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Voyage, voyage... Plus loin que la nuit et le jour.... further than the night and the day... voyage voyage...

On y va a Paris!!!

Summer_81_de
2005-12-23 15:45:30

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when we stopped at a petrol station.

At 8 we reached Paris Bobigny where we had exactly 5 Minutes time to rush into our hotel rooms to drop the luggage quickly.

No time for showering, breakfast, brushing teeth, we had to hurry up because we were meeting up with another group in the city for a city tour. Some of us didnt go on the city tour but I was one of those who joined it. We were showed around the entire inner city with all its attractions while it begun to rain outside. Somehow I feel like the city tour wasn'T worth the money as we hardly had chances to take pictures as the bus didnt stop anywhere. By the end of the tour we were guided to notre dame by a fanatic tourguide!!! In his earlier life he must have been a history teacher (JK) as he screamed at us whenever one of us didnt pay attantion, or he asked questions and pointed at someone in the group to answer it. The whole thing went on for 3 hours and all of us were quite amused about him ;-)
After this I got together with a few people from the group and we explored the city of Paris with all of its sights. In between it was raining a little bit but later in the afternoon the weather cleared up.

At night we did a cruise on the Seine river which was the most romantic thing ever. Paris is the city of poets, thinkers and romantics and it definetly deserves this reputation.

Later we met up with some aussie friends of mine who live in Paris now. We went to a japanese place near notre dame and did a lot of catching up. After midnight we decided to go back to the hotel as all of us were very tired (most of us were awake since more than 40 hours maybe with an interruption of max 1 hour sleep in the bus) so we got onto the metro and went all the way back to the HOtel in bobigny. We heard abour riots in paris suburbs but as we were reassured (by the ones who organized our trip) that Bobigny would be fine us 4 girls werent too worried about travelling by metro in the middle of the night and walking all the way to the hotel (15 min walk from the station).

IN the next morning we found out that we were in one of the worst effected areas, a couple who came home at night 15 minutes after us
were escorted by the police from the metro to the hotel. In fact riots were 10 min walk from our hotel away just on the other side of the metro station from where we got off. Its true that there were some very very strange people in the metro, but then again this is the same here in Frankfurt, in Sydney or whereever. I would find out about this myself just a few hours later.

On sunday morning I met with friends in the city (we had such a lovely time together) and on my way home from the metro station i saw a sign that pointed the way towards a shopping centre (i just wanted to get some groceries). So I followed the sign and saw the shopping center was closed because of demolitions. Right next to it I saw a parking level with burnt cars, windows were smashed. The area looked pretty strange and so I quickly left and returned to my hotel. Awwwww man so in the bus we were told that our weekend trip residence was in the middle of a civil war scenery... funny though that we didnt hear anything?
Now they told us after some of
us saw things and now we were leaving anyway... It all must have happened those 10 min walk away from the hotel, or maybe the medias exaggerate again?
It was a fantastic weekend though :o)