What can we say about Paris… let’s start from the beginning.
Eurolines: quite cheap, quite comfortable, quite fast; conclusion: really good selection.
Hotel: Bercy Gare du Lyon. It is a small three star hotel in the east of Paris. Nice room (maybe a bit small), breakfast included, and the best feature of the hotel is that it is situated at only 20 or maybe 21 meters of a metro station!
Booking the hotel: we used the Spanish website http://www.atrapalo.com/. It is a good thing if you want to practice your Spanish there. We paid for the room les that half price! You can use the website to find hotels, flights and spectacles tickets (at least in Spain) and I bet that all of them are going to be cheaper than booking in the regular way.
And now I can describe a bit the trip. Let’s go. It is not going to be a long post considering that we were there two days. We left Louvain-la-Neuve on Sunday morning, reached Paris on Sunday noon, and left Paris on Tuesday afternoon, so two days.
After reaching the hotel and leave the stuff there we started our tour. The first stop (quite obvious) was the Tour Eiffel. It is huge, it is metallic and it has awful queues to climb on! Considering that we didn’t have that much time we decided to not climb and just admire it: under it, and far away from it. It is beautiful and impressive. After it we followed a nice park and went to see something called “Ecole Militaire” or something like that. The building is really nice, again, and we didn’t visit the inside of it.
Let’s check the map: the Hôtel des Invalides, a really nice building again. Napoleon built it for the Invalides of the war (he was really nice… sometimes) and his tomb is there.
Let’s jump to the metro and go to the next checkpoint. L’Arc du Triomphe. Sorry for the spelling… Huge and… how to say it in a nice way: useless! There were quite used to build impressive things with the purpose of… impress! So basically that’s all. Oh, and we walked through les Champs Elisées which is really nice, but we started to get tired. Cheap solution, especially in Paris: McDonald’s. We were thinking about taking a beer but we realized that we were not in Belgium. In that lovely country you can order half litre of good beer for 3 euros, in Paris you have to pay 6 euros for 25 cl of mediocre beer. Great.
The next Checkpoint was la Place de la Concorde which shows again how nice are French. I don’t want to be rude but it is a monument which says: “hey, we robbed you this huge stone! aren’t we nice?”. The obelisk is impressive, that’s true.
And after it, our last event in Paris, a really nice one. We walked to Musée du Louvre where we met our friend Kristof! It was really nice to see him again and we had a beer and dinner together. It is weird but nice to meet you people outside Louvain-la-Neuve, it is a good way to realize that we made real and good friends there.
And bon nuit, and see you tomorrow!
The second day started at Musée du Louvre. The building is huge, and nice. Inside… we visited the “modern paintings” avoiding the stone age and the sculptures from Babilonia and bla bla. What can we say… they are so French in that sense. Lots of paintings, just to demonstrate that they have lots of paintings. No history (meaning explanations) and the Gioconda, surrounded of rude tourists taking pictures even though there were two guys (at least) shouting “no pictures, please!”. For me was particularly interesting to see the Hammurabi Code, the first “written language” ever. Ok, basically it is an ugly stone with weird symbols on it, but I liked it! And we also visited the “Nordic countries paintings”, which they fill a little room. I think that again is a French thing. They have lots of French, Italian and Spanish paintings but forget about the rest of the world, just in case. We had the lunch at the Louvre’s restaurant and it was quite nice, and quite cheap (which was a big surprise).
After it, let’s go to the Islands in the Seine. Nice ones! Specially, of course, “l’Ile de la Cité” where there is Notredame. Spectacular, what can I say… and everybody knows that I am not really fan of Catholic churches! Huge, and… beautiful from some points of view. (After it we needed a siesta, specially me!).
And now the best part for me, and I think that Emma agrees with it: Montmartre. It feels like a different Paris, even though is obvious a tourist place they hide it with elegance and seems that you are walking through the real Paris. The up and down hills, the drawers, the crèpes and Sacré Coeur. It feels a bit fake church because it was built at the beginning of the XXth century, but it is still quite cool. And the nicest part of that place are the views from Paris. And here ends our second day in Paris!
We planned to go to Musée d’Orsay on Tuesday, our last day in Paris but surprise, surprise, there is a huge line to go in and we haven’t got that much time. So the next stop is Musée Rodin. Here there is the Thinker, well-known sculpture. And some other stuff. There is the Hotel Rodin, where that man was living and basically the exposition is organized in the next way: some little indoor sculptures and the same sculptures in big scale outdoor. If you take a look at the map that they give you it seem huge and something like the little Louvre, but it is not…
And then, lunch and come back to Louvain-la-Neuve!
