of churches and getting lost

We have to take 3 trains to get to Sacre-Coeur from where we are, as it’s pretty much on the other side of the city. One of the stations we had to change at was Montparnasse Bienvenue, which was a bit bigger station than I had anticipated…

This is what a normal warren-like tunnel we would use to connect to another line:

And this was what at Montparnasse Bienvenue:

… yeah, it’s a bit O_O no? hahah So you could imagine it took some time to get to the line we wanted.

It was a loooong way to our intended stop, Abbesses, and we found out the hard way that it’s deceptively deep underground. We followed the crowd of people up the stairs and most seem to shun the elevators for some reason… and up and up and up and up we went, around and around and around – man, I would have gotten dizzy if I was going any faster lol.

We finally spiralled up above ground and spied a quaint little garden nearby: Jardin des Abbesses. The garden, interestingly enough, has a “Love Wall”, where the lady at the top says:

aimer c’est du desordre… alors aimons!

Which Google translates to: love is the disorder … then enjoy! On the wall, people have scribbled stuff like “I love you” (naturally), but there was one that caught my eye: a guy professing his love to two girls, one after the other and with an exclamation at the end “I love you both!!”. Interesting.

View from Square Louise Michel (a garden of sorts just in front of Sacre-Coeur):

I noticed that there was a sign out in front forbidding people from relaxing on the grass… ooookay, that’s a bit … nazi-ish. lol But I’m quite sure they have very good reasons… maybe.

The square is full of hawkers, like at Eiffel Tower, only worse, as there’s these guys who get you stick a finger out, loop some string around it, and they start plaiting whilst talking to you. When they’re finished and you try to extract yourself from it, they will demand that you pay them to release your finger. How dodgy is that?!

We saw a couple of people getting scammed and most would say, “Excuse me, excuse me!” to get your attention and rodeo your unsuspecting finger. I kind of smiled and shook my head whenever they tried to get my attention and they would, rather annoyedly, say, “I said: ‘excuse me!’” but I just ignored them. One guy was rather persistent and actually grabbed onto my arm, which totally freaked me out and I wriggled out of his grip, walking faster – not looking back.

Why is it though, that I feel bad in doing so? *Sighs* Anywho…

The view from Sacre-Coeur!

SC-238 sent Gunner out with the troopers to try and keep them focussed at the job at hand. However, Gunner really must like heights and/or the sprawling city beneath, as he exclaimed his enthusiasm of the view, totally forgetting why he was sent out with the troopers in the first place (who both sighed and traded a long-suffering look with each other).

Close-ups of Sacre-Coeur:

There was a Silent Prayer thingy on at the church and so photography was completely forbidden. There was a guy standing near the front of the door (on the inside) whose keen eye would espy on a non-observant tourist raising their camera to take a photo and would then sternly call out (whilst pointing at the offender), “No photos! No!”. Some people did manage to take photos (saw their flashes from afar) and some people did a dodgy like my brother:

I bought and sent a beautiful black and white postcard of stairs framed with snow-laden trees, the bottom of the stairs slightly obscured by fog (or falling snow)… when I found out that it was right next to Sacre-Coeur, I wanted to take a photo of it as well, just for kicks…

Ugh, remind me never to try and replicate postcard photos T_T Definitely should leave the job to the experts *sighs*

Not far from these stairs were another set of stairs that went down more directly to Abbesses Metro station and while it wasn’t as steep, pretty, or as long as the one above, it has its perks:

The expressions on the clones faces were priceless – Gunner even dropped his gun in disbelief that they had that many steps to go… (be thankful guys that we didn’t take the other stairs!! hehe)

We headed to the Louvre the long way (through the gardens), as we had some time to kill and we wanted to get some information for the next day (we planned to visit the museum), and got off at Concorde Metro station.

I adore this fountain for some reason, I have no idea why. Last time I was here they had the water on, but this is a nice change (it also allows me to get close without getting wet! yay!).

The troopers couldn’t stop staring (they definitely don’t have anything like this at home), but Gunner seemed a bit nervous, “You sure they’re not going to come alive and eat us?” Sometimes I wonder what exactly goes on in that helmet of his, but I think it’s better that I don’t know.

The Louvre, if you didn’t know know, use to be a palace… a massive palace! This is just one of the wings:

It’s hard to convey just how long the garden is, but this is looking back to where we started from:

You can see the Place de Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe! O_O I guess they really thought it out huh? I looked over to my left, where these neck-high hedges were…

Teehee… I had a bit of a giggle and my brother rolled his eyes, telling me to grow up (and then he went to take a photo himself haha).

