Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

I think I’m well and truly holiday-ed out, after two visits to France within a month!

This holiday was with Charlotte.  I spent a few days at her house in Wales before we left, and to be honest I don’t recall much of that, save for watching copious amounts of Battlestar Galactica, a ridiculously nice dessert of ice cream, strawberries, strawberry sauce, chocolate sprinkles and chocolate chip thingys prepared by Charlotte’s mum, and a crazy trip to Currys after I found out that I hadn’t packed a wall socket charger for my phone (the horror!).  We safely arrived in the Charles de Gaulle airport, and after some wandering around wondering what exactly was going on, we worked out who we were supposed to buy tickets from, and we were on our way!

Our hotel room was nice – we didn’t pay much for it, so we weren’t expecting much, but it was clean and there was friendly staff and we weren’t planning on spending much time in the hotel anyway.  There was the main room, for sleeping and making food (more on that later), a little room with a toilet and another little bathroom with a sink and shower.

I won’t go into full details of everything that happened in Paris, but general day events were:

• 1st August: went to the hotel’s supplied breakfast, expensive but nice.  Explored local area – found grocery store / metro station ( / McDonalds).  Made our own lunch in the hotel room – jam sandwiches, yum.  Met up with Eilise and Daryl at Notre Dame, and then walked to the Eiffel Tower, but didn’t go up it today, as the queue was huge.  We found a very strange Tarzen-esque museum, and partially explored it, but couldn’t work out what it was supposed to be displaying at all.  And dinner was… Domino’s pizza.  Oops.
• 2nd August: Louvre day!   It was free for everyone since it was the first first Sunday of the month.  Spent lots of time walking round and saw lots of famous things, like the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo, and a big Egyptian exhibit.  Charlotte tried to stalk me behind some bushes, but failed.  Made our own lunch again.  A nap turned into a few-hour-long sleep.  Went to the Champs Elysses street for dinner.  We went to a little bar on on the same street as our hotel and had a couple of drinks.
• 3rd August: Today we visited the Eiffel Tower, and we found an awesome way to skip the entire queue.   We had lunch in the 1st floor (not-ridiculously-expensive) restaurant and it was lovely – they put all your food in separate little glass boxes, and you had to take it back to your table.  We explored the rest of the Eiffel Tower and contemplated going up to the very top, but didn’t in the end – huge queues prevailed.  Took some photos and videos.  Charlotte had a big bunch of candy floss, I had an ice cream.  We went across the road to a palace-y type place, and relaxed on the grass for a while, then walked up to the top of the palace.  Got our picture taken in front of the Moulin Rouge, Charlotte bought a beret, and then we visited the cafe from Amelie (oops, two burgers today so far!).  Went to the Sacre-Coeur and saw a guy with a guitar singing on the steps, we sat and watched for a while.  Got back to our hotel, and had the best chocolate ever!
• 4th August: Uh oh, Disneyland day!  Got up ridiculously early (7am!), then realised we couldn’t get in until 10am as the Disney hotel guests got in earlier to go on the rides before us.  We ran to Space Mountain and went on that first, and then Star Tours (twice, stupid assistant woman…), Haunted House, had some lunch in the Hakuna Matata cafe, Thunder Mountain, the non-backwards Indiana Jones ride (crazy, I know…), the carousel, then we journeyed over to the Movie Studios park.  We went on the Haunted Tower Hotel, where they drop you down a lift shaft a few times, it was awesome.   Then we went on the behind-the-scenes tour, then on the Aerosmith rollercoaster – mega fast.  Back in normal Disneyland, I beat Charlotte at the Buzz Lightyear ride (no questions!), then the teacups ride, then went to the Rainforest cafe for dinner, right next to a big elephant that Charlotte swore kept moving, but I don’t believe her.  Getting dark now, we went on the It’s a Small World ride, and then a Pirates of the Caribbean ride, with rowdy and annoying people in the queues beside us.  Then came the Disney parade, with lots of Disney characters (Aladdin was not dressed like Aladdin should have been dressed, and Jafar turned into a dragon, psh…), after the parade there were a huge fireworks display timed to music.  Then we hustled and bustled out of the park (invisibility weaving), and had an uneventful trip back to our hotel.
