Donna Maree Hanson, Author and PhD Candidate

I’ve been to the UK four times. To Spain once and to Italy twice for long visits. I had never visited France so this time around we took some time out to catch the Eurostar and head to Paris for three days. We travelled with the fabulous Cat Sparks and Rob Hood, our buddies from Wollongong.

To tell the truth I was worried about going under the English Chanel in a train, in a tunnel but I had been told it would be a good experience and of course, Paris!

So we were on the train (lugging great loads luggage Ugh!) and I was doing edits still and I looked up and said this must be Dover and we’ll be in the tunnel soon. He said I think we are already in France. So we looked out the window and after a while I realised he was right. We’d been through the tunnel and I didn’t even notice.

We nearly got conned at the station by these guys saying ‘want a taxi?’ only to be led to a private car offering to take us at 3-4 times the going taxi rate. Cat said no way and we were in the taxi cue. An American lady came over and said. Some guy wants to charge me 120 Euro to take me to my hotel. Does that sound right? We told her she was being scammed and she joined the taxi queue.

Our hotel was in the Saint Germain De Pres area, the Millesime hotel was lovely and quaint and we loved it so much and so reasonably priced for a very swish part of Paris. We went walking about. Notre Dame, the Seine and just the buildings were all so lovely. I had tried to learn some French from an app on my phone but I’d been too busy with edits to really study hard. I’m also shy with languages so oops! But we got on okay without the French and people were lovely and polite.

Notre Dame, Paris

Eiffel Tower

Sign along the Seine

Black canal boat Seine, Paris

Travelling with a bunch of writers (and geeks) is great. We thought this black canal boat was a supervillan lair.

Cat managed to book us tickets to a concert of Vivaldi music at Saint Chapelle, a amazingly beautiful church. We had front row seats. We also shopped, got lost, tried the metro, the tourist boat thing up and down the river, the museum Art De Metier (and the steampunk themed metro station), the modern art museum of Pompadou and the Arc de Triomphe. We crammed a lot in, including marcons in those three nights and two days. I’d love to go back to Paris and France.

Arc de Triomphe

Inside Saint Chapelle, Paris

Cello player playing Vivaldi

The concert

Art de Metiers metro station

Matthew on the steam punk station

astrolabe

Steam powered airplane

1895 typewriter, Art de Métier

Pompadou, modern art museum

I managed to get pick pocketed in the metro and lost a credit card and drivers license withsome cash. But I coped with that and had made sure my stuff was split up. Luckily I had my phone in my hand because that would have killed me to lose that.

I took this lovely shot of Cat Sparks and Robert Hood, pity Matthew photobombed them.

Cat Sparks and Robert Hood, photo bombed by Matthew Farrer

And we were across the road for a Lauduree shop. We had cake but then was told via Twitter that this shop makes the world’s best macrons so we bought a supply to take on the canal boat.

Cake from Lauderee

One mustn’t forget the two tiered carousel in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Two storey carousel

Or some shots from inside the Notre Dame, because no flash it was hard to take piccies.

Stained glass window, Notre Dame

Death taking Jesus, Notre Dame

And this post is a bit short really when you consider what an excellent time we had. I’d be going back to Paris one day and maybe explore further. The world is such a big place and I feel eager to know it all, to see it all, but that’s a bit like reading books isn’t it? There are too many books to read in one life time. I’ll have to make sure I come back again.

View across the Seine to the Notre Dame

Next travel post will be the canal boat trip.