At last, we finally arrive at the heart of the Louvre:

Gunner and the troopers decided to have a meeting, as they still haven’t seen any sign of Stormy (and his blasted blaster didn’t seem like it was enticing him out) and were rather worried about SC-238’s reaction to their lack of information.

I think they had come to a conclusion on what to say by the time we left, but they were being all secretive about it, so I just left them be.

Afterwards, we headed off to Notre-Dame. Now, I remember the first time we tried to find Notre-Dame, we kept on getting lost because while it looks like you can tell it’s on an island, you actually can’t – the island just looks like well… still part of the mainland.

I actually took the wrong exit coming out from the station, so we were much further away than I had anticipated. I tried to get my bearings as I got all confused which way I was facing (I knew what street I was on though but that didn’t help all that much).

I managed to get everyone on the right track and were crossing Pont Neuf when I looked back and saw some Gothic-looking structure peeking out between 2 buildings. I stopped, confused once again, and asked my dad if that was Notre-Dame, he looked and said that maybe it was.

Ugh. It wasn’t. It turned out to be St. Bloody Germain, we were on the right track before. *Sighs* So shouldn’t have looked back. We trekked back to the bridge and after a couple of almost wrong turns, we finally made it! Yay!

When I was taking that middle picture, I was in a fast moving queue that stopped and started irregularly. I was too busy focusing the shot whilst walking that I didn’t notice the line had stopped and actually walked into the lady in front of me. >_< oooopsy. Gave her a bit of a nasty surprise.

We were 15 minutes too late to go up the towers (they restricted access after 4.30pm), but on the bright side, we were allowed to take photos in here...

The statue was of Joan of Arc! I had forgotten that they have a statue of her in here. They also have some weird stuff happening on the exterior of the building (I guess that’s what makes Notre-Dame Gothic =P hehe)…

We had dinner at the Hotel de Ville McDonalds (for some reason we ALL got the Big Tasty, which is – I’m sad to report – wasn’t Tasty but was kind big… like a Whopper-sized big). We took our time as we were waiting for it to get dark.

It was a good thing that we did! When we came out, there was all this hullabaloo and we thought it was another protest, but it was an actual parade!! It was rather fun…. and we lost dad for a good 30-45 minutes, but he did get photos of the parade that I didn’t manage to get (ugh, sucks being short!!).

My brother left a couple of times to go look for him (hehe more like call him to come back to us), dad actually came back himself and so we had to wait for Tim.

The parade was the 12th Annual Carnival of Paris and this year’s theme was “Cosmic Carnival, Astronauts and Extraterrestrials” (which explained a lot of the costumes haha). It started at 3pm somewhere in Paris (i.e. at the bottom of the rue Le Vau, the 20th arrondissement) and ended up at Hotel de Ville (the 4th arrondissement) – that’s at least 3 hours! Boy, they must have been tired, but they didn’t look it! Such exuberance! =D

When we were finally together, we made our way to the Palais de Chaillot for some Eiffel Tower night shots…

Another long day had finished and we were so glad to put our feet up.

of friendly parisiennes

My last night in Berlin was spent swapping luggages (remember our 1-wheeled large suitcase fiasco?), looking for Rome accommodation, and trying to decide between a shuttle coach or risk a taxi to our hotel (we have 3 large suitcases and 2 small ones, plus 3 randomly sized plastic bags [one of which contains entirely of German junk food MUHAHAHHA]… and that’s not including my brother’s and my backpacks! I was a bit worried that they wouldn’t all fit into a taxi).

I think I got about 1 and a half hours of sleep that night, but then again, none of us really got that much sleep. So, it came as no surprise that all four of us were nodding off now and again while we were transiting on the Metro. We were lucky that we didn’t miss any stops!

There were a couple of hiccups along the way, but nothing we couldn’t handle. However, one really big hiccup left us stranded in the hallway of our relative’s building because there were lots of confusion about which unit number it was (we were given the access code and keys, but no unit number) and if it was really that building. It should have been straight-forward, really, as there was only one Giang in the entire building, but dad came back saying that the keys didn’t fit.

I told dad that we were in the right apartment building (how else would the access code and key work?) and that unit 202 should be our relative’s (who, which I think I should add, are on vacation in Toulouse so we have the place to ourselves)… and that it didn’t make any sense why the key didn’t fit!!

I think we were loitering around there (with my parents kind of wandering around, in and out, of the building) for a good 30 minutes (and with various of nice people trying to help us find the correct apartment number) before I had enough and exclaimed, “It doesn’t make any sense!! Here! Let us try the door again.”

Guess what? It fitted. *sighs* Then we found out that the elevator was broken and so had to lug our suitcases up to the second floor. *double sigh* lol

Anywho, after doing a spot of grocery shopping and lunch, we tried to find our way to the Metro station. A very nice lady stopped and asked us if we needed any help. She not only told us where to go, she took us there and made sure we bought the right tickets and everything! =D So very sweet.

