Paris....the City of....(well its not romance anyway)

By the heading we don't mean that we haven't been romantic (we can do that anywhere) it means that this place is beyond anything we have experienced before (and only reiterates my absolute dislike for the city)

Where do we start? The drive in would be good. We got a nice little Ford Focus from Calais and drove the 3 hours down to Paris. Mike was so good getting the hang of driving on the other side of the car and road. The rules on the highway are great here, the trucks all stay in the slow lane - in fact everyone stays in the slow lane and only goes in the fast lane when they overtake - unlike Australia where any lane goes. However there is no speed limits which was quite sketchy when we had little cars speeding past us at the speed of light through really thick fog, so we couldn't see them coming up or going past for that matter!!! We thought we had the driving and navigation thing cracked....well we were wrong!!

As soon as we got to Paris it became a living nightmare. It took us another hour and a half once hitting the city to find our hotel. (thats because the map of Paris streets looks more like a children's crayon drawing; no reason or logic behind the design of the city) The Paris drivers are absolute madmen hell bent on killing their garden variety tourist. How we made it out alive is beyond me. There are no road lines and what you would consider a one lane road would turn into 7 lanes just because the Paris drivers decided to take up the whole road. They don't drive one behind the other like normal people do, it is every man for himself and if you aren't aggressive enough then you get pushed into lanes you don't want to go into - just like what happened to us for the first 45 minutes before Mikey decided to get just as aggressive!!! I am so proud of him, even though I must have inherited a few extra grey hairs - i have never screamed so much or closed my eyes. Forget indicating here, just go where you feel like it - that seems to be the only road rule. And that is just the start of it - you have the scooters who zip in and out of the cars and up the wrong way just to get ahead (actually the cars do that too), we have dubbed them the kamikaze bunch because they definitely must have a death wish!! And we haven't even touched on the cyclists! Watching them on the road is like watching a child balancing on a high wall...just can't look at it - you just know they are going to get killed! We are shocked we have not seen one accident, but we haven't left the city yet! I am sure there are so many more adjectives and examples we could use to describe the driving here, but we just don't have time!!

On to our adventures. We got into the hotel finally at about 8pm last night (after leaving London at 7am - very LONG day!!) We got to the hotel to find that the lift was broken and we had to lug 50kgs worth of luggage up to the 3rd floor. Now when we say 3rd floor, the stairs aren't like normal stairs - straight - they are spiral staircases consisiting of about 25-30 steps per level. Actually that seems to be the norm here and in London. We haven't seen a straight set of stairs since we left the States - and that is no joke!!

This morning we braved the traffic to drive out to Palace of Versailles. We are so proud of ourselves for not only navigating successfully but actually surviving the trip!! The Palace was awesome.....it was like stepping into one of the many books that i read. We got audio guides which were such a huge help and in some parts it really felt that you were there back in the day...but the asian tour groups really took away that feeling now and again! Mum, you would have been in absolute heaven - before we went into the Palace we went to this little cafe overlooking the Palace for breakfast and as we are eating an old Wham song came on - a true you and me experience: eating, listening to Wham, drinking coffee while overlooking the Palace of Versailles - you should have been there!!

We left Versailles to head back towards Paris as we really wanted to go the Louvre. Again we made it successfully and while we were patting ourselves on the back for another job well done we discovered that the Louvre closes on Tuesdays!! BUGGER!! So a lazy afternoon is on the cards - playing cards of course.

Tomorrow we drive up to Amsterdam and we are just about to get travel directions on the net once we finish this blog. We are very much looking forwards to getting out of this very dirty and cold city!

Keep in touch, we miss you all

Luv Mikey & Karen

PS. We haven't been able to share any photos because the internet places we find don't allow us to do that - but never fear we are always on the look out to be able to do it. If not you are all in for a treat: a night long looking through the photos and videos - after Mikey has edited out all his rude bits!!!!