Paris - city of chic fluro vests

Before we begin, we'd just like to let those out there know, this was a joint effort. Due to its extreme size we recommend setting aside an hour or so. Muchas Gracias. Oh also we updated Barcelona this morning so check that our underneath as well.

We're currently sitting at our hostel in Bruges, we've realised after a bike round there ain't much to do here, but more on that in a future blog. So here you will find Carcassonne (small French town with castle) and Paris together as one.

Right so we arrived in Carcassonne and our first remark was, 'seriously why the faff are we here?' it is the randomist town ever! This is what we did in our 24 odd hours...

Visited the train station, we were later to spend ALOT of time here the next night waiting for our night train.

Captain Annabelle gets her bearings!

I make a stylish entry into the Hotel.

We enjoy the food of Carcassonne, this is chocolate mousse and its not anything like Pizza Hut's mousse.

This is me at the sweet shop in the Castle, I had to physically support myself in here.

Here we are in the Castle of Carcassonne, it is still a living village with a population of about 250 people who make things and mainly cater to the tourists (we were the youngest there by about 50 years).

The castle from the outside, back in the day there would have been a sweet moat. We found out moats really stunk which is prob why people don't have them anymore.

After yet another failed but creative attempt at taking this ourselves (this one involved us cramming the camera into the castle wall) another friendly tourist stepped in. Surprisingly this was only take 2 of 2.

Ohhhh picturesque eh.

Notice here 2 things... one we are on bikes again. Two we are working the hottest denim bike shorts available at short notice in Carcassonne. Belz has become rather attached to hers.

That brings to a close our very brief stay in Carc. It was good times, with a few random characters along the way. But on to PARIS!!!

We arrived in Paris still half asleep and HANGING OUT for a shower after 8 hours on a night train! We splashed out on the uber expensive showers at the train station and were good to go. We checked in at St Christophers (which is by far the best hostel ever invented or at least that we have seen) and headed straight out to see the sights. First stop Notre Dame...um....wawp wawp. I am sure it's awesome if you know the stories but all we could see is the queue which baffled Megan...

So we decided to improvise with some sweet outside photos...

(Megan's note: see what I mean about Belz's fondness for her shorts?). (Belzs note: Megan, they are denim bike pants!!!!).

Creep scariness...

After a full on day of... failing to get inside Notre Dame we checked in for our night bike tour of Paris. We were off to a rocky start when we checked out our crew of 50 year old Amercian mumsies (about 20 of them) and were given our hot high vis vests to wear. What better accessory to rock in Paris than a fluro vest...ummm...

Speed demons...

The good news is that we cruised past some pretty awesome sites like the Louve at night and the 'lovers bridge' which was just awkward in our high vis!

Our guide was actually a douche American who was the epitome of why people get frustrated with Americans and had no respect for Parisian locals but he semi redeemed himself by taking us on a boat cruise with some rouge vino vino and amazing views of the Eiffel tower (sparkling it's 200,000 lights)...

So like I said, we had some rouge vino and got purple tongues to match our high vis. If you think we look wasted you should have seen our guide!!! It was so awkward and everyone was side wise glancing wondering how we were gonna get home on our bikes!

Day du (I think that's how you say it in French) we saw Eiffely in the daylight, whoops. Even went up it (on the elevator) it was awesome and if you were at all confused, made you realise you were definitely in Paris. I still cant get over how massive it was.

Here's a view from the 2nd storey.

Us at the top. Also while we were there I was convinced one of the dudes from Home and Away was there. I never see the show so I have no idea who, but made Belz stalk outside the gift shop with me in the hopes she would recognise him. She didn't and she claims she is a fan. (Note from Annabelle: so in other words - no, he wasn't from Home and Away :)).

Yes he was but moving on.

Oh and here is us again high fiving, don't even get me started on why the tourist who took this choose this angle. But me being the hard out I am, almost asked him to do it again. I refrained.

We picnicked under the Eiffel Tower, as ya do when in Paris.

Oh look its me eating again...

Ok and now we are into the night again, this night was very good times. We were drunk before we left the hostel and we somehow ended up here again...

Some lovely old people agreed to take shots but we didn't see in them the high level of skill needed to capture an action shot...

But trusted ourselves..

STUNNING MOVES!

We were on our way to the Latin Quarter as we'd heard it was the place to be for a fun night. We crossed the Lovers bridge again (we call it that because people who get engaged put a padlock on the bridge and throw the key into the river) and were looking a little more inconspicuous than our last high vis visit. We had a traumatic experience of a dude in army get up exposing himself to us - as we were approaching we were both looking at him like "what is he doing" and after I'd realised I cried to Megan and she said "oh I thought he had a bread role"... so naive :)

We found the BEST little riverside restaurant and fell in love with their Duck Confit (so much so that we headed back there the next night as well).

Just add two bottles of vino, a shot or two and some sweet made up tunes (sing "photo, photo, photo" in the tune of a conga line song). So stuff went down here - some bars, some photos, some VIDEOS (haha - the best) and we found ourselves on our way home on the last metro of the night. We were clearly still enjoying ourselves and by now we had added some dance moves to the increasingly popular photo tune...

Megan channeling that conga line to the extreme.

After our rigorous routine we needed some hydration and attempted to buy some water but of ALL the lines of water to choose from I chose the one with just one bottle left and it WOULD NOT COME OUT.

I tried and a random man even interrupted his cell convo to get amongst it...



Megan said mean things to the machine and hurt its feelings...

But it hurt mine more... so I cried. I had saved hard for at least 20 minutes for that two Euro.

So next day we were obviously bright eyed and bushy tailed after such a low key night. Luckily we were headed for our fancy hotel and the area surrounding it had some awesome graffiti and street art to check out...

Above is part of an exhibition that was comparing old (1920's ish) with new - same location, new person but similar stance etc. Pretty cool.

Footpath graffitti on a zebra crossing

This area is known for its vintage shops, and unlike Sallies at home, we're talking vintage Gucci, Chanel, LV you name it, it was excrutiating to not even be able to afford 2nd hand Chanel.

Vintage Bar, an old bar turned into a vintage shop, it was the coolest shop I have ever been into.

Here I am with the few vinatge purchases within my budget, enjoying our new boutique surrondings, god what high rollers...

We got dressed up, drunk champagne in our room listening to Rihanna and then headed out for a nice dinner and finished the night off with gelato. Pretty much most girls ultimate evening.

Here's me, modelling said Gelato. 5 flavours, grande, shapped like a flower uhhhhhhhhh

We took our gelato back to our Hotels japanese courtyard garden

But then it was off to bed for us as we had a big day planned....

EURO DISNEY!!!!!

They arent in order, but it was fantastical day, we saw dancers and Micky and went on rides and ate hotdogs and sung songs and got scared and I became a Princess...

Annabelles favourite ride, Lancelots Carousel

Micky joined us for a photo op, before he had to dash off to make an appearance as a balloon

We became Indiana Jones and our mining cart lost control (it was fun)

I ate this, I also ate 9 nuggets and a donut and 3 sandwiches and a chocolate croissant and an ice cream cause thats what you do at Disneyland. I wasnt proud of myself (but secretly I was).

Oh and a video to end! Thanks for sticking with this blog. To summarise we really loved Paris.