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4 jours à Paris and more!

By ⋅ October 6, 2005 ⋅ Post a comment

Finally, finally!

After much plot­ting and plan­ning, the vaca­tion I’ve been dream­ing of for a while…

My UK and French visas have arrived. The Swiss one is prov­ing to be more prob­lem­atic. In fact, they now want sev­eral sup­port­ing doc­u­ments like who I am vis­it­ing in the UK. And how do I know some­one in Switzer­land! What the hell does it mat­ter and what dif­fer­ence does it make to them?! Really frus­trat­ing. (Update: By some divine inter­ven­tion, the Swiss visa is also through! Yippee!!). I also got an invite from a cou­ple I met while ski­ing in Auli this year to visit them in Spain where they will be based for a while, so I am also plan­ning to do a cou­ple of days in Barcelona.

Any­way, if after all this, it does come through, I start with a visit to Lon­don where my sweet friend S lives.

Then to Barcelona to spend a few days with Romain & Emma, then to Lau­sanne to meet mon amie, Stephanie in Lau­sanne and the hand­some Bagha!

Switzerland

After that, the plan is to get myself to Paris and spend some time walk­ing around the city. I have 4 days and no plan as of now. And I don’t know any­one. So if any of you have any ideas and sug­ges­tions as to what I can see in the city (espe­cially if you’ve been there), please leave them in the com­ments box. (Jag, thanks a lot for that long mail!).

Paris, France

I don’t have too much time in Lon­don. S is heav­ily preg­nant so I doubt she will be able to show me around :) But with London’s effi­cient tube and bus sys­tem, hope­fully I shall be able to travel around with any problems.

London

Will also try and catch up with Sun­rayz, Anand and Jag, of course, if it’s con­ve­nient and all the stars get aligned in the right plan­e­tary positions.

And from there I go onto Scot­land with my sister.

London

And then head back home in November.

So there, I have much pack­ing to do. Final level 2B French exams on Sun­day. And a heavy work sched­ule till next Tues­day. (Update: Work over! Exams disastrous :).

So I’m going to dis­ap­pear for a while. How­ever, I shall def­i­nitely sur­face wher­ever I get an inter­net con­nec­tion and update.

Please, please do leave any sug­ges­tions you might have though! (Thanks folks for all the sug­ges­tions! My list is grow­ing by the day).

Discussion

20 Responses to “4 jours à Paris and more!”

  1. Ah bon! Quel chance, Anita!! :)

    Bon voy­age, alors! Je vais atten­der impatiem­ment pour les pho­tos! Amuse-toi bien! :)

    Posted by Vaish | October 7, 2005, 10:50 am

  2. Is this working?

    Posted by MadMan | October 7, 2005, 7:20 pm

  3. Hi Anita,

    Donna worry about ur Lon­don trip.…if u need any help , i can help u out in London.

    do let me know , by mail.
    thks ,
    Krish

    Posted by krish | October 7, 2005, 8:17 pm

  4. oops..this is my email id

    krishnan_s16@yahoo.com

    Posted by krish | October 7, 2005, 8:19 pm

  5. While in Paris, in addi­tion to the Eif­fel, Champs Ely­see, the Arc the Tri­om­phe, the Lou­vre and the muse­ums sur­round­ing it and the Notre Dame, please do visit Mont­martre (go up on the funic­u­laire) and the Left Bank, and just sit in any of the road­side cafes and watch the world go by…And in the restau­rants, don’t let them push the gaz water on you, they’re expen­sive as hell! If you’re a veg­e­tar­ian, your choices are lim­ited, but do try the crepes.

    Posted by Sujatha | October 7, 2005, 9:44 pm

  6. Regard­ing Paris, here are some more places that you can visit:

    1) Ver­sailles Palace(once a power cen­ter in Europe) in South Paris. This visit can take almost a full day. You can reach there by local train from south-east or south-west as it is a cir­cu­lar route.

    2) Ceme­tery “Pere Lachaise” in East Paris.
    (Famous Peo­ple buried there include Jim Mor­ri­son, JRD Tata, Oscar Wilde and many more)

    3) “La defense” in West­ern part of the city.

    4) Take a boat ride in river Seine (say at Eif­fle Tower).

    Please get a colour Map of the city with the local train routes. I really love this map. There are sub way sta­tions in almost each 500 meters of one another.

    As you stud­ied in Alliance Fran­caise, you may have much more info.

    Guten Tag,

    How many days you would be in Der Schweiz ?

    Posted by Sumanth | October 8, 2005, 12:12 am

  7. Hey Anita, I have some friends in Swiss. Do send me an e-mail regard­ing your travel dates and I shall see if I can set up some­thing. No promises though.
    My e-mail id is : venky.krishnamoorthy@gmail.com

    Have a good trip.

    Posted by Venky Krishnamoorthy | October 8, 2005, 2:03 am

  8. Must see list…

    Louvre..(will take u 2 days to com­plete if u really want to see every­thing…) but u can do it in a day too..Absolutely fan­tas­tic place!!

    Eif­fel tower..u can climb till the 2nd level..
    Walk along the siene in the evening..

