Thursday, June 19, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Paris... the city.
June 17, Tuesday.
Took our time waking up, fully in vacation mode, don’t usually go to bed till midnight or so, waking up about 10am or so… super lazy!
Went towards the Eiffel tower, walked from hotel. About 2 miles. Got there about 1 realized line was really long and decided against heading up to its observatory right then.
Instead we boarded an double decker open bus tour which allowed us to get on and off and different locations through out the city, like we did in London, true tourist style.
After leaving the Eiffel tower the tour bus took through the city. We were able to see Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Louvre, Arc d’ Triomphe, the Musee d’Orsay, the National Opera, the Galeries Lfayette, Champs Elysees, Grand Palais, Trocadero and many other places along the way.
Traffic in Paris is 100% crazy, people make their own lanes, do whatever they want, and as long as they don’t wreck it’s all good. We have some pictures of “intersections” :p
We got off at Champs Elysees which is a huge shopping area and where the Arch is. We walked through the stores that interested us, Adidas, Nike, and similar stores, just to see what the goods were like in relation to what they would be at similar locations in the states, like the Magnificent Mile in Chicago. All the sports stores were super Football (aka Soccer) oriented, had some neat stuff, but were well out of the range we were willing to pay for for things that weren’t necessary.
More cool then the shopping was all the car dealerships that were dispersed among the clothes stores (what were you expecting me to say ;) ? ) . . . from the bus I had season 2 dealerships that peaked my interest, one was the Peugeot store/display and the Renault store (which had the F1 car in the window!!!!!!!!!!!). So first we hit the Peugeot store, it was a tribute to the Le Mans race which Peugeot had wanted to win (by beating Audi), and they even went as far as saying that in the displays within the store. They had a model of the Le Mans car among other models, and then they had a bunch of shirts and other memorabilia for sale, it was so freaking cool to see their location in such a busy part of the city where everyone could appreciate it. We figure that there actually is quite a bit of enthusiasm for the racing here compared to in the states, and it was cool to see if being appreciated by companies. Rent can’t be cheap in that location yet they still made it possible for fans to be appreciated. After the Peugeot store (where we bought a few things) we had our Peugeot shopping bag, my Scion backpack, and Aaron had on an Audi Shirt… lol love cars much?
We had lunch at a local fast food joint called Quick, where they had Fred and Omar burgers and Chicken dippers. Aaron got an Omar Burger and I had chicken dippers to store up energy for heading to the Renault store!!!
At the Renault store I got to check out (as close as I’ve even been) a Renault F1 car, as most of you that care know I rather like the Renault team, or at least Fernando Alonso, who drivers for their team (other then when he was ill fatedly a teammate of Lewis Hamilton at Vodophone). I was in Renault racing heaven in the display store, they even had a spot in the back where you could stick your head in a cut out between Alonso and Piquet, and take your picture, OF COURSE I did this! I almost caved and bought a Renault F1 shirt, but now I have my aim on a Renault Bag since I carry a bag almost every day (and my current daily bag will need replaced after this trip) but I don’t wear the same shirt every day :p
After leaving Renault Heaven we kind of wound up our trip, got back on the bus towards the Eiffel tower. This time we got inline, and went up the tower. The view from the first stop was probably better then when you went all the way to the top level of the tower only because things were still recognizable in the city and such, and there were less people (or more place for more people) on the middle level where as on the top level it was so crowded and you were fighting for spots, it just made it annoying.
It took us more time to get up and down the tower then we actually spent in/on it, but now we can say we’ve seen it and mark it off the proverbial list of things to see in life.
During the day we probably heard 40 different languages spoken, and I’m amazed at how diverse the city is. I can see how locals are weary/annoyed by tourists. :p
We headed back to the hotel and ended up taking some wrong routes making the trip seem double the time then it should have been, by the time we made it back we were grumpy and tired and super hungry. We’d walked about 20,000 steps.
