I went to France with 2 bags and came back with 1.
Bonjour! I am home! Back to the comfort of my little own room. What a trip full of unexpected twists and surprises.
It's hard to put everything down into words. Let's start with the bad. Probably the worst thing I would have imagined happening on a holiday... getting your entire bag stolen. In Nice. It's such a jinxed place I will never go back there again i swear. not only did i lose my bag, it also cost us a bomb to get to paris from nice, leaving us poor to the bone in Paris! After losing my wallet last term, I have been super paranoid about my valuables, alas, fate has it that i was to lose not just my wallet but the whole bag as well. Including passport, camera and phone. The 3 most important things. I was careless for 20sec. I left my bag on the floor at the table to get some mayonnaise and that was all it took. I remember that desperate rush to the door to give chase, running down the dark alleys, not knowing where to turn to. And I knew it was gone. The Puma bag with our picture is dumped somewhere in the back alleys of Nice. The bag I so eagerly explain to everyone that it's the picture of us, the girl power of 64.
But it would have been silly to harp on it, so we just went on with the trip. Paris is indeed the city of Romance. Every turn, there were beautiful buildings, such fine architecture. The Eiffel is GORGEOUS and the very first night we were in Paris, it burst into a million sparkly stars, lighting up the entire Eiffel. And then of course we strolled along the famous Champs Elysees which we thought didn't live up to the hype, we much preferred Galleries Lafayette which is something like the Covent Garden of Paris. You know... Oxford street = champs kinda thing. THere were these suspicious Chinese touts along the Champs which kinda spoiled the experience abit... conmen! I really like the Arc de Triomphe too, this huge arc that Napoleon built to celebrate the declaration of France as a republic (hope i didn't get the facts wrong). The Tuleries Garden is really nice too, directly infront of the Louvre. I remembered reading about how Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu drove along the Tulieres Garden after they escaped the Louvre. Cool. But alas, fate was playing us out again because we couldn't enter the Louvre. We read that it was open till late on Mondays, so we decided to go in the evening, only to discover to our horror that it closes at 5.45pm. We wanted to go on Tuesday, our last day, only to discover to a bigger horror that the Louvre is closed every Tuesday. All the way in Paris and we didn't even get to go in! What to do... ?
Paris is just really different from Marseille and Nice. Our common favourite is this small town near Marseille called Aix-en-Provence, a pretty chill-out town where we sat at Uncle Sam's and ate delicious salmon Paninis and sugar crepes, just watching the world go by. There was a wonderful fine arts museum there as well. It's a charismatic town full of well-dressed French, busking in the sun, blatantly people-watching (hey, we should do that too... you know what the French do, they sit with their chairs facing the outside, how discrete can you get). It was also where i spotted the David Beckham look alike. Handsome man! We saw the student strike at Aix too, pretty cool, no violence or anything, just peaceful strike with a police car following behind, i think they were enjoying it, wearing ghost faces and holding placards that read "The French Revolution".
And anw... it's such a big world out there you wouldnt believe who i met in Paris! Teo Eng Siang, we just looked at each other for a second and i wasnt sure if it was him, and Andre wasnt with us so when he finally came along, we went on our quest of Teo Eng Siang, didn't take too long to find him and it was just kinda strange that the world is indeed this small. And Hf met her RJ friend in Paris too, shopping. Maybe it's the shopping maniac in all of us. All roads lead to shopping?
It was a wonderful trip, except the stuff that happened in Nice. The ride from Nice to Paris was surprisingly scenic, we all got along, laughed alot, ate alot of baguettes, played alot of Spades, walked till we dropped, and spent till we were broke. Thank goodness Jesse could speak French, otherwise, we're pretty much doomed cos the French just don't like/don't know how to speak English. Yeah, and we're all so impressed by his fluency that we wanna take up a third language too? The few phrases that i can remember are... palais vous anglias (Do you speak English?), Bonjour, Bonsour, Merci, Au Revoir. er... pathetic lah.
This morning, when I reached back hall, I had a wonderful surprise that left me wet-faced. A big thank you to Kelvin. And Mummy, I love you!