    Versailles…will take u a day…and a big gar­den (for­est?) nice place…

    Lots and Lots of Museums…(If u r a museum lover..)

    Notredame…( u can climb to the top to see gargoyles..if u have strong legs..)

    La defense..for mod­ern architercture…

    Dis­ney­land (though noth­ing excit­ing here.…)

    Arch de triumph..Champs Elysee..

    ensoy
    Gopal.v

    Posted by Gopal | October 8, 2005, 2:44 am

  9. merci, ma chere vaish! je suis très excité. je suis sûr que je vais pren­dre beau­coup de pho­togra­phies pen­dant mes vacances :)

    mad­man: seems to be work­ing now!

    krish: thanks a lot! will get in touch via email.

    sujatha: all noted :) i intend to do just that. sit and watch the world go by. that has been a fan­tasy of mine for a while!! and no, i am not a vegetarian…

    sumanth: thanks so much! my list is look­ing good already :) my french is really basic but hope­fully will help in ask­ing for direc­tions! der shweiz? switzer­land? plan­ning for a week…if visa comes through (not look­ing good at the moment…)

    venky: stephanie is there in lau­sanne so switzer­land is not a prob­lem. but thanks for the offer! just keep fin­gers crossed that they find me good enough to let me enter their coun­try. right now they’re not con­vinced i am a gen­uine tourist!

    hi gopal! thanks a bunch… i don’t think i will run out of places to visit :) and i think i shall keep a whole day for vis­it­ing the louvre!

    Posted by anita | October 8, 2005, 10:00 am

  10. and the Moulin Rouge of course. Must see. I had it in mind when I was writ­ing the ear­lier com­ment, but for­got. There are a few nice restau­rants to the right of the Moulin…And the shop­keep­ers are very very snooty about talk­ing in Eng­lish. I began a few con­ver­sa­tions with “parlez-vous anglais?” and got stared down! Bah!

    Posted by Sujatha | October 8, 2005, 11:43 am

  11. hey anita!
    i would kill to be in your shoes!so u bet­ter watch ur back!
    haver loads of fun!and i dont have to tell u to blog about it!
    chitra

    Posted by chitra | October 9, 2005, 2:30 pm

  12. Hi Anita!

    I live in Paris these days. We should meet when you’re here. I’m not reach­able by phone, so send me an email before you get here. I’m suer you can man­age all the tourist places by your­self, but if you’re look­ing for some “untouristy” things, I can help in that department.

    - Mahesh

    Posted by Mahesh Shantaram | October 9, 2005, 5:01 pm

  13. Don’t for­get to take mem­ory cards, and extra rolls of film for cam­era, since you wont have time to offload pics.

    Posted by Doorknob | October 9, 2005, 7:54 pm

  14. hope you have a great time, anita… take care of your­self… and do come back soon,i was hop­ing to bump into you on my solo trip to south indian this novem­ber. will be stop­ping off at bangalore.

    your blog is great.

    Posted by natasha | October 9, 2005, 8:42 pm

  15. last time when i tried to leave com­ment i was blocked by some anti­spam u have…stung me to death..

    in my opin­ion this time of the year europe starts to get a bit cold..but with the weather vagaries these days.. sum­mer may stretch a bit longer…

    i was think­ing to tell u what i saw but i see that you have the good help already… i did do a lot of walk­ing… u can walk from the lovre to arc du tri­omph all the way.. nice walk.. but aftr all the walk­ing inside the lou­vre one doesnt have legs anymore :)

    while in europe u shd try and see ams­ter­dam and barcelona maybe …barcelona is what ban­ga­lore should have been…minus the tourists…

    bon voy­age…

    Posted by krishna | October 10, 2005, 9:05 am

  16. Nice blog.I like this.
    Nick
    http://www.yahoo.com

    Posted by Nick | October 10, 2005, 10:09 am

  17. Great! Very inter­est­ing. But your friends are too wordy :)

    Posted by Kirubakaran | October 11, 2005, 8:53 am

  18. sujatha: def­i­nitely! one of my favourite movies so the place will be on my list.

    chi­tra: am sure you’ll do it too, someday!

    mahesh: thanks a lot! didn’t know you were in paris now. but will drop in an email…

    door­knob: will take loads of film but won’t need mem­ory card :)

    natasha: thanks! do drop me a mail when­ever you’re plan­ning to come…

    krishna: am really sorry! that prob­lem was fixed. i am plan­ning to walk around a lot. and btw, have also sched­uled about 2 days in barcelona, so will look around a bit there too :)

    kirubakaran: thanks…

    Posted by Anita | October 14, 2005, 3:40 am

  19. You have a great jour­ney.. I am sure you are hav­ing it already… Bon Voyage :)

    Posted by Pallavi | October 14, 2005, 3:21 pm

  20. thanks jil :0) spent my first day walk­ing around london’s south bank. really pretty. but it was typ­i­cal eng­lish weather. gloomy to the point of being depress­ing! now i know why they com­plain so much :) hop­ing tomor­row is slightly better!!

    Posted by anita | October 15, 2005, 2:43 am

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