Bye Bye Paris, Hello Bordeaux

Paris,
On Sunday we visited the Musee d´Orsay and queued for ages to get in, and it rained...but we had our 5euro umbrella to see us through. It was pretty good to see all the impressionist paintings and the Van Gogh section. My favourites were the Edgar Degas pastel pictures and the Toulouse-Latrec sketches. At lunch decided to eat in the rather pricey Musee d´Orsay restaurant as a treat - Big mistake... again we had to queue for a table as it was so busy and when we eventually got out food, the special "fish and pasta",which was a slab of salmon and a slab of what looked like bass on some pasta it was cold...nice. hmm 20euros well spent i think NOT.
We crammed so much into our 5 days in Paris that it was time for something a little more relaxed - Bordeaux here we come

Bordeaux

So on Monday it was time to bid a fond farwell to paris and make our way down South.

Paris

Paris

Continued....

Next we visited the Musee de l'armee hotel national des invalides which is the french army museum. All the museums in Paris seem to have a scheme running where it is free if you're a student from the EU.

The Ceiling above Napoleon's tomb was actually way more interesting then the tomb (below) itself, however i'm not sure which Napoleon it was?! The poor guy was in five successive coffins which all seems bit excessive for one body!

Thursday 27th May

Day trip to Versailles and it poured down with rain and ever the sensible travellers of course we didn't have waterproofs! So a 5euro umbrella later and we were sorted. When we got there the Palace was closed so we had to trudge round in the rain, but the gardens were lovely. Despite the rain the gardens were the best part of the day because in some parts it was so peaceful and tranquil that it felt you were the only people there.

Our lovely lunch... Rob had Carpaccio de boeuf, raw beef slices and i had linguine tomates yum yum. This was in a quiet part of the gardens in Versailles in a beautiful restaurant called le petit Venise, it must of once been an old barn because all the walls were exposed but it had modern glass tables and candelabras.

The Famous hall of mirrors..If i had moved the camera a few centimetres lower all you would see is a sea of people.

Paris

Monday 24th May

The longest coach journey in the history of the world and a bottle of water leaked in my bag at Exeter so i had to leave my Henry James novel behind -what a shame! The Ferry arrived an hour late at Dover so we didn't board until 01.30 instead of 00.30 so a lovely sleepless night on the ferry, i couldn't even tempt myself with any duty free.

Tuesday 25th May

Arrive in Paris and made our way to Alys' apartment (Thank you Alys) in Michel bizot, we hope we didn't scare Kathy (Alys' flatmate) to death by just turning up at about 9 oclock in the morning when any sensible student is still wisely asleep.

Today all we did was sleep, the coach left us too knackered to do anything else.

Wedesday 26th May

The first day in gay Paree! That means we walked up the Eiffel Tower...and all the way back down again.

The view from the first level looking over the whole of Paris.

Shame about the millions of street sellers or 'the lucky lucky man' as Rob calls them. They wouldn't take no for an answer even if Rob said"Espanol, espanol". Walking definitley gave a whole new experience to the Tour Eiffel, my feet are still dead and it's Sunday. Rob on the other hand is as fit as a fiddle. Must do more walking when i get home. Being underneath the Tower was really impressive, you just don't appreciate the scale of it until you are right next to it!