Our first stop: The Eiffel Tower!

It was a bit disappointing to see that we came at a time that they’re doing maintenance on one of the pillars, but it’s still rather pretty and Eiffel Tower-ish hahah

What I didn’t notice or see last time I was here was the sheer amount of guys selling cheap Eiffel Tower keyrings and statues. “1 for 1 Euro… *we walk by* 3 for 1 Euro! Okay, okay, 5 for 1 Euro!!” I was very tempted in turning back to take up on his deal, but they seemed a bit dodgy… especially when I saw a handful of them high-tailing out of the area.

I wondered where the police they were running from were and about 10 minutes later I saw them:

Okay, they’re definitely not normal police people – I would so definitely run if someone like that was coming near and I was doing something wrong. We saw them at the airport as well when we went to pick up our luggage. Both times it was the female nonchalantly holding onto a big ass gun and both times it kinda freaked me out a bit. Eep.

A mandatory Eiffel Tower shot:

And of course we headed up the tower too (after a 45-minute line-up during which we saw a protest! … and you can see why it took us 45 minutes!! Crazy, it was like that with all three pillars!)…

The day wasn’t exceptionally clear (or sunny), but you can see the Grand Palace (the massive glass-domed building) and off in the hazy distance, sitting on a lonely hill top on the left of the picture, is Sacre Coeur.

It’s amazing how densely packed the city looks as well (does Sydney look like that??) from up top…

The sun was setting over the Seine (or at least I would like to think it was, if it weren’t for all those clouds!)…

This is where we’re headed off to next, the Palais De Chaillot, where it has several museums in it and… a cinema aquarium? *puzzled* Maybe it’s just an aquatic cinema… Anywho, it is a pretty good place to take photos of the Eiffel Tower…

I saw someone scrawled something funny, but too entirely true…

SC-238 sent the troopers out to the next rendezvous point for any sign or clue from Stormy. CT-275 hoped that bringing the blaster would somehow entice him out, but looking around, they didn’t see anything Stormy-related…

Pont D’Iena is the bridge that connects the Eiffel Tower and Palais de Chaillot; its beginning and end is lorded over by a couple of statues – one of which caught my eye…

Upon reaching Palais de Chaillot, the troopers were given a dressing down by SC-238 for not being able to find anything about Stormy (much to their dismay). Gunner, wholly oblivious to the lecture going on behind him, whooped enthusiastically at the view – they don’t have anything like this at home!

I found this rather strange:

Standalone petrol pumps?? Though come to think about it, I don’t think I’ve really seen a petrol station actually in the city at all, so I suppose it makes some sort of sense. =P

Some of the older (or perhaps just random?) Metro entrances has these fancier designs…

I quite like them and whenever I think of Paris’s Metro, I would think of these entrances; they seem to be from the 1920’s or 1930’s… or something (I’ve never been good at decor movements lol).

This is what a typical Parisienne subway station would look like if it was clean and didn’t have hundreds (okay, seemingly hundreds) of people on it:

So, we were making our way towards the Arc de Triomphe – we had it in our sights! – when dad got distracted by these old guys carrying flags.

“I think it’s a parade!” he enthused and dashed off to take photos of them. We sighed and followed suit.

I think it was a memorial of some sort, but after googling for a bit yielded nothing about a memorial being held on 21st February (or maybe my keywords sucked haha). They had to stop traffic for about 10 minutes for the procession and boy, there were some testy drivers when it was over.

I think I’m starting to get slightly obsessed with day/night shots:

We were so tired by this time that we pretty much fell into a deep sleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow, despite having a cold, cold apartment.

of a missing stormy

The clone troopers arrived at the designated rendezvous point and was surprised to see an abandoned camp site.

The clonies weren’t too sure what to be more upset about: the fact that a campfire was left irresponsibly unattended or that Stormy was nowhere to be seen. The commander, SC-238, decided that the missing Stormy was more upsetting, as no stormtrooper would willingly leave behind their blaster… and besides, he could give Stormy a good talking to about leaving campfires unattended once they found him.

When asked by clone trooper ST-631 what their next move was, SC-238 decisively replied that they would continue on to all the next rendezvous points where they would hopefully catch Stormy at one of them or perhaps find out whatever happened to him along the way…

… Meanwhile, Gunner and ST-275 were enjoying the heat of the campfire on such a cold night; ST-275’s delicate feet were especially frozen from tramping through the bushes all day and were blissfully thawing out (much to his relief, as he was certain that the commander would chop his frost-bitten toes off unhesitatingly).