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!!!