Eurolines: quite cheap, quite comfortable, quite fast; conclusion: really good selection.
Hotel: Bercy Gare du Lyon. It is a small three star hotel in the east of Paris. Nice room (maybe a bit small), breakfast included, and the best feature of the hotel is that it is situated at only 20 or maybe 21 meters of a metro station!
Booking the hotel: we used the Spanish website http://www.atrapalo.com/. It is a good thing if you want to practice your Spanish there. We paid for the room les that half price! You can use the website to find hotels, flights and spectacles tickets (at least in Spain) and I bet that all of them are going to be cheaper than booking in the regular way.
And now I can describe a bit the trip. Let’s go. It is not going to be a long post considering that we were there two days. We left Louvain-la-Neuve on Sunday morning, reached Paris on Sunday noon, and left Paris on Tuesday afternoon, so two days.
After reaching the hotel and leave the stuff there we started our tour. The first stop (quite obvious) was the Tour Eiffel. It is huge, it is metallic and it has awful queues to climb on! Considering that we didn’t have that much time we decided to not climb and just admire it: under it, and far away from it. It is beautiful and impressive. After it we followed a nice park and went to see something called “Ecole Militaire” or something like that. The building is really nice, again, and we didn’t visit the inside of it.
Let’s check the map: the Hôtel des Invalides, a really nice building again. Napoleon built it for the Invalides of the war (he was really nice… sometimes) and his tomb is there.
Let’s jump to the metro and go to the next checkpoint. L’Arc du Triomphe. Sorry for the spelling… Huge and… how to say it in a nice way: useless! There were quite used to build impressive things with the purpose of… impress! So basically that’s all. Oh, and we walked through les Champs Elisées which is really nice, but we started to get tired. Cheap solution, especially in Paris: McDonald’s. We were thinking about taking a beer but we realized that we were not in Belgium. In that lovely country you can order half litre of good beer for 3 euros, in Paris you have to pay 6 euros for 25 cl of mediocre beer. Great.
The next Checkpoint was la Place de la Concorde which shows again how nice are French. I don’t want to be rude but it is a monument which says: “hey, we robbed you this huge stone! aren’t we nice?”. The obelisk is impressive, that’s true.
And after it, our last event in Paris, a really nice one. We walked to Musée du Louvre where we met our friend Kristof! It was really nice to see him again and we had a beer and dinner together. It is weird but nice to meet you people outside Louvain-la-Neuve, it is a good way to realize that we made real and good friends there.
And bon nuit, and see you tomorrow!
The second day started at Musée du Louvre. The building is huge, and nice. Inside… we visited the “modern paintings” avoiding the stone age and the sculptures from Babilonia and bla bla. What can we say… they are so French in that sense. Lots of paintings, just to demonstrate that they have lots of paintings. No history (meaning explanations) and the Gioconda, surrounded of rude tourists taking pictures even though there were two guys (at least) shouting “no pictures, please!”. For me was particularly interesting to see the Hammurabi Code, the first “written language” ever. Ok, basically it is an ugly stone with weird symbols on it, but I liked it! And we also visited the “Nordic countries paintings”, which they fill a little room. I think that again is a French thing. They have lots of French, Italian and Spanish paintings but forget about the rest of the world, just in case. We had the lunch at the Louvre’s restaurant and it was quite nice, and quite cheap (which was a big surprise).
After it, let’s go to the Islands in the Seine. Nice ones! Specially, of course, “l’Ile de la Cité” where there is Notredame. Spectacular, what can I say… and everybody knows that I am not really fan of Catholic churches! Huge, and… beautiful from some points of view. (After it we needed a siesta, specially me!).
And now the best part for me, and I think that Emma agrees with it: Montmartre. It feels like a different Paris, even though is obvious a tourist place they hide it with elegance and seems that you are walking through the real Paris. The up and down hills, the drawers, the crèpes and Sacré Coeur. It feels a bit fake church because it was built at the beginning of the XXth century, but it is still quite cool. And the nicest part of that place are the views from Paris. And here ends our second day in Paris!
We planned to go to Musée d’Orsay on Tuesday, our last day in Paris but surprise, surprise, there is a huge line to go in and we haven’t got that much time. So the next stop is Musée Rodin. Here there is the Thinker, well-known sculpture. And some other stuff. There is the Hotel Rodin, where that man was living and basically the exposition is organized in the next way: some little indoor sculptures and the same sculptures in big scale outdoor. If you take a look at the map that they give you it seem huge and something like the little Louvre, but it is not…
And then, lunch and come back to Louvain-la-Neuve!