• 5th August: We had a good long lie in and made our own lunch again, had a nap (lovely lazy day :] ), then we went to the Arc de Triumph (free, yes!), and walked all the way up to the top on those dreadful stairs.  Back on the Champs Elysses street, we went to a pizza place for dinner.  After this, we had a huge ice cream each (I had three scoops of ice cream, Charlotte had a big sundae thing), and as soon as we finished our stomachs probably exploded, it felt so full (“uggggggghhhhhhhh…”).
• 6th August: We went to re-visit Notre Dame, as we didn’t really get a look around when we met up with Eilise.  We didn’t go up to the top, as the queue was huge and it was hot outside.  I tried to teach Charlotte how to play chess, failed.  We visited the Paris Pantheon, it looked like one of the ones in Rome – it had a huge pendulum that told the time based on the rotation of the Earth, which was cool.  We visited Palais de Tokyo, so that we (Charlotte) could get our photos taken in the amelie-esque photobooth (3 times).  We also visited the Museum of Modern Art (and squiggly lines) which was next door.  Dinner was Domino’s again, I had to go because Charlotte was lazy.  (However, I did complete a hard Peggle level while waiting for the pizza.)  I told Charlotte the longest joke in the world, which lasted about an hour!
• 7th August: Unplanned lie in, then breakfast, then short gap, then lunch.  Went out to the park with some food and were planning to sit around and eat some food.  We started out going to the biggest Paris park, but it was full of trees and strange men.  So we went to the other side of Paris to a much more family-friendly park.  We sat there and listened to music / read books and ate our nuts.  Got some ice cream, went to the African museum so that Charlotte could use the toilet… Then came the hiring of a rowing boat!  We were rowing the wrong way for half of it, oops.  We went to a restaurant on an island in the middle of the lake, it looks expensive so we had some drinks and ice cream there.  Later on, there were no restaurants open, as it was 9.30pm already.  So… McDonalds.  Triple oops.  However, it was very nice food, and then after that we went to a bar that sold “very very special” cider.  So we got a bottle of that and then stumbled home.
• 8th August – Today we went to a huge department store in Paris called La Fayette.  It was ridiculously posh there – hundreds / thousands of Euros for normal-looking shoes!  I’m pretty sure Charlotte wanted some, but since I wasn’t allowing her to use my money, she decided she wouldn’t buy any.   We bought some less-expensive gifts for our families, and had lunch in a nice Italian place next to the shopping centre.  After lunch, we went to a deluxe chocolate shop and had some chocolates / ice cream.  (Charlotte bought some very posh chocolates and wouldn’t share them, meanie.)  We went to the Caravan restaurant, which was a little bar restaurant, near our hotel for dinner.  There was a lovely waitress there and everything.
• 9th August – Today was our last day in Paris, and we didn’t go anywhere new – we re-visited some of the places we’d been to before, including the Sacre-Coeur where the man was playing the music last time – we just sat around and chilled and took some photos.  We walked alongside the Seine and saw a couple of things that we wanted to buy as gifts to take home.  We had lunch at a little cafe on the riverside, and since the waiter never brought us the bill for our last crepe / Coke, we ran away… oops!  (I hope he doesn’t read this and hunt me down…)  Back to the hotel to collect our bags, and then it was off on the train / plane home at exactly 6pm, but not before I’d beaten Charlotte at Trivial Pursuit in the waiting room of the hotel.  Charlotte got quite angry at the lack of food in the airport (“This is ridiculous!”), but we eventually found a Pizza Hut place where she could eat all she wanted.  Flew home without incident, and then we were back!

Apologies for the long delay in posting this since the trip, but business / laziness prevailed up until now.  Photos / videos will be added to the post soon!