The Unplanned Paris Tour

Okay, I promised Luke that we won't do the full Paris trip.  No sights, just few things on my wish list.  It involves going inside the Notre Dame and Jardin du Luxembourg as it is my favourite site in Paris.  Tour de Eiffel didn't even make it on my list as I have seen it on my last Paris trips.  I know, it should be the first one as this was an anniversary trip.  Paris always equates to couples with Eiffel Tower photo in the background.  But not for me.  It's too much of a cliche.  :-P

The first stop on the trip was Jardin du Luxembourg.  I kept on mispronouncing jardin to "hardin" instead of "jardan".  I blame the similarity on Tagalog and my Spanish class for this mistake.  When I was single, I promised to go back to this place when I have a boyfriend.  I didn't realise that after 4 years, I will be back celebrating my 1st year wedding anniversary.  Fate have a funny way of giving us what we want.

 I want this on the wall babe!!!

Plakada sa hair!  No more buns for this trip!

In Jardin du Luxembourg, we found an Asian sister to take photo of us.  Mind you, she approached us first as she was alone on holiday.  Luckily, Asians have Asian photo standards which explains the lovey dovey couple pics of my hub and I :)) 

Across Jardin du Luxembourg is Parthenon so we had quick photo session as well.

This has to be taken with my iPhone.  Our camera wasn't focusing properly that day.

From Parthenon, we head to the train station to buy 2 days unlimited pass and ask for directions to Pere Lachaise.  We boarded the wrong train and ended up in Tour de Eiffel.  Fate have funny way of doing things.  So here's the cliche, totally ate my words.

Thank God for iPhone!  Without it, we won't be able to have couple pic.  We only took few shots and this was the best.  This should go to the wall too babe.  X

Pere Lachaise was a disaster!  This is probably the most famous cemetery in Paris.  It has Chopin, Modigliani and Jim Morrison buried on it.  What I didn't realise was the place was massive and doing a tour on your own is not advisable.  They may have a map but finding the actual grave site is still difficult.  We spent over an hour in there but we only found Chopin.  At least we found one or I will be totally pissed.  Hahaha!  Actually, I am getting pissed that we can't find any grave site.  We first settled to Jim Morrison then Modigliani but since Chopin was very near to where we were during that time, we settled for him.  

We were hungry at this point so we decided to go to Basin de la Villette.  According to my research, it is the largest lake in Paris.  What I failed to read was, it is the largest artificial lake in Paris.  I thought it would be something different but when we got there, I realised that I have been.  It was the area where we stayed in our 2009 trip.  My research also lead me to believe that the area is full of restaurants.  It wasn't.  It feels more like a residential area for me with handful of restaurants.  I think staying in the centre of Paris spoilt it for us.  Luckily, we had a fab meal overlooking the lake.

If this is your first time in Paris, give this a miss.  There are so many places to visit closer to the city centre.  19th Arr is so far!!  

Lastly, we went to Parc de Villette for a free outdoor cinema since we were in the area.  I messed up with the train so we ended up in the wrong place.  I thought we could walk it through.  We can't.  Luckily, there was a train station in the area.  We took it on the right time.  If we didn't, we could we'll end up nowhere.

This photo was taken before dusk.  By the time the film started, there were at least a thousand people in the whole park.  We were there at the right time and we were seated close enough to the screen, exit and toilet.  :)  Tetro was playing that night.  We left halfway through the film as we weren't confident with the train times.  The film BTW, started at half 10.  By the time that we left, it was almost 12 midnight.  

Luke slept til late that night.