public transport I have ever traveled in. Trust me . .. it was far too comfortable from an airplane and not at-all expensive.

Gard De Nord-Paris

Finally my train reached Paris…. And my cousin (Dolly ) was waiting for me!!! Good she was there.. as I had no guts to travel alone in this city…

Paris view from Sacre-coeur

Sacre-coeur is a famous church in Paris which is located on heights. You could get an wide angle view of Paris from this church. It was a blessed sight and surely one of the important sight-seeing spots in Paris. The monument itself looks majestic…. Its one of the places where you can go an sit for hours and watch the sun-set and enjoy the blissful sight. Unfortunately I only had a little bit more time on hand than Robert Langdon of “Da Vinci” and so did not wait longer at this place. But before leaving “Satyam” ( Dolly’s fiancée) took me to almost back of the monument and showed me the first glimpse of Effile Tower!

Begatte on Subway.

The only mode of transportation I used in Paris was Subway. People in France eat a peculiar kind of bread. It’s called "Begatte". It's almost like a two feet long sub bread. The important point is they buy one begatte daily!.. And in the eveing you would see almost everyone walking home with one begatte under their arm-pits!! I also decided to taste this French bread. On my way to Effile tower from Sacre-coeure I had a begatte!!

Wonder of the World.

Effil tower! Of the seven wonders of the world, and the third one I was visiting. The tower is big, magnums and definitely beautiful. It stands in the center of Paris city on the banks of river Seine and kisses the sky!! The curve on the tower is simply amazing…
The visitor’s line was not too big. So I climbed to the highest point of the tower. It was a clear night and the city looked awesome from the top. But will add one more note.. I have been up so many towers that now it does not excite me any more.. From next time onwards I am going to click photographers of the tower but will refrain from climbing it, except if Leaning tower of Pizza is opened to climb again!!!

Crapes at Effil

Climbing down from Effil we were hungry, so decided to eat. There was a road stall which sold "Crapes" another French cuisine. Crapes is like a dosa/pancake with filling of chocolate or cheese. And its served after folding it to a quarter of a circle. I really loved it.

Ride on Seine

By now all three of us ( Dolly, Satyam and myself) were dead tired and had planned to return back. But as we were sitting on the banks of river Seine and enjoying Crapes. Satyam asked if I was interested in the cruise ride.. which we eventually did.

The cruise was a 1 hr long boat ride and it went past some of the important monuments of paris.
I certainly don’t remember all the monuments but it did go past the Lover, Concord, Norte Dame, The university area, The bridge of love ( don’t remember its name) The famous paris ancient hotel and many other places. This was an excellent time to see Paris night life… I saw group of students and friends sitting on the embankment on sides of the river and partying around in open-air. At one point there was an open gathering where people came and tried to perform tango. It was not a paid place. But a casual gathering for people who loved tango. My cousin told me that the place is pretty famous in Paris!!
I should say the decision to go on the cruise ride was really good. As it was the best part of the trip!.

Gardens of Versellis.

Day two we got up late .. and after some Indian snacks. Headed out to the Versailles Palace. While we were in Subway.. Satyam had an idea, so we droped out at the Opera station. Don’t have much knowledge about the western music.. but the place did look like a big theater. And there were names of four famous guys out there. Out of the four, I could only identify Mozart!! Right in front of Opera there was shooting going on for the next Miss France. 10 beautiful girls were posing… and boy they looked hot!!!!
Got back on subway and reached the palace.

The palace from distance looked like an ok monument.. but like any good architecheral work the monument grew up with getting near to it…. I was not interested in knowing where the king ate and where he slept. So we skipped the inner tour of the palace. ( BTW this is the same palace where Lakshmi Mittal’s daughter’s wedding took place). So I went to the Garden’s of Versailles. Its in the back of the palace.. and they are the reason for the palace to be so famous!!!
There was some French Opera kind of music going on in the garders and it had beautiful fountains. As you stand beneath the palace and look at the gardens it looks like a never ending garden. There are hundreds of sculptures and each one was way to different.

Arc de triomphe

The saying goes “ All roads lead to rome” If you look at the arial view of this monument you will feel that all roads lead to arc de triomphe. It has 13 roads meeting at this intersection.

We got down from the sub-way at the parliament house. Here I saw the original ancient French road (the black brick roads) and we started walking towards Arc.
Just near to the monument there’s the most famous Paris shopping street. The Montaigne
.. or something I forgot the name. My cousin updated me as it’s the fashion street of the world. Any new fashion related stuff first appears on this street in the world. It had shops by some of the biggest name in the world of fashion. Also there was the worlds largest perfume shop named Saagoda! It was like a scented heaven in there. Anywasy things were why too expensive. for a louzee shopper like me!!

Road side table dinner.

Had walked and traveled enough for the day . It was almost 6:30 and we were hungry. So on this fasion street. There were some restaurants with tables on the road. Entered one of those and had a quick bite! And there we enjoyed the rest of the evening chit-chatting for almost 3 hrs….Returned back to the apartment and were ready to sleep.

Good-Bye Paris…

I should say it was a wonderful trip to Paris.. I never expected to visit so-many places. It was fun to see my cousin over there and catch-up with her on old times… I did not understand French more than two words but it felt a very sweet language to listen to. And also the babes out there were stunning… People do dress well in Paris not like Americans where Shorts super-seeds any other outfit!!!!

Finally I should .say.. it was just one day trip ..and I do regret not trying the french wine...but probably the best trip of 2006!!