Now, it's time to get studying, ah, the inertia. The exams are one and a half months away, I can't wait for it to be over!
It's hard to put everything down into words. Let's start with the bad. Probably the worst thing I would have imagined happening on a holiday... getting your entire bag stolen. In Nice. It's such a jinxed place I will never go back there again i swear. not only did i lose my bag, it also cost us a bomb to get to paris from nice, leaving us poor to the bone in Paris! After losing my wallet last term, I have been super paranoid about my valuables, alas, fate has it that i was to lose not just my wallet but the whole bag as well. Including passport, camera and phone. The 3 most important things. I was careless for 20sec. I left my bag on the floor at the table to get some mayonnaise and that was all it took. I remember that desperate rush to the door to give chase, running down the dark alleys, not knowing where to turn to. And I knew it was gone. The Puma bag with our picture is dumped somewhere in the back alleys of Nice. The bag I so eagerly explain to everyone that it's the picture of us, the girl power of 64.
But it would have been silly to harp on it, so we just went on with the trip. Paris is indeed the city of Romance. Every turn, there were beautiful buildings, such fine architecture. The Eiffel is GORGEOUS and the very first night we were in Paris, it burst into a million sparkly stars, lighting up the entire Eiffel. And then of course we strolled along the famous Champs Elysees which we thought didn't live up to the hype, we much preferred Galleries Lafayette which is something like the Covent Garden of Paris. You know... Oxford street = champs kinda thing. THere were these suspicious Chinese touts along the Champs which kinda spoiled the experience abit... conmen! I really like the Arc de Triomphe too, this huge arc that Napoleon built to celebrate the declaration of France as a republic (hope i didn't get the facts wrong). The Tuleries Garden is really nice too, directly infront of the Louvre. I remembered reading about how Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu drove along the Tulieres Garden after they escaped the Louvre. Cool. But alas, fate was playing us out again because we couldn't enter the Louvre. We read that it was open till late on Mondays, so we decided to go in the evening, only to discover to our horror that it closes at 5.45pm. We wanted to go on Tuesday, our last day, only to discover to a bigger horror that the Louvre is closed every Tuesday. All the way in Paris and we didn't even get to go in! What to do... ?
Paris is just really different from Marseille and Nice. Our common favourite is this small town near Marseille called Aix-en-Provence, a pretty chill-out town where we sat at Uncle Sam's and ate delicious salmon Paninis and sugar crepes, just watching the world go by. There was a wonderful fine arts museum there as well. It's a charismatic town full of well-dressed French, busking in the sun, blatantly people-watching (hey, we should do that too... you know what the French do, they sit with their chairs facing the outside, how discrete can you get). It was also where i spotted the David Beckham look alike. Handsome man! We saw the student strike at Aix too, pretty cool, no violence or anything, just peaceful strike with a police car following behind, i think they were enjoying it, wearing ghost faces and holding placards that read "The French Revolution".
And anw... it's such a big world out there you wouldnt believe who i met in Paris! Teo Eng Siang, we just looked at each other for a second and i wasnt sure if it was him, and Andre wasnt with us so when he finally came along, we went on our quest of Teo Eng Siang, didn't take too long to find him and it was just kinda strange that the world is indeed this small. And Hf met her RJ friend in Paris too, shopping. Maybe it's the shopping maniac in all of us. All roads lead to shopping?
It was a wonderful trip, except the stuff that happened in Nice. The ride from Nice to Paris was surprisingly scenic, we all got along, laughed alot, ate alot of baguettes, played alot of Spades, walked till we dropped, and spent till we were broke. Thank goodness Jesse could speak French, otherwise, we're pretty much doomed cos the French just don't like/don't know how to speak English. Yeah, and we're all so impressed by his fluency that we wanna take up a third language too? The few phrases that i can remember are... palais vous anglias (Do you speak English?), Bonjour, Bonsour, Merci, Au Revoir. er... pathetic lah.
This morning, when I reached back hall, I had a wonderful surprise that left me wet-faced. A big thank you to Kelvin. And Mummy, I love you!
Now, it's time to get studying, ah, the inertia. The exams are one and a half months away, I can't wait for it to be over!
posted by Jillian at
11:26 PM
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