Paris - The city of light....

Just another nice building in Paris

St Michael s Notre Dame

big copper carved pillar thing

The Louvre Museum

Kids playing with boats in the park

The church on top of the hill

carachature artist at work, after his hard work the couple rejected it, poor guy

one of the entertaining buskers

Mmm... smog

Ah Paris....
On returning from Taize we were very blessed to have a place to stay for the last of our days in Europe. We were staying in a wee apartment off to the side of Alex's (who we stayed with in Barcelona) parents house. It was a tricky place to get into though and when we arrived we had to call Alexs sister Emilie when we were outside and she would let us in, this was what we had done the last two times we stayed in Paris. This time however our cell phone was out of money and not worth topping up, so I left the sick Sharon siting outside all forlorn in search of a phone box. I found one but our two phone cards were out of credit or expired (we hadnt really used them so i dont know how they were out of credit).... So, i returned to Sharon and got us through the first gate because we had remembered the pin but then we were stopped by a gate with spikes that we needed a key for... Our only options were to sit outside the gate till somone left or I could try and climb in and knock on the door. It seemed easy enough so I hopped over the gate and wandered down and knocked on the door... Emilies mother was watching television downstairs and looked very alarmed to see a strange man knocking on the door, she opened up and seeing the look on her face I stammered out who I was and asked if Emily was there (untill now we hadnt realised that the whole family lived there as Alex had only mentioned Emilie), she yelled upstairs for Emilie and then asked how I got in... I avoided saying I climbed in and just said that I had the pin already so could get in the outside gate, but then I had to explain that I had climbed in...awkward!!! I could see that she was not impressed! Luckily Emilie came down and seeing the prdicament I was in whisked me away to go and get Sharon and then we could retreat to our little apartment.
Sharon was feeling very ill with fevers, body aches and sweats, along with clogged sinuses and a sore chesty cough and I wasnt too flash either (thanks Taize). We decided to take it easy and try to recover before our long haul flights at the end of the week. That night Emlie along with her younger sister and brother brought us down some blackcurrant pie as a gift from their mother who said she was sorry for the way she was to me, mmm it was really good and made things a bit less awkward.
We didnt venture out at all the first day and then tried a 2 hour excursion on the Tuesday to see the famous Notre Dame, it was good to get out but very tiring for both of us. The next day Sharon was finally showing some improvement so we went out again this time for 3 and 1/2 hours, (phew that one was hard!) to see the outside of the Louvre art gallery.
On our last day after we finished packing we went to watch the sunset from a big beautiful church on a hill overlooking Paris with some olives and brie and crakers to finish our Eurotrip :-( Crowded on the steps going up to the church were a bunch of men holding bracelets in their hands, luckily we had been prewarned to watchout as these guys would act all nice and try to tie the bracelet around your wrist but so tight you cant get it off and then you have to pay a ridiculous amount of money for it. The first guy we had to walk past wanted me to bonk my knuckles against his and was being all chummy about it, I said no thankyou and carried on walking, seeing that it wasnt working he got stroppy and forceful and was shouldering me trying to not let me past, hehehe, he didnt expect a sick and therfore stroppy Sharon to come in with the shoulder from the side so we got past... there was a throng of them but they saw the pissed-off look in our eyes and no one else bothered us.
The view from the top was great, you could really see how smoggy a big city gets but it made for great colours with the sun. There were also big crowds of people and lots of buskers which made for a neat atmosphere and we sat down watched the sun set listening to music and watching the buskers entertaining, a nice way to finish our trip. Once the sun dropped below the horizon it cooled down very quick and we headed home for our last dinner and bed.

Thanks Europe you have been great! We have had the best time going everywhere, visiting friends and meeting new ones... We will be back!