The beautiful city of Paris!

Paris is indeed as beautiful as what everyone says. Even the cynic in me was taken aback with this city. I think, seeing Paris at night is just MAGICAL. The Parisians did an excellent job of lighting up Paris beautifully at night.

I was expecting difficulty getting help/ friendliness as I do not speak French and I have always heard that the French are immensely proud of their language and plus, historically the French and the British have not been the best of friends. However, I am pleasantly surprised again. Paris is very tourist friendly and at the tourist spots there is always someone that speaks English. =)

Throughout my 3 days in Paris, I am impressed with the way the French people conserve their history and culture. Although not very tangible, I can really feel a strong sense of art, history and culture: Beautifully restored monuments, impressive architecture, Lido, street artists and musicians... The Arch of Triumph is an amazing monument; gigantic in size, down to small and detailed carvings. Visiting the Notre Dame was pretty exciting for me... as a huge fan of Disney, I cannot wait to watch The Hunchback of Notre Dame again. Most of all, Versailles is REALLY IMPESSIVE. I never expected it to be so huge and beautiful. Walking amongst the palace rooms, and reliving a bit of the French history is amazing.

Well, another type of highlight... sleeping on the streets of Paris! We missed our train to Amsterdam, and had to wait till the next morning. Since the station is only closed for 2 hours, we figured we would get into a cafe or walk a bit. However, the cafes turned out to be really pricey. We adopted an Israeli girl who was harassed by some guys at the station earlier, so she wanted to joined us. The 5 of us sat down by the sidewalk and decided to just rest and talk... after a while, everyone started to fall asleep! At about 3am, a lady came out from a van and started speaking French to me. Initially, I thought she wanted directions to some cafe or bistro. However, after some chicken and duck talk, she said something that sounded like "We are the association of the homeless people in Paris...." GOODNESS!!! I thanked her profusely and assured her that we had a train to catch in 3 hours.

Amazing life experience... we are still joking about this. What a way to end an amazing trip to Paris!! This definitely goes into Emily Tan's History Book. Hehehe...