friendly french...
Hi! - well I finally had some blue skies - they lasted a morning - grey skies are here again...
went to the catacombes in Paris (got in for free - woohoo!) but it was très creepie!!! - passageways were fenced with skulls, rib bones and other boney bits in bizarre patterns... and i went to the Rodin museum which I absolutely loved - they have his bronze statues out in these gorgeous gardens, and then in this old building they have some of his marble ones which i think are brilliant!
also managed to make it to the top of the eiffel tower for sunset which was nice... and went to Chartres - little suburb outside of paris - to this old 12th century church that has apparently one of the best collections of stained glass in the world from that time... -climbed its gothic spire with all its goblins etc hanging off it just like notre dame in paris... - and realised i had actually made it to paris for the springtime - altho not much of a spring!
I pretty much had the room to myself at the backackers the first two nights - so was feeling a bit dislocated as only had little chats with people - usually funny old french men! - on the trains etc going places, and also at breakfast it only seemed to be this huge american tour group of 19yos. But on the last night finally shared with some people and did some wanderings with them around paris.
am in strasbourg at the moment - raining - but the hostel has fantastic rooms!!! - it is very swish! - altho it is like a firemans ladder to get to the top bunk!
I have enjoyed france - they give you hot chocolate in bowls - now that is the way to do it!!! - and it is the only place i have been where if you pull out a map people actually stop in the street and offer help (usually you have to ask others to help).
I had a good 4hr train ride - which turned out to be 5 due to train incident -from paris to strasbourg - again with friendly french people - checked to make sure i had validated my ticket etc and then one of them wanted to practice their english so that was entertaining... - was the first offer for a drink (just a friendly one!) i have accepted as he was just nice and he wasnt persistently creepy like the others...
Most of the time i am rushing to type this out etc so make spelling mistakes (particularly with this french keyboard!) and probably sometimes it doesn`t make much sense as i think sometimes i begin to say a story but get side-tracked...
looking forward to the black forest tomorrow - altho am a bit unsure how i am actually getting to the hostel as they have bizarre directions on the website - and am hoping i am not the only one there!
and - as i am sure you all want to know - i am finally getting round to doing laundry -cant wait for nice machine-washed clothes (have been hand washing)!
later!