Lucky for us there was an Italian Eatery right next to our hotel which we had passed in the previous day that looked great, we ended up going there after unloading our bags. Their special for the evening was home made lasagna, we enjoyed salad, and some of the best lasagna we had had in quite a long time, and shared dessert which was chocolate cake! Yum! We might just end up back there again during our stay; the service was also great, just very friendly, and speedy.
After the great meal we basically came home and passed out: p I had started to type this entry on June 17th but now it’s June 18th and I have just finished it after our second day of touring Paris.
Today (June 18th) we got back on the bus (it was a two day pass), the walk to the Eiffel Tower (which was where the bus tour started) wasn’t as long as it had been the night before because we realized where we veered off the path. We were still more then happy to get to the bus and sit! We took the bus to the Louvre, got off, checked out the outside area of the Louvre, the glass “pyramids” etc. We headed into the museum to find it was amazingly crowded and would not have been an enjoyable visit just for the sake of seeing the Mona Lisa for 30 seconds. We also were feeling drained from the day before. So instead of exploring the museum we cut across the Seine to the Orsay. Which is also a museum of art, and which was less touristy then the Louvre, we got our passes and amazingly enough if you are between 18-30 years of age you get a discounted admission, SWEET! So we paid our 11 Euros total (just to get into the Louvre was 9 a piece) and went on our way. We saw quite a bit of cool stuff, mainly the Monet pieces were the most notable of the artists we saw. After spending a few hours in the museum we got back on the bus, headed back to the Hotel area for lunch/dinner. We stopped at a pizza place for the meal. Got some pretty decent pizza, though the service left much to be desired. After happily being fed we were able to tackle the last two miles of our journey to the hotel without any problem. On the way back we got some iced tea, and laundry detergent, oh yes, glamorous laundry day in Paris is scheduled for tomorrow! We think we can swing it to do laundry tomorrow and then be good till we get back to London on June 29thish. Thank god, since I dislike doing laundry at home, let alone in Europe 5000 miles or so from home.
Now it’s about 8pm, Aaron has awoke from his nap (I’ve worn him out with all this touristy business) and I think we’re going to hit the hotel pool and relax tonight.
Took our time waking up, fully in vacation mode, don’t usually go to bed till midnight or so, waking up about 10am or so… super lazy!
Went towards the Eiffel tower, walked from hotel. About 2 miles. Got there about 1 realized line was really long and decided against heading up to its observatory right then.
Instead we boarded an double decker open bus tour which allowed us to get on and off and different locations through out the city, like we did in London, true tourist style.
After leaving the Eiffel tower the tour bus took through the city. We were able to see Cathedral of Notre Dame, the Louvre, Arc d’ Triomphe, the Musee d’Orsay, the National Opera, the Galeries Lfayette, Champs Elysees, Grand Palais, Trocadero and many other places along the way.
Traffic in Paris is 100% crazy, people make their own lanes, do whatever they want, and as long as they don’t wreck it’s all good. We have some pictures of “intersections” :p
We got off at Champs Elysees which is a huge shopping area and where the Arch is. We walked through the stores that interested us, Adidas, Nike, and similar stores, just to see what the goods were like in relation to what they would be at similar locations in the states, like the Magnificent Mile in Chicago. All the sports stores were super Football (aka Soccer) oriented, had some neat stuff, but were well out of the range we were willing to pay for for things that weren’t necessary.
More cool then the shopping was all the car dealerships that were dispersed among the clothes stores (what were you expecting me to say ;) ? ) . . . from the bus I had season 2 dealerships that peaked my interest, one was the Peugeot store/display and the Renault store (which had the F1 car in the window!!!!!!!!!!!). So first we hit the Peugeot store, it was a tribute to the Le Mans race which Peugeot had wanted to win (by beating Audi), and they even went as far as saying that in the displays within the store. They had a model of the Le Mans car among other models, and then they had a bunch of shirts and other memorabilia for sale, it was so freaking cool to see their location in such a busy part of the city where everyone could appreciate it. We figure that there actually is quite a bit of enthusiasm for the racing here compared to in the states, and it was cool to see if being appreciated by companies. Rent can’t be cheap in that location yet they still made it possible for fans to be appreciated. After the Peugeot store (where we bought a few things) we had our Peugeot shopping bag, my Scion backpack, and Aaron had on an Audi Shirt… lol love cars much?
