Return to Paris

From Zagreb to Paris takes a the better part of a day. I take a night train from Zagreb to Munich, Germany and from Munich another train to Mannheim, Germany. Finally a train from Mannheim to Paris. Walking out from the metro stop at opera I feel like I am home. The feeling of familiarity during a time where everything feel new is nice welcome. I will stay in Paris a few nights until I can figure out my plan of action for Spain as well as fix a power supply problem I am having with my Dell laptop. Since about a day after arriving at Zagreb my power adapter has stopped charging my battery. For some reason the power supply no longer detected and will no longer charge. I can still run my computer off the power supply but my battery will only keep draining and draining. A less than 1 year old laptop that has had this many problems already has been quite disappointing.

Paris Food

I had several authentic French dining experiences in Paris and I have to say that they were all good. Most restaurants have a 3-4 course meals and the prices aren't too bad. The first area was by the Châtelet area where waiters stand on the outside of their restaurants in an attempt to get people to come in.

We selected a French restaurant and I was finally able to try some escargot (snails) and frog legs as appetizers, salmon as the main course, and dessert of course. The escargot came with a special snail holding thongs and a spear looking utensil to hook the meat out. It was kind of difficult to eat at first but once you get the first one the rest are easy. I've had frog legs before as a child in China, but I felt obligated to try them while in France.









Another cafe next to opera I was able to try some rabbit in mustard sauce. I had never had it and I saw rabbit in the supermarket in Nice. Ever since then I had been interested. This meat was probably the most tender meat I've had. It melted apart.

My Laptop Died

Hello friends. Sad news but my Dell XPS m1330 has died after in its first 7months of use. I am guessing that the graphics card has overheated since I get vertical lines during boot and during initial post, before bios even pops up. I still have a 1 year warranty so hopefully I can get this resolved in Europe. The problem is I dont have a permanent location and won't be speaking the native language. Wish me luck, but otherwise this site maybe be dead for a while too.

This is Wei signing off for now =(

Notre Dame: Revisited

Notre Dame is a place I've already seen and from my initial glance of it I was a little bit disappointed. This time around I went to check out the towers of Notre Dame with Mark, Tim, Jasen and Chad. This time I also had my 70-300mm zoom lens and was able to see some of the details of this structure.



All of the gargoyles are different and unique. The same can be said to all the statues that are craved into this building. I was truly impressed by the detail of this place. Although I am still shocked at how small the building is compared to what I had imagined in my mind from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame movie.





We took the tower tour which had over 400 steps going up one of the towers. From the top there is a pretty good view of the Eiffel Tower and Sacré-Cœur. The ledges were very tight with all the tourists and there are even passages that were difficult to squeeze through with a backpack. At the very top there is a bell tower where I guess where legend says the hunchback once lived.







After the view we descended and took a free tour of the insides of the church. It was pretty interesting that there are all these signs outside saying no flash photography, yet people were snapping pictures left and right with their flash on. The inside is massive and huge compared what I had expected from the view of the exterior. It is much more of a tourist area than a church now.





Here are some panoramic shots from the top of the two towers.

Versailles Daytrip

Besides the famous Treaty of Versailles, I really don't know much about it. Versailles is a 30-40minute RER ride from Paris. It costs about 2€, but in our case if you forget to buy a ticket prior to getting on the train, hope that a nice cute girl is running the gates on the other end and lets you and your group of 5 friends pass for free. Mark has just arrived to France and will be traveling with me for about 2 months. He was nice enough to bring me Canon 70-300mm zoom lens. So hopefully I will be able to have some good close up pictures from here on out. I was also able to meet up with the Canadians from Nice, minus Sacha who wussed out and went back to Canada.







There is a fee to get into the palace of Versailles, but the gardens are free. I was told ahead of time that the palace was not worth it. We did just that and went straight to the gardens. It was massive and the land was wide open. There was so much space and the gardens were beautifully designed. The only down side was that the fountains were not on when we went.









There is a long stretch of water towards end of the garden. This lake has row boats for rental and we were able to rent two boats with 3 people in each. The row boats were fun, but it showed just how bad our form was as we were zig zagging across the water. Its much more about technique than strength. We played bumper boats and even ran into a hissing swan. He was not happy with us and hissed at us repeatedly.

Back to Paris

The train strike had backed up all the schedule trains to Paris. Now all the trains out of Nice had been booked until the following Wednesday. Luckily EasyJet had released several cheap flights and a ticket from Nice to Pari was 29€. However EasyJet does nickel and dime you with baggage fees and charges for using a credit card. So when it was all said and done the flight back to Paris came out to 36€, which is still a pretty good price.



Paris almost feels like home now. I have a grocery store, clothing store, haircut place and sporting goods store. I know how to get around by foot and rollerblade. It is a much more familiar experience than before. And now I even have local friends here. I met up with Cristina and Carolina on Saturday and we all went to the Hideout. I hadn't really been to any clubs or bars in Pars, so it was a pretty exciting time. This club is actually underground and almost feels like you're walking down into catacombs.






I went out with Caroline and Cristina's friends one night for sushi. We all met up at the Châtelet metro and when everyone arrived to took another metro ride over to the sushi location. This sushi restaurant has a 20€ all you can eat sushi. I told by our waiter that all the Japanese sushi, and Korean food restaurants were actually all owned by Chinese people. We were able to converse back in forth in Mandarin.





