Nuit Blanche!

Ta dah!!!!!

Another blog entry for you all, sorry it’s been so long in the coming, I’ve just been sooo busy entertaining Australian visitors and starting my language course. Tonight I am meeting up with Lauren Southern in Paris for dinner and am sooo excited! It will be great to see her here, I wanted to go visit her in London when she lived there, but it didn’t happen, so it's lovely to have her come here!

About 2 weeks ago I saw Natalie again, we went up to Montmartre again, Kelli joined us later for Nutella crepes! I must say I was a little bit disappointed with mine, the man had folded up my crepe and just slopped Nutella on top! Not rolled in it...totes stingy!! So that’s a bit of advice...get your Nutella crepe take away as they have to fold the Nutella into the crepe! AKA ask the black guy in the little window to do it, his are ze best!

I have been to church here a couple of times, they are soo friendly there, and it's nice too because it feels a bit like home, I guess it’s just being surrounded by people that feel the same as me and worshipping altogether singing about God, I'm looking forwards to this coming wknd too as I'll be going again! It's cute, they have a luncheon each Sabbath, and everyone brings what they can-typical sevvy food! Poor people though as there is only 2 little microwaves to warm everything up. It's incredible though because although it doesn’t look like there is lots of food, it goes a long way! You just have to beware of this one older Madagascar guy!!! He always comes over to talk to Kelli and I, and I mean SPIT more like it, you have to hold your plate far far away from him or else you end up with his food on your plate, very gross!! Don't get me wrong he is very nice, but he doesn’t know when to leave you alone and to have conversations with other people!

Last week when we were at church there was also another Australian family visiting from Cannes, they sounded oh so Australian! I think it's more so where they were from, different lingo!

Speaking about Australians, I met up with my friend Emily from Perth and her boyfriend Reece last week at Galleries Lafayette for a spot of shopping, it's huge there and very expensive. If you want to buy Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci, this is the place for you! Unfortunately it doesn’t seem the place for me, unless I get a rich boyfriend that wants to take me shopping! hehe

Last week I started my French course at La Clef, it's such a great place to do classes as all of the girls in my class are soo nice, especially 4 in particular, on the first day we formed our friendship! And since then we have been hanging out heaps. Classes are going well, it was quite tricky at the beginning as the teacher only speaks in French, I was thinking to myself 'How on earth am I meant to learn the language when she doesn’t even explain what she is saying!!!' It seems to me that it's just how it goes! She's great as she does actions to help get the point a bit. Yesterday we had to take in a sort of show and tell for the class then they would ask us questions in French about it and we had to respond in French! I took in a finger puppet of a Koala and Kangaroo that I had given my kids here and talked about them! My friend Sarah made a robot out of biscuit boxes and coke cans! Hilarious!

Saturday just gone I thought it best to sleep in as long as possible as I knew I had a big night ahead of me! Me and the girls from class caught the very last 12.20 am train into Paris to go to Nuit Blanche, it's an event that happens once a year, it means white knight, meaning night with no sleep! There are certain places around Paris that have light, video or art exhibitions, so our aim was to see as many as we could. A very fun night although we barely saw any Nuit Blanche! We saw about 2 exhibits in total! We started the night at the Arc de Triomph and walked all the way down to the Eiffel Tower to be greeted by one big giant dark tower!!! So disappointing as I have stated a couple of times on facebook and pictures! lol It turns out that the tower lights get turned off at 1 am, too bad if you’re a tourist one night and just miss out, lucky I can go back, but I was really looking forwards to it as it was my first time at the tower!

After the tower with no lights, we walked to Notre Dame in St Michel, hoping to see some more exhibits as that’s a main area for attractions. It took us about 2 hours! That Seine is longer than it looks on the map! Yes we did walk quite slow and stop along the way, but I must say that the smell of urine along the way makes it easy to try walk faster! That's one of the bad things in Paris, they don't provide many public toilets, and if they do they are locked! So the street it is for a many! (not me)

 

Along the way we came across a cute red English scooter so thought it necessary to hop on and take photos! Then when we were at a gorgeous bridge this random Mexican guy came up, put down his money pot and put on his hat and started dancing and singing to all of us! Us being poor aupairs with no money told him we had no money, he just kept dancing so we walked off, not a very agreeable man as he kicked the plastic bottle at us!

Might I add that whilst I'm writing this I am eating my 2nd yogurt... I now love yogurt!!!

Back to the story!

After the dancing man we walked and walked and walked and walked!!! We did have all night so what was the rush? It's funny how many times I have been asked directions since I’ve been living here; do I look like a regular around these areas? I don’t know, but at the Louvre we got asked by some New Zealanders which way the Eiffel Tower was, then by some French guys! Lucky for them we knew! haha

Along the way to St Michel we went past the tunnel where Princess Di died, it was lovely reading all of the nice things people wrote about her on the marble wall. Gorgeous memorial they have designed.

Once in St Michel we saw Notre dame in all it's dark glory (like the Eiffel) with people dancing to bongos down on the banks of the Seine. Sadly we couldn't find many more exhibits so resolved ourselves to finding a cafe, it was only 4.30 am after all!!! But after a long search and not finding any cafes with coffee under 8 Euros we decided to just go into a cafe, find somewhere quite and doze!

Once nearly morning we went to pass another hour by in the metro station...waiting for Mc Donald’s to open for our breakfast of mini pancakes and strong coffee! Once breakfast had satisfied us, we needed to pass another 2 hours until the museums had opened, as it was the first Sunday of the month all the museums where free. I looked up opening hours of Notre Dame church on my phone and saw that a service was starting at 8.30, so it was off to mass we went! Quite amazing being in there, I couldn’t help thinking I was actually in Notre Dame! Some of the girls used this as another chance to doze! The sound was amazing with organs playing and the lady singing hymns,

 it was beautiful inside too.

It was then time to go to the Louvre and see special Mona Lisa!!! Can't believe I saw the Mona Lisa! I couldn’t stop thinking of the Mr. Bean movie where he takes the painting hostage! It's incredible how small the painting is compared to what I’d imagined. The castle is so gorgeous and huge, I sometimes wish I could have lived in that era and not just been a tourist. It's all so over the top ornate with great attention to detail, it's true they don't make buildings like they used to. I need to go back to the Louvre as I barely saw any of it, we did sneak in a nap on the garden lawns though! Was great not to get kicked off the grass this time!

In exactly 14 days I'm going to Spain to visit my friend Belen! It will be so nice to see her again and celebrate my 22nd birthday there! Let's see how they do it Spanish style!!!

Well I think I’ve written your eyes off for now, until next time!

xxx