My arm is quite sore. I have been pinching it many times and saying to myself “OMG I am in Paris”. Good news is my cold has gone. Think I’ve given it now to Ann, sorry about that.

Sounds were the first things that I noticed different from home here in Paris. Living in a quiet Lake Macquarie we don’t hear sirens often, or the clatter of garbage trucks, tooting of car horns or the zipping of scooters outside our windows. I flung the apartment’s lounge windows open as soon as we got here to admire our view (see below) and breath in Paris. Sure these different noises comes with the territory but keep the noise down people! BTW I have slept well every night, so far.

To give you some orientation our apartment is in a great locality near the Lourve and close to many Metro stations. Would I recommend the apartment, nope. It’s eccentric which is fine but the owner, well he could be more professional. No, you can not build an additional bathroom late at night when we are asleep. Anyway, it’s our base to explore Paris.

The next thing I notice are the buildings with their wrought iron balconies, decorative stone motifs above or below large white windows, gargoyles, fanciful styled columns and window boxes with plants, I love looking them. I feel everywhere I look there is another photograph to take.

Beautiful buildings that are tucked onto small blocks so the building shape is narrow or in some cases triangle. Small windows poke out of the roof and I just love the attic style apartments.

On some of our walks we have spotted through building entrances something behind we have had to check out. On sneaking in we  found beautiful and curved staircases going up three levels. Sometimes they might be a little rough and has paint peeling, but that all adds to the ambiance.

Paris dictator?

Morning walk along the Seine. That is the Musse D’Orsay

Our view outside our apartment is of a shop that has sewing machines in it’s window display. Love it.

Arcade with wedding party

Curved stairwell

To add to the whole Paris ambiance, Nigel, Ann and I have been doing a few early morning walks. One way to see the sights close by without the hordes of people around.

Morning walk past the Lourve & it’s pyramid

La Parisian newspaper stand

All the boys photographing Notre Dame

We have started visiting the tourist sites and whilst I love taking photos of the obvious site I also love taking photos of the unusual or unexpected. Here Damien, Matthew and Nigel are all taking their photos of Notre Dame with the hordes of people doing same around them.

Bruce my old boss mentioned before I left that only one lift was working at the Eiffel Tower. We brushed it off thinking they would have fixed it by the time we got to Paris. WRONG. Three hours later we had queued for the various lifts and spent about 20 minutes on the tower. The kids were great in the lines.

Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower & merry-go-round

Love the tourist souvenirs

We are seeing, tasting and smelling a whole lot of different things. The kids just went wild in this sweet shop not far from Sacre Coeur. I have written a post about food in Paris but one small story I’ll share now is how we discovered a different flavoured Camembert plus its so inexpensive here. Of course we are doing you all proud and gorging ourselves on the cheese. But we wondered why we would not see crackers (savory biscuits) in the shops and plucked up the courage to ask the cheese shop owner where we could get them. “We in France eat cheese with our bread”. First lesson for us ditch the crackers. Of course the cheese tastes better with bread 🙂

Sweet shop

Sacre Coeur & moving statue

Cool dude near Sacre Coeur

All holidays will have their good and bad times. Whilst at the Paris Concord area the other day we were going to go on a boat trip we packaged with the top deck bus tour but got caught in this storm. Well actually, we thought the storm had passed and were in awe looking at the clouds an the Eiffel Tower in the distance. But if it wasn’t for that storm we would not have found a classical band playing in the Metro. I love Paris.

Concord area Paris

Concord area looking back on the Eiffel Tower with storm behind. The storm got us.

Paris metro live music venue

p.s. No luck on getting back Nigel’s iPad, Laptop and prescription glasses. No matter, two have already been replaced. Dear loosing luggage gods, we have made a donation to you, now leave us alone. Thank you.