Day: October 15, 2019

So we started by being woken up at 7:00 AM. Then left at 8:00 ish for a 40 min drive to Angoulême, which is about 2 hours north of Bordeaux. We caught a train at Angoulême. A TGV to be exact. A train of great speed!!! Woooo Hooo!!! Max speed for a TGV is 517 kph!! Average is 300 kph! The train was 2 hours long to get to Montparnasse train station. After we got of the train we put our bags in a BagBNB ;P. We then walked to the Eiffel tower. then we got on a bus tour of paris that was shorter than normal because the road was blocked so they skipped a bit of it. We got off near the end of it to go up the Arc De Triomphe. It was really cool. There were 291 steps and we h– to go up and down them. When we got to the top of the Arc, a protest about climate change started. It really was like the police were doing a Yakety Sax. routine. Please watch. It is really funny. Beside us people were throwing a cloth poster off the edge of the Arc. Anyhoo, after the Arc we went to the Catacombs. WoOoOoO!?Ha! It really was a lot of walking then SHOOM!!!! BONES! 6 MILLION PEOPLES BONES!!!!!!!☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️WOW!!! Then we went to the hotel. Nothing special and literally a Budget hotel. I mean, the name was Ibis Budget. Buut the next day we started off going to the LOUVRE!!! WOOO HOOOO!!! I was pulling along to get to the Mona Lisa. I SAW IT and Mom got a picture with me in it. We saw the Winged Victory of Samathras(No head) Then I fell apart.?As in TALKED. A LOT. Then we looked at the Notre Dam on the way to a natural history museum :P:P:P (My choice) We then traveled to Munda lingwa, a language museum. After that we left Paris?. I will spare you the details. We had pizza and left.

This was an expensive & busy weekend. On the 12th and 13th of October we went to Paris. We got there on a TGV which went to Paris from Bordeaux and we caught it at Angoulême. For most of the journey it was traveling around 300kph. We left at 9:27AM and got there around noon. We got there and went to the Eiffel Tower. We walked around it once and waited for our bus tour. There were a LOT of people selling little model Eiffel towers, all the exact same. They came in, large, gold ,silver, blue, and rose gold, Medium, gold ,silver, blue, and rose gold, Small, gold ,silver, blue, and rose gold.

The bus tour was a disappointment, as it was stop and start traffic, it cut off a lot of our route, due to closed roads, the seats were cheap plastic, and the earbuds malfunctioned as often as not, When they did work, the info was rare and far between. We got off at the Arc de Triomphe and climbed the 291 steps (I counted) up to the top, and stared out across the city for a while, and looked down the Champs-élysées. As we were about to go down we saw a bunch of bike protesters and heard police sirens. A bunch of riot police then jumped out of their vans, (after going up the wrong side of the street and doing a U-turn into traffic then stopping on the Champs-élysées) and warded off the cyclists. Then the cyclists snuck up through smaller streets and came out farther up. Then a drumming band started up, also part of the protest. It was very entertaining, and we were watching it all when more police arrived and blocked traffic even more. A couple guys then came up next to us and threw a massive banner up and over the wall of the Arc de Triomphe, which promptly came back up at them. They tried again and again and it hung there. Then they started yelling “Extinction rebellion” and then some more cyclists had snuck up to the arc, and were yelling back. The police were then sick of it and came and evacuated the Arc, which we had just vacated. It was all very exciting.

We then walked to the nearest metro station and went to the area of the Catacombs. We waited a while and got some really good bread, and then got in line (the priority line is WORTH it. Otherwise we would have been in an hour long line, as it was we were first in line and got in the line only a quarter to 6, the time of our tour being 6). We got in and went down. First there were a few info boards, telling us that we were below the waterways and the metro and even the sewers. We walked for about half a kilometer I would say, through old quarry tunnels and then got the the entrance to the bony Catacombs. The sign above the entrance said,”STOP THIS IS THE KINGDOM OF DEATH”, it was supposed to deter any miners that stumbled upon the entrance. There was supposed to be 6 million skeletons here. They lined a tunnel about 1 kilometre long to my reckoning, and up to 20 meters deep and stretches up to 30 meters back. That is a LOT of bones. It was cool but not really cool and the hour down there was about as long as I would have wanted. Dinner was next and we found a really good and cheap Thai restaurant. Then we headed to the hotel and I found it nice and luxurious, but it was only 1 out of 5 stars for luxuriousness. (I wonder what 5/5 stars would be like?) Breakfast was nice, because Mom would never buy chocolate cereal, or practically infinite croissants. I also liked the coffee (and hot chocolate) machine.

Now day 2. Up at the crack of dawn, and down into Paris and into the Louvre at 9:30. We saw loads of Italian paintings including the Mona Lisa, and many others. Other pieces of note are The The Winged Victory of Samothrace, and The Venus de Milo.

Then we walked by Notre Dame, and talked about the burning. Then we went to a natural history museum. That was nice, but rather small and sparse then we went to a museum of languages and that was boring to me, (languages are not my thing). And that was it. We got on a metro, had pizza near the train station, and went on another TGV at 7:30.