Going in search of Platform 9 3/4

Yep, that's what I'm off to London in 2 days time to do!!

No, not really - well, I am... Let me explain >>>

It's T W O days until my f2f in London and whilst I'm there, having done all of the cool touristy stuff with Michelle last time I was there, I plan to have a wee look at that most famous of all platforms and take a photo or two, as is my want!!

Well enough of that tomfoolery on to the real deal, the f2f at Chez Gerard on Wednesday!!!!!!!!
EEEEEEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEekkkkkkkkk!

So, the march 27th peeps have already been through the mill, and lived to tell the tale. Apparently there were 25 people at their interview... Not many at all methinks - there were only 2 of them on wdwip and for tomorrow there are nearly 20, so I wonder how many of us there will be on Wednsday at Chez Gerard!!! Here's a picture, cos I fel like it...So there it is and I shall give you more details when I've been there and done that!!

Today I had my dress rehersal ~ put on my suit and practised getting everything to lay down right etc, so I feel all prepared. Now all I need to do is get my Mum to empty out her handbag for me to take, cos I didn't bring a smart one home with me. So on Tuesday morning I hardly have anything to pack really, just need to remember all of the little things, like the all important black pen...
What more to tell you? Umm well, some very inconsiderate polititians have decided to hold a G20 sumit in London on April 1st and lots of people have decided to stage a protest outside...so I hope the public transport system isn't too mucked up on the day and we don't have to be searched by armed police or anything like that!
Not to mention its going to be April Fool's Day anyway!

WHHOOOOOOOPPPP, I'm going to London! WHHOOOOOOOOPPP I'm going to Chez Gerard! WHHOOOOP I'm interviewing with Disney. Yaaaaaaayyy!

Ahem, so anyway yes that's all of the details I can impart at this time. I haven't decided what train I'm geting yet, but I'm going to go to Victoria, so I can validate my Oyster card there and then walk to the Wellington. Arron, Adam and Steph are staying there too so we're going to do all of our travelling together, which will be nice! Here's a pic of the Wellington (I quite like adding photos to my blogs now!):
If the times and all that jazz work out, I may get to see Sarah on Wednesday afternoon, which will be nice. She'll be at home in New Malden, which will only be a tube ride away. I'll let you know all of what happens afterwards!!

One small issue ~ all of my money is in euros, not pounds, so I need to change them even if I have to do it in London!
Ooh thanks for your new blog Michelle and the good luck message! T'will bring back a lot of memories of the last TGI meal and I can't wait to meet all the people who are going this time around!
Let's see there's: me, Adam, Arron, Steph, another Steph, Christina, Jasper, Andrew, Nick, Dan, Damon, Mi, Michelle, Kathryn, Jade et al. I've def missed some people out (sorry!), but I know that the table is booked for 18. Whhooooppp!

So me hearties, I think that's the last you'll hear from me until AFTER. When of course I'll be blogging to let you all know how I think it went. Including whether or not Valerie is more annoying second time around, whether I win a prize (I missed out last time) and whether Roger remembers me or not... Apparently, there are ICP interviews inbetween the 2 CRP interview days; so good luck to those guys and I hope Roger isn't too tired after all of those interview days!

Wish me luck. Off I goooooooooo......

P*A*R*I*S* 14-16th March (3)

As it kind of fits in between the two days, I'll put the club night here before I move on to day three. So, I suppose it really began when we got back to the hotel, the other girls went to get ready and they took aaaaages! They got all dressed up in their mini dresses and stilletoes and then we went for dinner and to the Cafe des Arts... Harriet and I opted for jeans and flat shoes, not that we'd bought any alternatives with us, but still....

Phil and his gf met us there and took us on to Duplex (I think its called) which not only was free to get in to, but had free drinks for girls all night!!! We had to leave all of our bags in the cloak room, which we didn't really like, but que sera sera...
It was a bit dead to begin with but began to liven up around 1am, with more people and dancing.

Then, just as most of us thought it was safe to get on the dance floor, these two podium dancers showed up and began strutting their stuff!!! We basically thought they were going to strip and to be frank, they did everything but!! They soon had a dedicated audience around each podium and so our group had a nice part of the floor to ourselves.