We had lunch at a local fast food joint called Quick, where they had Fred and Omar burgers and Chicken dippers. Aaron got an Omar Burger and I had chicken dippers to store up energy for heading to the Renault store!!!
At the Renault store I got to check out (as close as I’ve even been) a Renault F1 car, as most of you that care know I rather like the Renault team, or at least Fernando Alonso, who drivers for their team (other then when he was ill fatedly a teammate of Lewis Hamilton at Vodophone). I was in Renault racing heaven in the display store, they even had a spot in the back where you could stick your head in a cut out between Alonso and Piquet, and take your picture, OF COURSE I did this! I almost caved and bought a Renault F1 shirt, but now I have my aim on a Renault Bag since I carry a bag almost every day (and my current daily bag will need replaced after this trip) but I don’t wear the same shirt every day :p
After leaving Renault Heaven we kind of wound up our trip, got back on the bus towards the Eiffel tower. This time we got inline, and went up the tower. The view from the first stop was probably better then when you went all the way to the top level of the tower only because things were still recognizable in the city and such, and there were less people (or more place for more people) on the middle level where as on the top level it was so crowded and you were fighting for spots, it just made it annoying.
It took us more time to get up and down the tower then we actually spent in/on it, but now we can say we’ve seen it and mark it off the proverbial list of things to see in life.
During the day we probably heard 40 different languages spoken, and I’m amazed at how diverse the city is. I can see how locals are weary/annoyed by tourists. :p
We headed back to the hotel and ended up taking some wrong routes making the trip seem double the time then it should have been, by the time we made it back we were grumpy and tired and super hungry. We’d walked about 20,000 steps.
Lucky for us there was an Italian Eatery right next to our hotel which we had passed in the previous day that looked great, we ended up going there after unloading our bags. Their special for the evening was home made lasagna, we enjoyed salad, and some of the best lasagna we had had in quite a long time, and shared dessert which was chocolate cake! Yum! We might just end up back there again during our stay; the service was also great, just very friendly, and speedy.
After the great meal we basically came home and passed out: p I had started to type this entry on June 17th but now it’s June 18th and I have just finished it after our second day of touring Paris.
Today (June 18th) we got back on the bus (it was a two day pass), the walk to the Eiffel Tower (which was where the bus tour started) wasn’t as long as it had been the night before because we realized where we veered off the path. We were still more then happy to get to the bus and sit! We took the bus to the Louvre, got off, checked out the outside area of the Louvre, the glass “pyramids” etc. We headed into the museum to find it was amazingly crowded and would not have been an enjoyable visit just for the sake of seeing the Mona Lisa for 30 seconds. We also were feeling drained from the day before. So instead of exploring the museum we cut across the Seine to the Orsay. Which is also a museum of art, and which was less touristy then the Louvre, we got our passes and amazingly enough if you are between 18-30 years of age you get a discounted admission, SWEET! So we paid our 11 Euros total (just to get into the Louvre was 9 a piece) and went on our way. We saw quite a bit of cool stuff, mainly the Monet pieces were the most notable of the artists we saw. After spending a few hours in the museum we got back on the bus, headed back to the Hotel area for lunch/dinner. We stopped at a pizza place for the meal. Got some pretty decent pizza, though the service left much to be desired. After happily being fed we were able to tackle the last two miles of our journey to the hotel without any problem. On the way back we got some iced tea, and laundry detergent, oh yes, glamorous laundry day in Paris is scheduled for tomorrow! We think we can swing it to do laundry tomorrow and then be good till we get back to London on June 29thish. Thank god, since I dislike doing laundry at home, let alone in Europe 5000 miles or so from home.
