As I have promised in my previous post, here is the story of my new-year-trip to Paris. It’s not that I celebrated my new year’s eve there, but I spent my new year’s holiday in a three day vacation traveling around Paris. It was AWESOME! I have never been to Paris before. All I knew about Paris was just (of course) the famous Eiffel tower, the Musee du Louvre, the Moullin Rouge, and perhaps..the croissant..LOL! But, when I decided to go to Paris for new year vacation, I knew that I had to go to all those places and ate the real croissant for sure.

After spending several months arranging trip, choosing hotel and transportation, finally, me and the other 12 friends went to Paris on January 2, 2008 by bus. We departed at 10.00 pm and arrived at Gallieni bus station in Paris at 06.00 in the morning. The road trip was a little bit tiring though since we had to spend 8 hours in a bus! But it’s all worth it. So, starting from that moment, first day of the Tour de Paris began.

After arriving at Gallieni bus station, we soon found ourselves confused with the city transportation. Actually, receptionist of the hotel had told us how to get to the hotel by metro, but there were 13 of us and we were like stupid tourists who didn’t know what to do in the middle of nowhere..hehe..no, I was exaggerating..:D The problem was that we had to buy the metro ticket. Each of use wanted to buy the 10 carte ticket and since there were 13 of us, imagine how annoying we could be..haha..Furthermore, stupid things happened when one of us only got 9 tickets and we finally complained to the lady in the locket who seemed upset and pretty sure she had given us the exact amount. Apparently, it was Anne, one of my friend, who complained to the lady (since she’s the only one who can speak French), that held the missing ticket..hehe..

Enough about the tickets, soon we managed to get to the hotel. It was a small nice hotel near Montmartre and Sacre Cour. Since we were tired we then took several hours to have breakfast (baguette and butter) and to take a nap. But, who need to sleep while we can visit the great Basilica Sacre Cour?? That’s why I, Rondut, Anne, and Dewi sneaked out and went to the marvelous church.

As soon as we got there (after walking through hundreds of stairs – it reminded me to ‘Tangga Aborsi’ in Sabuga ITB..hehe), we were AMAZED by seeing the remarkable and impressive church. Of course, we took lots of pictures there..hehe..we must not forget about that rite? Since we still got some time, we went inside and once again I was astonished to see everything there from the statue, the ceiling, aaahh it was absolutely beautiful! I could tell that it was the most beautiful church I’ve ever seen. Suddenly I got the feeling that I should pray. So, I sat for a while and prayed. I prayed for every moment He had given me. I thanked Him for giving me this opportunity. I also prayed for myself, my family, my future, and of course my soulmate..hehe..:D I bought some souvenirs from the church before I went back to the hotel and visited the next interesting places.

The next destination on that day was the Champ Elysees avenue where we could see the Arc de Triomphe monument at the end of the street. The monument was the first thing we saw when we got out of the metro station. It was huge and crowded. The monument was built to commemorate those who fought and died during Napoleonic wars. We could see their names written on the wall and there were some French words written on the floor. I didn’t really know what that meant, so I just took pictures..LOL..Actually we could get to the top of the monument, but we had to pay some euros. We decided not to go up and took walk along the Champ Elysees avenue. Time to refresh some eyes girl!! Haha..

Champ Elysees is famous for its numerous boutiques and shopping centers. You can find all brands there started from Zara, GAP, Cartier, Disney, and of course those elite ones such as Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Chanel, Prada, Jimmy Choo (oh lala, those shoes were fabs!), and many moreeeee..Poor me, the only thing I could do was taking pictures in front of each shops..Haha..Pathetic! Well, I went inside Louis Vuitton and found myself wanting everything in that store!! The shoes, the bags, the jackets, the wallets, the glasses..aaahh.. Why does it have to be so expensive???!!! Huks..Huks…FYI, one LV bag costs more than 1000 euros..In rupiah??U do the math..:D Jadi merasa pingin ke mangga dua beli KW 100nya..hahaha..

Eniwei, passing through all those stores finally led us to visit the famous Eiffel Tower. It was three o’clock when we got there and the queue was..LONG!!!Huu..We had to stand in line in order to go to the top. Full of spirit, we began the queuing process..uuughh..Never again go to Eiffel tower in winter season. It was extremely cold! When you finally reached the top of the Eiffel, the wind blew so strong and it made the temperature even colder and colder..Brrrrrr..Oh, I forgot to tell you, we not only had to queue from the bottom but also at the 2^nd floor of the tower. So, in the end, the time we needed to finish the queue was almost one hour and we spent only half an hour on the top! So worth the cold! Haha..But I could tell you the view was amazing especially at night when you could see the Paris city light from above. Hmmm.. God, thanks again.^_^ One more thing, the Eiffel tower started to display its beautiful lights in the evening and luckily, we had the chance to see it. OOOHHH..It was so pretty..But, we still got one more place to visit in day one..the Musee d’Orsay..

The Musee d’Orsay is a museum for impressionist art where you can find many paintings from famous artists such as Monet, Manet, Renoir, Picasso, and so on. I also found many sculptures inside and took pictures with some of them (sometimes with crazy style, too). We had a lot fun in this museum. I agreed to what people said that everyone who comes to Paris must visit Musee d’Orsay. It was so beautiful.

Tired. Exhausted. Hungry. But filled with joy and satisfaction for day one. Finally, we went back to the hotel, ate late dinner, and prepared ourselves to face the next day.

Louvre, here we come!!