We thought we ought to call it a night a bit later on, and set off to walk the entire length of the Champs Elysees to get a bus back to the hotel. Some of the others were drunk and this resulted in one hilarious phone conversation between Sophia and Seb (one of our coursemates who didn't come with us, and who she is going out with!) as she meandered drunkenly down the street!
We eventually got back to the hotel at 3am by taxi, had to wake up the nightwatchman to be allowed in, and fell in to bed completely shattered!
We were up again at 8am, to check out and be ready to leave for the day's activities at 9.30am - some of the others were still a bit worse for wear! Soooo on to day 3!!

Day 3 ~ Lots of dead people and beaucoup de shopping!!

Our last day in Paris :'''''(

We began with visiting Les Invalides which is home to La Musee de l'Armee et les Deux Guerres Modiales (Museum of the Army and the Two World Wars) and Napoleon's Tomb.

We spent actual hours in the museum cos its very big and covers nearly one hundred years, what with all the build up to the war etc. There were many more dissertation pictures, as you would expect, and then we went to take a look at Napoleon's Tomb. On the left is building it's in and the right is the altar inside. Here's the actual tomb...
Tis all very grand indeed. We then posed outside for one of many, many group photos that were taken throughout the week. If my lecturer puts them on Blackboard, then I'll add some here. We decided to head straight to Pere Lachaise cemetary and get lunch on the way. I had the most amazing Salmon panini I have ever tasted - it was goooood. The weather, as it had been for the whole weekend, was still gorgeous and so we headed up to the cemetary.

Our tutor gave us maps and pointed out the significant bits, then left us to wander. We went there to look at all the various Holocaust memorials, put Pere Lachaise is also the final resting place of Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf and Heloise and Abelard too. It is, quite simply, massive! I won't add pictures of the memorials, cos that seems a bit weird to me!

In the afternoon we had free time and so Harriet and I headed back to the Marais to do some shopping!! She needed a present for her sister's birthday and it so happens that the first shop we went in to had one that she liked!! We also bought postcards and stamps. We had a sit down in a cafe where we wrote our post cards and then found this amazing jewellery shop! We spent ages in there, there was just so much stuff and they had these massive display cabinets that each held a different colour of jewellery. I resisted, but Harriet bought two rings. That afternoon was a good chance to practise my French too, which was a little rusty, but rose to the challenge rather well in buying postcards, buying stamps in a post office, asking where the post box was, ordering in the cafe etc all without using English!

Meanwhile Sophia had set off to collect her Mum from Gare du Nord, as they staye on in Paris for the week! After that, we headed back to the hotel, to collect our cases from the storage room and took our last metro journey all the way back to Gare du Nord.

We bought dinner (or in my case sweets!) and then boarded our Eurostar train straight away. It left Paris at 7.13pm French time, we got back to Kings Cross St Pancras at 8.34pm British time. We took the tube to Waterloo and then ran all the way up 3 massive esculators and across the station to catch the 9.02pm train back to Southampton, which we caught, thankfully with a while to go!! We got in to Southampton at 11.20pm had to run again for the bus, and I eventually got in to my house at around 11.45pm. Needless to say, I didn't set the alarm for the morning! I was knackered for days afterwards and so am now having to pick up the slack, quite seriously, on my dissertation!

As of today, it is......

*8*

days til my f2f!!!

P*A*R*I*S* 14-16th March (2)

Day Two ~ Down and Out in Paris

Our first stop on Day Two was Montparnasse, where we saw the Tower, the Jardins Atlantiques (Atlantic Gardens) and then headed to the museum we'd come to see.
The Jean Moulin Museum and Memorial to the Liberation of Paris took us a fair while to get around, esppecially as we put our history student caps on and started taking dissertation pictures etc.

So that's one of my diss pictures on the left and the Montparnasse Tower on the right. So if you thought that the Tower was a good example, here is the picture of the trip: my coursemate Sophia, who had the (mis)fortune to sit next to this man on the Metro.
Actually, it was probably worse for him - look at his face!!
Next up for us was the site of the Rafle du Vel d'Hiv. Basically that's where 13,000 Jewish people were rounded up during the war and kept in a velodrome until they were eventually sent to Auschwitz.