Now it’s about 8pm, Aaron has awoke from his nap (I’ve worn him out with all this touristy business) and I think we’re going to hit the hotel pool and relax tonight.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Made it to Paris....
Monday June 16th (in case you didn't know the day/date, we've kind of lost track!) and we're in Paris; which means we survived our week/weekend in the "French Countryside" and Le Mans and didn’t get superbly lost on the way back to Paris! Watching the 24 was quite thrilling, we got back to the track on Sunday and it was kind of a disaster, all the campers had pretty much wreaked havoc on the place, trash and debris everywhere.. Just messy. I guess you can’t expect a lot more from a quarter of a million people chugging down beer as quickly as the lines will allow them to.
We got to watch the finish of the race, which ended quite closely if you figure the difference between 1st and second places in many of the classes was only 4 minutes (four minutes out of 24 hours really isn’t bad)! Audi won LMP1 (who-hooo!), Aston Martin won GT1 (not Corvette, even though this was the race they had been running the entire ALMS season for : sucky for them), I didn’t have a favorite for LMP2, but YAY!!! GT2 was won by Risi Compitizione Ferrari (I’ve seen these guys run at Mid Ohio and always been a fan!!!).
After the race as soon as the last car was around the track they opened a few of the gates to track, and madness occurred, I felt like I was doing the running of the bulls to get to the Podium to watch the trophy presentations. We got pretty close and it was thrilling to watch all the drivers/teams who had driven for 24 hours straight celebrate their victory, and you could just see their exhaustion but total excitement. When they played the American anthem Aaron and I were pretty hyped, as well as many other folks, so maybe more Americans around then we realized. Even after driving that long the drivers still had spirit and were crowd pleasers. Ron Fellows came out to the podium carrying HIS camera, taking pictures of the crowd taking pictures of him… it was quite amusing, and then he proceeded to just rile up the crowd who loved every second of it!
After the race we did some “shopping” and scored some cool apparel and souvenirs!
Then we headed back to the bed and breakfast in hopes of catching an early meal and returning at a decent time before our journey back to Paris… well that didn’t happen. EVERY restaurant was closed (assuming cuz it was Sunday), and so we thought about just going back to the hotel and eating our peanut butter and bread staples we had bought at the Super U (grocery). We got back, packed, and kind of vegged, we figured at that point to go down and check with our host to see if they could order us a pizza, we should have known better since they sell dinner (upon reservation, which we hadn’t made) and were told, “too late.” Even though we had seen the lil pizza deliver guys whizzing around on scooters in the area, we just didn’t know where they whizzed from!
So in hopes of randomly getting lucky and finding something we headed back into the main town, this time the same places that had been closed and miraculously open. Looking at the hours it seemed that opened later on Sunday (which confused the crap out of us, but we were super happy anyway). We got pizzas, mine plain cheese, and Aaron with ham (they REALLY love their ham in this area of France, not sure if that is how it is everywhere). No luck on translating pepperoni. We happily enjoyed our meals and headed back to the bed and breakfast. Charged up cameras, tried to find a wireless signal (no luck), and called it a night.
Today we navigated our way back to Paris, the road signs were great, really easy to understand, and just everything well marked, what could have been a nightmare of a drive was actually a super easy one! Thankfully. I guess when you’re charging 18.5 Euros toll on about 150Km’s you can afford to make everything great and nice!
