Five days was not enough time to really explore Paris, but Owen and I managed to fit in most of the main sights and had a great time!
Our first day involved an excessive amount of walking. Distance is quite deceptive in Paris and everything is often a lot further away than it seems! We started our sight seeing with a walking tour which took in most of the main sights. It was very interesting to hear some of the stories connected to different parts of the city, and our tour guide was from New Zealand so I spent a while speaking to her in between the sights.
At the end of the tour Owen and I decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower which we could see in the near distance. Over an hour later we were still walking, and by the time we got there it was dark. This worked out really well as we were able to see the light show up close and then spent a while taking photos before trekking back across the city to catch the metro back to our hotel.
We spent the next day fighting through crowds at the Louvre, exploring Notre Dame and later went to Montmartre for a panoramic view of Paris at night.
The sun was shining the next day so we took advantage of the good weather to go up the Eiffel Tower and take a lot of photos. After some trouble with trains in the afternoon (which involved travelling in the wrong direction, expired tickets and jumping turnstiles) we finally made it to Versailles. After a stroll round the gardens we decided to take the tour of the palace, which was a bit like being in a highly decorative mosh pit. There were so many people! It was still worth seeing though, and I'm already making plans to come back one day in the spring.
On the last day we spent a few hours in the depths of the city at the Catacombs. In the late eighteenth century the bones from the graveyards of Paris were moved into an old quarry which is now open to the public. There are apparently the remains of over six million people down there, and most of the passageways are lined with bones. It was a very interesting and slightly disturbing place to visit!
If you'd like to see more photos, check out my
flickr page.
