France - Paris

The train was near full as we pulled out of Namur station heading for Paris.  It was a popular train to catch as it got your into Paris just after 9am.  Paris Gare du Nord was a huge station,  we found somewhere to have brunch and then brought a hop on hop off bus ticket - and got on.

From looking on the rather small and simple map, it looked as though we could pretty much get off at one of the stops and walk to our hotel.  But no, I had mis read the map and we had to catch another metro out further and then we had trouble finding the hotel due to lack of signposting - hmm not so good so far Paris!  After we had settled into our wee box we went and caught a train and headed back into the city centre to re catch the hop on hop off.  Skies were a little grey and it was quite dull, we sat on the top deck and got blown around a bit, although it did get better as the day went on.  The buildings were amazing with wrought iron banisters, big oak lined streets, loads of traffic, which was a bit erratic.  It had a nice feel to it though, it was busy and had a city feel to it, but in a friendly relaxed way.  There were people all shapes and sizes wearing all sorts of garments, some done up to the nines and others super casual - pretty much anything goes.

Beautiful sculptures outside the Assemble Nationale

There is a power lead going into a socket
so I am guessing this little guards box is heated or maybe he is listening to some heavy metal.

Grey skies

Complete with caps and hats

Just a cool building

National Academy of Musicals.

Eiffel Tower by day ...   not so pretty,
although Murray thought it was a cool bit of engineering.

Me with the NZ bear,  alongside the Tower, there was a display of 140 bears, designed by 140 different artists.  The display moves around the world.  The theme being that they stand together, hand in hand thus symbolizing the vision of a peaceful world.  Each bear represents the people of the country and their culture, but not political views.  Since 2002, they have raised 1.9 million by auctioning the bears and receiving donations.   The NZ one was pretty cool, although I thought the colour weren't vibrant enough.

Mr NZ bear bares it all - second along.

Beautiful by night.

Bears everywhere

Next day took luggage to lock up, then headed off to explore some more sights and got a bit side tracked. We had to run with our bags for around 10 mins hard out, to get to train.  Red faced and out of breathe we just got on train in time for doors to close.  No seats left but and area where we could sit on our packs and still see out the window.  We looked at each other and shook out heads, then laughed we had made it, the problem was it was the last train for the day to where we were going, so we had to get it.  A minute passed and the train did not move and shortly after that they opened the doors.  We found out soon after that we had been delayed for one hour as there had been a train accident on our line.  It turned out that some poor bugger had ended his life and thrown himself under a train.  As we passed the station we saw his body still on the tracks!  A common occurrence apparently.  A French man told us that one person everyday ends their life in Paris this way – they have a high suicide rate.  So we had sprinted and got the earlier train, but ended up delayed for one hour, and still got into Argentan a little early.  So we had a short wait to meet our helpx host Patrica.  Ironically, Patricia had arrived early too and was sitting in her car waiting for us, so we both waited for around 30 mins before meeting up.
Haha travelling is fun!