We returned our rental car and spent about 45 minutes in line at the train counter to get our selves figured out for the next part of our trip. Our train reservations for the French Grand Prix to the Nevers, France (google it) area have been made as well as our train from there back to Paris, to Nurenburg, uh.. yeah not where we want to go! Oops, so we’re going to have to sort that part out later. The lady at the station was great, super helpful and explained everything, in English! She even worked 10 minutes past her shift to help us out. But feeling accomplished we took a cab (yeah, lugging our stuff on the metro just didn’t seem like a “fun” idea. We got to the taxi stand only to find the line was about ½ and hour on that, but we had committed to it at that point and just waited it out. We got to ride in a “Picasso” Van and had a really crazy taxi ride to our hotel (I think all taxis are insane, not matter what country you’re in!). Lucky for us the hotel we pricelined was as pimptastic as I had expected, just getting into the lobby I was like YAY! Really nice lobby, and landscaping, it’s in the business district of Paris, maybe 10 blocks or so to the Eiffel Tower. We check in, get our room key, ride the elevator a little longer then we needed to because forgot to scan our card in the elevator to let it know we wanted the 5th floor. Once we got to our room it was great to put down the bags and just sit! The room is really cool, and sleek. So sleek, that we didn’t know how to turn on any of the lights!
I located a house keeper who showed me that there is a slot when you walk in the door where you insert your room card and it is how the lights and such are activated in the room… wow. High tech! We went from the likes of Canfield, or East Sparta in Ohio straight to New York City or Chicago in terms of the differences in our bed and breakfast in Le Mans to the hotel in Paris! You can see the tip of the Eiffel tower from the hotel, and if you got up to the pool level you can see the whole thing!
Since today was a travel day we haven’t done too much, needed time to unwind. We ate lunch at Mc Donald’s about 2:30 cuz we were dying of hunger and it was the only thing we could see from our hotel that was close. Yes, it’s lame, but god it is nice to know what you’re ordering and what it will taste like!
After “lunch” we took a nap in the middle of the afternoon. Woke up refreshed and ready to explore. We walked a few blocks, found some local restaurants, and settled for a place that served pasta! We decided to carbo load for energy and had spaghetti. Quite enjoyable. We went to a BP quickie mart to get some beverages, Powerade & Orange Juice for the hotel, and now we’re just relaxing and unwinding.
Tomorrow will be a touring day and we’ll surly take lots of pix.
Speaking of pix, seems like we won’t be sharing them as soon as we thought due to lack of free internet (right now I’m typing this is Word and will copy paste to the blog). We bought a few hours of internet access at the hotel and are trying to use it sparingly.
I still haven’t caught the blog up on the few days in Le Mans but overall, I think the pictures will speak for themselves when we are able to share them, and this is already really long, so I don’t want to bore everyone to death!
We got to watch the finish of the race, which ended quite closely if you figure the difference between 1st and second places in many of the classes was only 4 minutes (four minutes out of 24 hours really isn’t bad)! Audi won LMP1 (who-hooo!), Aston Martin won GT1 (not Corvette, even though this was the race they had been running the entire ALMS season for : sucky for them), I didn’t have a favorite for LMP2, but YAY!!! GT2 was won by Risi Compitizione Ferrari (I’ve seen these guys run at Mid Ohio and always been a fan!!!).
After the race as soon as the last car was around the track they opened a few of the gates to track, and madness occurred, I felt like I was doing the running of the bulls to get to the Podium to watch the trophy presentations. We got pretty close and it was thrilling to watch all the drivers/teams who had driven for 24 hours straight celebrate their victory, and you could just see their exhaustion but total excitement. When they played the American anthem Aaron and I were pretty hyped, as well as many other folks, so maybe more Americans around then we realized. Even after driving that long the drivers still had spirit and were crowd pleasers. Ron Fellows came out to the podium carrying HIS camera, taking pictures of the crowd taking pictures of him… it was quite amusing, and then he proceeded to just rile up the crowd who loved every second of it!
After the race we did some “shopping” and scored some cool apparel and souvenirs!