On Friday, Giang and I decided to do Roller Pari again. This time we both survived without falling. However I was able to witness 4 people falling. I skated towards the front of the pack this time and that group likes to play games throughout the entire course. For example first everyone will slow down and then a series of yells and screams will mean to skate as fast as you can to the next corner. It was usually during these bursts of speed that people's skates collided and bodies when down on the pavement. It was very entertaining.

Goodbye Nice!

Sacha and I had met up with the Americans the day before to grab some lunch. Aja, Drew, Daniella and Naomi were waiting for us by the time we arrived at the fountain. We quickly selected a restaurant with outdoor seating. We were given English menus and Sacha, Drew and I all ordered the salmon. I pointed and said salmon, Sacha and Drew said he would have the same thing as me. When the food came out we ended up with Sirloin instead. Apparently our waitress had miss-heard me and so Sacha and Drew all ended up with sirloin as well. Ever since then I had been craving Salmon.



Ever since we had met the group of Americans staying in Nice we always met up with them at the fountain at 10:30pm. More like 11ish with our trek to the city center. That night we were unable to make it there in time. We ended up drinking in the town center and eventually ran into Drew. Hung out for a little while and then said our goodbyes as it was their last night in Nice.



My last day in Nice was yet another beach day. The Canadians who were suppose to have left that morning ended up staying another night because of the French train strike. We ended up hanging out for another day with Cristina and Caroline, both from Paris. They were also leaving mid day so we all decided to hit up the last outdoor restaurant that Sacha and I got the sirloin at. This time we made sure that the waitress understood salmon and it paid off.





After seeing Cristina and Carolina off, we all hit the beach and relaxed. The waves were pretty strong that day and we all ended up getting tossed around in the rocks. I ended up with a couple of scrapes on my shoulder but all in all it was still a great time.

Eze Village

The village of Eze is located between Nice and Monaco and is again a 1€ bus ride over. It is a steep climb through a small village to get to the top. At the very top of Eze is an exotic garden which has some of the best views of southern France's coastline. The gardens require a entrance fee, but the views of the coastline below makes it well worth it.

Cannes Film Festival

Dan, who was staying in the same room in our hostel, worked in the film industry and was in town for the Cannes Film Festival. He was kind enough to drive us over the Cannes in his rental car. Julie (Canadian from our hostel), Stephanie and I got to Nice around 4:30pm, which meant that I was late in meeting up with Delan, a guy I met back in London. I walked over in front of the Carlton to see if he would still be there, while Dan showed Steph and Julie where they would most likely be able to see Antonio Banderas. For the first time I wish I had my cell phone again. I never did meet up with Delan that day, sorry bro.



I walked back to where the girls were standing and we decided that we should grab a quick bite to eat so that we could get a good spot near the red carpet. All the hotels are near the beach are fully booked and they all display large movie premiere posters. The big premieres all started around 7ish. Standing in line for a sandwich, I noticed a girl that looked a lot like Naomi, one of the American girls I met the night before. It was one of those I think I know you moments and then I noticed she was staring over as well. It turned out to be Naomi and she had been separated from her tour group. So she tagged along with us.



After getting a sandwich we started to head back to the red carpet area. Julie and Steph led the way as they knew the good spot to stand. The sidewalk traffic went up and there were tons of people walking around. Naomi and I were chit catting and suddenly we lost Julie and Steph in the crowd. After waiting around for a while we were still unable to find them. I wasn't really interested in the Hollywood's invasion to southern France, so Naomi and I headed to the village part of Cannes up the the hill.



There is a church that is up at the top of the hill which overlooks the entire coastline where the film festival takes place. On the way down there is an iron mask. Dumas' The Man in the Iron Mask is said to be a mixture of fact and fiction. It is local folklore that this mask was his inspiration for that story. Near the bottom of hill by the bus stations there is a large mural that depicts all the the films that debuted at previous Cannes Film Festivals.



Naomi met back up with group later that night and I met some Korean girls that were waiting to see Jackie Chan. I joined in since there was nothing else to do. Jackie Chan did come out. He blew kisses and waved to the cheering crowds. It turned out that the Korean girls were staying in Nice at a different hostel, so we headed to the train station together. It turns out that they were all teachers in Korea and had just gotten done with college. So this trip was their vacation before becoming inducted to the real world.



The second time I returned to Cannes was with some Canadians I met at my hostel. Sacha, Tim, Jasen and Chad had been traveling Europe for a little over 2 months and now just happened to be in Nice. Dan drove us over again in the early afternoon. After departing ways with Dan, we ended up chilling at the beach most of the time. The beaches of Cannes are probably the nicest we've been to in Southern France. It is actually sandy and the waters are just as blue as Nice. On the last Cannes outing, Sacha and I were swimming and ran into a lot of jelly fish. They were purple and the largest one was about the size of a basketball. We were actually able to capture one of the smaller ones on a towel.





On our trek back to the train station we stopped by the red carpet to see if we could spot some stars. That night it happened to be a lot of them out. Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Clint Eastwood, Sharon Stone, and Tim Robbins. Brad and Angelina even waved at us. It started to rain so we headed back to the train station and grabbed a free trip back.