Paris

We have been in Paris for the last week and it was great, although nobody speaks English so I have had to try my best to remember all my French from school and we got by ok.

I found France to be nice, but not as good as I imagined it would be. I look like a tourist here again - in Denmark especially, but Holland too, everyone was really tall like me and people kept coming up to ME and asking for directions. French people are short, and Paris is very noisy. When we got off the train from Belgium all you could hear was constant honking of car horns. There are no cyclists just angry drivers in Paris.

We ate some nice French food and Chris even got some frogs-legs at one restaurant we went to. They looked like the legs of little soliders, they were quite cute really. He liked them, I didn't try them. I am not a fan of eating any meat off a bone - even a chicken drumstick I don't like. With frogs you have to suck on their little leg bones to get the meat off.

Us outside the Louvre. We went in and saw the Mona Lisa (I explained to C the significance of the portrait) and the Venus de Milo, which we weren't allowed to photgraph. The rest of the museum is filled with a lot of Egyptian artifacts, including these mummified cats below. There was even a mummified crocodile and some chickens.

Me standing in front of the Sacre Coeur church in Montmartre. There are gardens in front of it and you can have a good view of Paris from where I am standing. It was really nice there.

Sacre Coeur.

The view.

We went up to the Eiffel Tower at night. It took AGES to get to the top and once we were up there was strong wind and rain so we stayed inside until it was over.

The view from the top - in the rain.

Me looking windswept. It was sooo windy!

The sparkling lights come on at night for about 5 minutes on the hour. It's really pretty with the lights on, and all the tourists are lit up because everyone is taking pictures!

The Jardin de Luxemborg - a big park with a little lake to sail boats in grass to have a picnic on etc. This was in one corner of the gardens and I thought it looked really nice.

The Notre Dame. It was really beautiful inside (no pics allowed), much nicer than that gothic cathedral in Cologne. We didn't see any hunchbacks.

The Arc de Triomphe. There is such a huge traffic jam going up to it. We going twice as fast walking!

Chris infront of it.

On Sunday we went to the Palace of Versaille and walked around the palace and the gardens. Below is the hall of mirrors - it was packed full of people.

This is Marie Antoinette's bed. The palace was pretty fancy and you could really understand why the French people got angry at the royals.

Chris and a view of the SIDE gardens. The gardens were huge, but it started raining so we didn't get to see Marie Antoinette's estate which was a shame. It was always sunny in Paris in the morning, and then in the afternoon it would pour down for 20 minutes and then clear up again. This time it rained for 3 hours though and it was just too wet to walk around.

On Sunday night we went to the Moulin Rouge to see the 11pm show which was fantastic. We were right at the front. Sitting on our right were some friendly Italiens and on the left were a sulky Russian couple. They didn't smile once and some parts were soo funny, there are 2 clowns and they are super funny - and I don't really go for clowns! We had a really good night and would go again.

Yesterday we spent the whole day on the train travelling to Castelnaudary where we have hired a houseboat. Today we decided to extend our stay on the houseboat which meant we have been upgraded to a huge boat big enough for 6 people! It's really nice being on the boat though and I think we need a rest so this is a good place to have one. We are going to miss out on going to Madrid though I think, but I am constantly exhausted so sitting around on a boat for the next week and not doing much will be good. We still have 7 weeks left until we come home to Sydney and I want to have some energy for that.

Anyway more soon!