Then we headed back to the bed and breakfast in hopes of catching an early meal and returning at a decent time before our journey back to Paris… well that didn’t happen. EVERY restaurant was closed (assuming cuz it was Sunday), and so we thought about just going back to the hotel and eating our peanut butter and bread staples we had bought at the Super U (grocery). We got back, packed, and kind of vegged, we figured at that point to go down and check with our host to see if they could order us a pizza, we should have known better since they sell dinner (upon reservation, which we hadn’t made) and were told, “too late.” Even though we had seen the lil pizza deliver guys whizzing around on scooters in the area, we just didn’t know where they whizzed from!
So in hopes of randomly getting lucky and finding something we headed back into the main town, this time the same places that had been closed and miraculously open. Looking at the hours it seemed that opened later on Sunday (which confused the crap out of us, but we were super happy anyway). We got pizzas, mine plain cheese, and Aaron with ham (they REALLY love their ham in this area of France, not sure if that is how it is everywhere). No luck on translating pepperoni. We happily enjoyed our meals and headed back to the bed and breakfast. Charged up cameras, tried to find a wireless signal (no luck), and called it a night.
Today we navigated our way back to Paris, the road signs were great, really easy to understand, and just everything well marked, what could have been a nightmare of a drive was actually a super easy one! Thankfully. I guess when you’re charging 18.5 Euros toll on about 150Km’s you can afford to make everything great and nice!
We returned our rental car and spent about 45 minutes in line at the train counter to get our selves figured out for the next part of our trip. Our train reservations for the French Grand Prix to the Nevers, France (google it) area have been made as well as our train from there back to Paris, to Nurenburg, uh.. yeah not where we want to go! Oops, so we’re going to have to sort that part out later. The lady at the station was great, super helpful and explained everything, in English! She even worked 10 minutes past her shift to help us out. But feeling accomplished we took a cab (yeah, lugging our stuff on the metro just didn’t seem like a “fun” idea. We got to the taxi stand only to find the line was about ½ and hour on that, but we had committed to it at that point and just waited it out. We got to ride in a “Picasso” Van and had a really crazy taxi ride to our hotel (I think all taxis are insane, not matter what country you’re in!). Lucky for us the hotel we pricelined was as pimptastic as I had expected, just getting into the lobby I was like YAY! Really nice lobby, and landscaping, it’s in the business district of Paris, maybe 10 blocks or so to the Eiffel Tower. We check in, get our room key, ride the elevator a little longer then we needed to because forgot to scan our card in the elevator to let it know we wanted the 5th floor. Once we got to our room it was great to put down the bags and just sit! The room is really cool, and sleek. So sleek, that we didn’t know how to turn on any of the lights!
I located a house keeper who showed me that there is a slot when you walk in the door where you insert your room card and it is how the lights and such are activated in the room… wow. High tech! We went from the likes of Canfield, or East Sparta in Ohio straight to New York City or Chicago in terms of the differences in our bed and breakfast in Le Mans to the hotel in Paris! You can see the tip of the Eiffel tower from the hotel, and if you got up to the pool level you can see the whole thing!
Since today was a travel day we haven’t done too much, needed time to unwind. We ate lunch at Mc Donald’s about 2:30 cuz we were dying of hunger and it was the only thing we could see from our hotel that was close. Yes, it’s lame, but god it is nice to know what you’re ordering and what it will taste like!
After “lunch” we took a nap in the middle of the afternoon. Woke up refreshed and ready to explore. We walked a few blocks, found some local restaurants, and settled for a place that served pasta! We decided to carbo load for energy and had spaghetti. Quite enjoyable. We went to a BP quickie mart to get some beverages, Powerade & Orange Juice for the hotel, and now we’re just relaxing and unwinding.
Tomorrow will be a touring day and we’ll surly take lots of pix.
Speaking of pix, seems like we won’t be sharing them as soon as we thought due to lack of free internet (right now I’m typing this is Word and will copy paste to the blog). We bought a few hours of internet access at the hotel and are trying to use it sparingly.
I still haven’t caught the blog up on the few days in Le Mans but overall, I think the pictures will speak for themselves when we are able to share them, and this is already really long, so I don’t want to bore everyone to death!
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