Missy & Geoff

Contiki Begins - Paris

Pics are Eiffel Tower, Me and Geoff infront of Eiffel Tower, Dinner with contiki people and Missy outside Moulin Rougue. Contiki has begun, very fun so far. Our tour guide is awesome, knows so much stuff about all the places we are visiting so we are so lucky to get such a great guide! We spent the whole first day driving, we had a ferry ride across the Channel to France, saw the White cliffs of Dover, and got into Paris about 5.30. Experienced our first language barriers ordering (trying to) lunch. I was so glad i'd learnt french at school so I knew the basics. We did a night tour of Paris, was so beautiful all lit up, I was blown away by the eiffel tower, it was MASSIVE! I also really liked Notre Damn.

The next day we had a full day to ourselves in Paris. Went up the eiffel tower, more stunning at night. Caught the metro the the Arc de Triomphe and saw the crazy roundabout below (we acutally went on the roundabout on our coach the night before, fun, lots of screaming.) then walked down Champs-Elsyees to Place de la Concorde. Got a chocolate crepe, the food is so much better than NZ! It was a freshly made crépe with melted choc in it. YUM. Geoff had his Big Mac for lunch but I refused to eat McDonalds in Paris! We had a French Dinner that night with the whole group, it was disgusting and not worth the $70 we paid for it (it was one of the optional excersions but everyone did it). The only plus was a bottle of wine for each person was included in the price so we made sure we made the most of it. Got to know some people in our group (Geoff tried snails) then headed for our caberet show. It was amazing, topless dancers, gay men in makeup, but groovers! Great costumes. Geoff got picked to go up on stage to be a volunteer for the acrobat show, it was so funny! He even got a certificate at the end. We weren't allowed to take photos but one of the girls upstairs sneaked a video of him so we'll have to get a copy. Went clubbing in Paris after that, pics outside Moulin Rouge. At about 4am we decided we should head home after getting something to eat. No sign of kebab shops, starmart or subway like NZ, we had to go to go to a full on restaurant. Looking at the menu, after many drinks, it was written completely in French, the only things I knew were cheese and tomato so we had a great cheese and tomato pizza. Interesting cab ride home, we had our address scrawled on a scrap piece of paper which neither of us or the cab driver could read, didn't recognise any landmarks after a 20 min ride in the cab, started to stress a bit. Finally got there after the cab stopped about 4 times to ask directions. 37euro later, lovely Geoff shelled out. As it was we ended up leaving someone behind in Paris, lucky it wasn't us!

posted by Melissa & Geoff @ 8:40 AM