Glimpse of Europe - Paris

Chiang Mai Restaurant in Havenstraat.

Friday was the last day of training and all of us were busy trying to organize our consignments to be sent back. I had managed to pack 3-4 box full of things back to India. We all decided to meet up at C’s apartment one last time before saying a final Goodbye. Our trainer also met us there and after chatting for a while, we headed towards Surya, an Indian restaurant in Hilversum. Unfortunately the restaurant was packed and we had not done a booking earlier. From there we went to Chiang Mai, a Thai restaurant in Havenstraat. This place serves awesome food and we all enjoyed a lot. We also read the slam book details and it was nice to know what everyone thought of us etc etc. It was getting cold there and by 12.00 am we all reached back our apartment after giving each other a goodbye hug. It was an emotional moment for me.

Next day we woke up early and headed towards the open market to do some final shopping. We picked up freshly roasted nuts, chocolates and then visited Hooglievet, Yiee Maee, Albert Heijn and other places. Our final destination was a pet shop in Hilvertshof. This shop is one of my favorite and I always admire their collection of pets, especially hampstead and pet accessories – ranging from simple cages to lavish sofa and bed sets for dogs and cats, the Dutch really have a taste for everything.





Garden of our apartment. Church view in the background


After a quick lunch, we finished off with packing and finally checked out from the apartment and sat in the taxi to go to airport. We reached Schipol airpot by 4.30 and after checking in our luggage, we roamed around in the airport. It was nice to look around and after having a generous cup of Coffee in Starbucks, we went to the gate and waited there. We traveled by air france and the flight was not so full. We had the whole row for ourselves and the best part was there was a man who lay down on all the three seats completely….Such things happen in Europe too!! Just abt 10-15 minutes before landing we could a brightly lit Paris from far off. We could even see Eiffel sparkling from the flight. After landing safely at Charles-de-Gaulle, we found our way outside the airport.

We came to know there that the metro system was not functioning due to some strike going on there. From there we walked till a nearby bus stop. We saw a couple of buses moving there, but none of them stopped. We asked a Police man there abt reaching our hotel area. He told us that we could reach there by either a taxi or by taking a special bus service to arc de triumph and getting down at a nearby place. We had to drag our luggages downstairs and walk for some distance before reaching the bus stop place. After waiting for abt 10 minutes, an empty bus arrived there and we got into the bus. The ticket cost us 13 euros each. Our luggage was put into a cabin below the bus by a watchman kind of person. We reached Paris centre quite fast, as the bus took the outer ring road to reach arc de triumph. There was a lot of traffic on the way becos of the absence of metro, but still we managed to reach our stop by 20 minutes. We got down at a place that seemed near to our hotel from the map. We waited to get into a bus from there, nut couldn’t find one. Also we didn’t know which direction to proceed to reach out hotel. We then hopped into a cab and he took us to the right place…inspite of the fact that we couldn’t speak French and the cabbie couldn’t speak English. We just told him montmarte and hotel mercure. We checked in at the hotel and picked up a few brochures and made an itinerary for the next 2 days.




View of Eifel Tower.

Louvre museum view from one of the rooms.

Basilica da sacre front view.

The next day, we started from the hotel by 9.00 am and had our breakfast which was exemplary. We headed to see the mighty Eiffel tower. It was a chilly day and we could feel cold winds at the ground itself. The Eiffel tower was not visible beyond 2nd level. But we were still excited to go till the third level. As the elevator moved, it felt like a plane ride becos everything below looked so tiny. We took some pics at the 2nd level and headed to wards the third level. It was very wind up there and I just managed to stay at one place where there was minimum wind. My spouse got adventurous there and went one round, took some snaps there. Infact we even noticed ice formation on the grills. We couldn’t see anything below becos of poor visibility, but the experience was quite amazing.


Later we realized that the eifel was visible after 1pm when there was bleak sunshine. From there we headed towards a metro station to go to Louvre Museum. After waiting there for more than 20 minutes, we realized it would be wiser to take a bus. We walked for sometime there and finally hopped into a bus, kept track in the map and finally got down at a place, had a quick lunch and then started walking towards the louvre. We had listed down a lot of things to see and the best ones were the paintings of Leonardo da vinci - Mona Lisa. Until I read abt the painting in detail in Da Vinci Code, I thought the Mona Lisa was just another painting and always wondered what was so special in it that it became so famous when there were so many other beautiful paintings in th eLouvre…. Maybe I will have to write another blog to explain the details.. Then we saw Napolean apartments, the Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Roman architecture. There was Hammurabi code and lots more. In the end, we managed to cover just abt 1/3rd of the museum by sprinting from one floor to another with the help of maps.

Notradame at 5.30 pm
It was dark by about 4.30 pm and then we decided to take a walk along the river Seine. On the way we saw lot of artists busy with their work. We also saw a lot of people traveling with their tricycles or skates. Then we reached Notradame. After spending some time there, I bought a jacket to keep myself warm and then we walked into a street full of restaurants. There were atleast 4-5 streets in that area, that was full of restaurants of all kinds – Greek, Italian, French, Japanese Chinese and more. Finally we went to a Pakistani restaurant and had Veg Falafel. From there we managed to walk till a nearby metro and luckily got into a train till Place-de-clichy. We walked along the road to see Moulin Rouge and found that there was a huge line to get into the opera show. We smiled at each other after looking at the rate per show and coolly walked back to the hotel.




Next day, we started the day by trekking up a small hilly place to reach Basilica da Sacre. This church was behind our hotel and we walked there. We even climbed up till the topmost level top have a look at massive Paris. It was a wonderful view. Basilica is situated a higher level and hence we could view almost complete Paris from there. From there we walked to the metro and found that there was no movement of trains. We decided to walk till La-fayette.




La-Fayette is the best shopping complex I have ever seen. When I saw it for the first time, I was awestruck and my jaws dropped down again when I saw it for the second time. There are 7 levels of shopping for everything- kids, women, formal, sports, accessories, perfumes and lots more. There are 2 more such shopping complex in the same road owned by the same person. One is a 5 storied complex full of house hold accessories and furniture and the other is more for men’s wear, accessories and electronic goods. The most interesting was the window display themes that faced the people walking in that street. We decided to skip lunch and then take a cab to our hotel from there. It cost us abt 12 euros and soon after we reached the hotel, we had some bread , muffins and juice that we had carried from hilversum and then took a cab to reach airport. It cost us abt 40 euros to reach airport.




After checking in at the swiss air terminal, we soon passed the x-ray checkin. V had forgot to pack his deospray in the checkin baggage and the ppl at the terminal threw away the spray. We had reached there almost 2 hrs before the departure of the flight. Unfortunately there was nothing we could do there as there were no shops nor restaurants nearby. So we had to just sit there and wait for our boarding. We reached Zurich and hardly got time to look around there as we had to board into another flight and we were getting quite late. There were lot of Indians there in the airport and just before boarding a swiss air staff lady approached me and started putting a tag on my bag and told me that she will not let me take the bag as hand bag and she will checkin the same. After a small argument with her and telling her that there were laptops inside, she then let us inside the aircraft. Swiss people are tough and we just experienced it. We reached Rome (Fiumicino airport) by 10.00 pm and after taking our luggage we walked towards the train station. The next posting will cover our visit to Rome.