We Have Some News!!! – Part Two

Day Two

After packing so much into our first day, we dropped the pace back a bit and enjoyed an extra hour lie in. After breakfast, we jumped on the Metro and headed off to the Notre Dame.

I thought I had seen some pretty impressive churches on our travels through the USA but after seeing the Sacre Coeur I had to reconsider. It was my first European church and I was dumbfounded. I can’t understand how they architect and build these beautiful buildings. Notre Dame impressed me even more. It is absolutely huge.

After Notre Dame, we headed over to Bacteria Alley, it’s full of restaurants and side alleys, basically a tourist trap that people think is the Latin Quarter. We successfully dodged it while making our way through the real Latin Quarter. On our travels we stopped for a coffee. It was here that I could no longer dismiss the exorbitant prices you pay in Paris. Our coffees cost 5 euro each. That’s the equivalent of 8 Australian dollars, 6 US dollars or 3.32 British pounds. That purchase hurt.

After our coffee’s we stumbled upon Luxumbourg park. A beautiful park where the Parisians sunbake, read and relax on a sunny Sunday afternoon. It was an amazingly beautiful park but they have park rangers that rouse on you if you walk, sit or lie on the grass. Defeats the purpose of a public park really.

After the park, we checked out the Pantheon, another enormous wonderous monument before deciding to laze for another hour or two in a cafe out of the blistering heat.

Before long it was time to head back home on the Eurostar. It was here that our wonderful weekend was tainted. There was a signal fault somewhere along the line and our train was delayed by over an hour and half. This meant that not only did we have to sit in an un-airconditioned train station on the hard floor for way to long, but that we’d also miss any possible form of affordable public transport home. We arrived back in London about 1:30am (an hour an half after the last tubes or trains) and had to fight with over 300 other people for the handful of cabs available to us.

Of course Eurostar provided cab vouchers for us (which we had to fight with the other passengers for 20 minutes before getting one) but they only were for one cab company and the wait was estimated to be well over an hour.

We considered our options and started walking back to Jaimee’s place (a long, long walk) and were lucky enough to flag down an unlicenced (mini) cab. We decided to pay the 30 quid to get home.

It was a late night to sleep and a terrible morning to wake up to. We both just wanted to cry as we trekked through the rain, an hour late to work.

I have already forgotten about that pain that was a trip back to London and can only remember that great weekend that Jaimee, Michelle, Damian and I shared.

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