En route to the city of love

When we were deciding our honeymoon plans, Cheena’s cousin in London suggested an Indian tour operator based in the UK – Star Tours. After looking up their packages and services (which were pretty good) along with a dozen other webpages, we decided to chalk out the plans ourselves instead of opting for a tour operator because a) this guy did not have private tours b) planning is fun. But nevertheless, we booked a 4-day Paris tour with Disneyland with Star Tours just to try it out.

The first hiccup was that the 4-day tour was merged with the 3-day tour because they did not get enough participants. There goes our trip to the palace of Versailles! We were already regretting our decision to go with these people, but since we had already paid for it, we had no choice but to go. Click here to see the tour details.

We woke up before the sun did

Our nearest pick-up point was Wembley and we were dropped by Cheena’s cousin again, bless her. The pick-up point was in front of the Star Tours office and we could see Indian uncles and aunties covered from head to toe. While we were all exchanging tentative smiles and guessing each other’s backgrounds, the bus arrived. Our guide Shruti was a 2^nd generation British Indian, whose ancestors were from Gujarat. She had a British accent and spoke Hindi like me. Okay, like my husband.

We stopped at two other pick-up points and reached Dover in about two hours, stopping only for a pee break. We got our visas checked at the Dover port and we took a 1.5 hours ferry ride to Calais in France. We were riding along the white cliffs of Dover so we went up to the top deck for a better view. We also had our breakfasts in the ferry’s food court and I bought a comb from one of the shops because I had forgotten mine back in London. Must say the husband was pretty disappointed.

The Dover port

After a 4-hour drive with just a 15-min grab-some-food break, we finally reached Paris. We went straight to ride the Bateaux Mouches, the open excursion boats that provide visitors a view of the city from along the river Seine. The river is 776 km long and is an important commercial waterway in North France. There are 37 bridges within Paris and dozens more spanning the river outside the city. The tour booklet promised a boat that was "entirely glass fitted with a terrace", this was an open boat. The guide rattled off viewpoints in multiple languages and with all the noise, it was hard to figure out which one was English. So we gave up trying and instead tried to match the buildings in our booklet to the ones that we were saying. For your viewing pleasure, here is the map(taken from the Bateaux Mouches website). 

I am going to list down some of the monuments that caught our eye during the cruise. The Eiffel tower was the most eye-catching of course, but the tower deserves a separate post.

We first saw the Arc De Triumphe on our way to Bateaux Mouches. One of the famous monuments of Paris, the arch honours those who fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars, with the names of all French victories and generals inscribed on its inner and outer surfaces.

 The Institut de France manages a whole lot of museums and foundations. It has a distinct dome-shaped structure that makes it stand apart from the other buildings around.   

You can also see the love padlocks in this picture.  The lovers’ names or initials are inscribed on the padlock, and its key is thrown away to symbolise unbreakable love. Cheena and I didn’t put up a lock though. Our love is unbreakable as it is :P These love locks are not a Parisian tradition though. This phenomenon broke in only in 2008, after it did the rounds in Italy and other countries. In January 2014, there was even a campaign called “No love locks” to save the historic bridges and monuments from the vandalism of these locks. I would suggest couples to refrain from adding their own locks to the already over-burdened bridges.  

 

  Musee D' Orsay located on the left bank of the Siene, houses the largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces in the world (Monet, Manet, Van Gogh et al) from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Behind me is the Hôtel de Ville literally meaning City hall is the building that houses the city's local administration (municipality of Paris) since 1357. It is the seat of a number of historical events in Paris.

   

And that is a bad picture of the Pont Alexandre III bridge – the most ornate and extravagant bridge in Paris. Kangana Ranaut tries to click a picture of one of the bronze status in the bridge in the movie Queen, if you remember. The four bronze statuses are of Fames from Greek mythology restraining Pegasus.

The Nymph reliefs at the centres of the arches over the Seine(on your right) are memorials to the Russian-French Alliance.   
 

But Cheena was most attracted by all the bikini-clad sunbathers relaxing by the Siene. He kept trying to click pictures, but his experiments with the DSLR did not allow him to capture much. 

The real adventure started when we decided not to go back to our restaurant with the group, but go to the Louvre to meet Mona Lisa instead. We were told that the Louvre was 15 minutes away and our coach driver suggested that we take a walk since it was a lovely day. That's a story for another post :-) 

Expenses:

• Star Tours - 3 day package to Paris with Disneyland (link given above) - £330 per person
• Comb(Ferry)- £1.90
• Hot chocolate and Cappucino(Ferry) - £6.00  
• Lunch(Sandwich and cakes) - €7.00