After that we walked along the Seine and saw the Eiffel Tower up close. We also went to the Bir Hakiem Bridge to see the memorial
to the famous battle (of the same name) there.

We took a double-decker RER train to Notre Dame after that and also saw the Memorial to Martyrs of the Deportation, very annoyingly, the museum was closed, so I'm having to look it up on the internet and just pretend that I've been there!

We spent a lovely lunchtime sitting on the banks of the Seine, eating very yummy ice cream. I totally forgot that I'd given it up for Lent!!

Next, we wandered to the Marais, which is the Jewish Quarter of Paris, where there are lots of plaques etc about the Holocaust.

We went to the the Mur des Justes and Musee de la Shoah (Wall of the Righteous Amongst Nations and Holocaust Museum). We also saw a girls school from which all of the pupils had been deported.

We ate again that night at Rue Mouffetard and then went on again to Cafe des Arts for drinks. We also met my coursemate Phil's French girlfriend and they invited us out to a club!!

For details of that night, and our last day in Paris, head over to blog 3, which will be up soon!!

P*A*R*I*S* 14-16th March (1)

Well hello! I'm back, in fact I've been back a week, so pardon me for slacking!!

On with the story....

Day One ~ Arrival in Paris

I was up at 7.30am to finish my faffing, left the house at 8.30am, got the bus at 8.45am, got the train at 9.32am and caught the Eurostar at 12.29pm. We got to Paris at 4pm French time and headed straight here to the Hotel Port Royal, our home for the next couple of days.

The hotel was quite nice compared to what we were expecting of a 1* French hotel! Except that all of the floors, corridors and stairwells were extremely crooked and you felt as if you were drunk walking along them! We had a Starbucks and McDonalds very close by - which were often the first port of call in the morning. Rue Moufftard was just around the corner, as was the Metro station Les Gobelins!!


The evening saw us take in the Tuilieres Gardens, Obelisque (with Eiffel Tower in the background), Champs Elysees and Arc de Triomphe, all before finally going to dinner!

We ate not far from the hotel in Rue Moufftard, which is full of little restaurants! The food is amazing: Onion Soup, Lamp Chops and Apple Tart all for 14 euros! We finished the evening here at the Cafe des Arts and went back to the Hotel a fair bit knackered!!

So that was Day One, short because we spent most of it in various modes of transport.
One thing of note is that, mature as we are, we got a bit of an obsession with phallic imagery over the weekend... :-x Ummm, so we've had the Obelisque and there'll be a closer shot of the Eiffel Tower. As well as a great one with a.... well read on mes cheries!!

Time is flying!!!

Firstly it is....

So yay and yay again to that!

Secondly, it is a mere....

and then there are only...

Well I admit, I just wanted to have a blog for March already, so here it is!!! I really like the pretty Countdown Timers on Mickeypath.com and so I decided to use three of them here and give you a taste of what I shall be blogging about over the next month...

I've booked my hotel - the Wellington - for the night before the f2f, so that's a weight off my shoulders and on to my credit card (ouch!) It only cost £28 after VAT was added, so I can't really complain especially as I'm poor! My new Oyster card arrived through the post today too, so I can take the tube without having to worry about buying tickets!

In terms of recent events there is little of great importance to impart...

Well, I've sorted out my dissertation now and I know what I'm doing, so I've made a start on that and I have to be ready to WRITE IT in two weeks, so that's all of my free time gone up the creek until then!

Then during Easter, I'm using the first 3 weeks to do ALL of my 4000 word essay. I'm then coming back a week before the end of the holidays to restart dissertation operations, which should take me all the way through to the deadline which is MAY 7TH 2009!

WHHHHOOOOOPPP!!!!

In sadder news, our router died last night, and we spent a very painful day without the internet today. Luckily, happily and marvelously it is now fixed and we have been reunited!!

Well, I'm going to get my Euros on Saturday which is exciting too - it's all go!

I do believe that's all. Allow me to leave you with this lovely picture: