pack and go!

paris part 3

so now, as promised i am going to write about my night experience in paris. to be honest, my night experience while i'm in belgium is very limited. most of the time, my night is spend in my studio, watching tv if not going out to have dinner with my colleagues once in a while. not that i meant that i have a wonderful night life back in malaysia.

when i am still a student, my typical night out usually meant hanging out at mamak having glass of teh tarik and hours of chit chatting with some close friends. if i have some money, i will go out for movie or roaming around jonker walk or any night market and hunting for food with some friends at some familiar places (that has passed certain criterias: the price must be reasonable, the portion must be generous and the taste must be good).

see, i am such a food hunter all the time. however, i can say that i have totally no night life in seremban since i am not keen to go out at night when i'm in seremban (apa je yang ada beb?). and when i was in kl, my night experience is totally depend on whom i was hanging out with. but most of the time, since i am not the type who goes clubbing so they were spent with dining out with some people or went to movie. you see, i have small crowd of people whom i can spent the time talking non stop and this people knew who they are. haha! apa yang aku da melalut ni?

ok lets get back to my paris night. after checking in to our hotel, we took sometimes to get ourselves back on the feet. penat wooo...tapi apapun pengembaraan mesti diteruskan. the initial plan was made by zul and eventhough there were voices heard of not participating, we're on our feet as a huge group again. oh yeah, the thing about going out after checking in is you need to return your room key to the front desk and get it back when you return to the hotel. i wonder if its some kind of rule for any hotel in europe but thats they way it was with ours.

first destination that night, hard rock cafe paris. ok ok, i know some of you are probably giving me 'that' look now and furthermore, i never been to hrc kl, owkay. but then, i think its pretty good plan too since it received support from the whole group where almost everyone ended up buying something at the rockshop. i bought two tees and received a complimentary gift from hrc, guitar shape tomato squeezer or something? i dont give a damn and it looks hideous too. no, we didnt dined in there since we still need to catch metro to see eiffel at night! eiffel at midnight to be exact. im not sure what is the name of the metro station that we stopped at since it was mike and zul who navigated our way. but its not really far actually from a good spot where you can get a good view of eiffel from the other side of siene. the tower was brightly lit up with maybe thousands of light from every corner of tower. it was such a breathtaking view and suddenly my heart pounded with disbelief. funny, but i really pinched myself since i couldn't believe my eyes that i was standing in front of the tall tower that i previously could only see in postcards, magazines or tv. it just so beautiful and inviting and i hardly could take my eyes off of it.

we spent sometimes by the river bank to snap more photos of the tower. and all of sudden, the thing that i wish never happened, is happening. my camera (borrowed from azhan, actually) was running out of battery and how dumb i am, i didnt bring the battery charger with me to paris. that mean, if i ran out of battery now, i would also have no photos tomorrow. i knew i'm in a deep s**t (need to sensor some curses since i think mom and dad is also reading my blog now, :P) dan terpaksa la berjimat-jimat. so i am so sorry for the lack of photo's quality. night photos consumed a lot of battery energy for the flash light. gosh! turned out every face in my night photos bermisai-misai!

after satisfied, we walked along the avenue to trocadero, a wide esplanade between the palais de chaillot and eiffel complete with a beautiful fountains. the stairs to the front terrace of the palais were really one of the challenges to my feet. we sat around the terrace for the remainder of the night watching the lights sparkle at midnight from the eiffel. i read somewhere that it took rock climbers 2 months to install thousands of leds on the outside of the eiffel tower and every hour during the night they are set off randomly. i also learnt that the tower shrinks up to 12cm every winter when the rivettes contract.

the atmosphere was pretty happening up there at the terrace. young people were hanging out with their crowds, couples kissing everywhere (perhaps it made the kiss special to them since its in front of the eiffe, for bottle sake) and there are street vendor trying to sell souvenirs at a very low price and we can even bargain. i've learnt the trick of bargaining that night and ended up buying eiffel miniature at a price that i am so satisfied with.

at midnight, the light from eiffel went blinking beautifully and after the show, we walked back to the nearest metro station to head back to our hotel. there were series of funny incidents happened on the metro. first was when the metro didnt stop at the station we want and 5 of us (jess, brenda, zul, marwan and me) trapped inside the train while mike, mat and azli has already got out at the next station. its because the door stucked and the train has started moving. there were hell lot of running around to catch the next metro back to the station where mike and the rest were waiting for us. and more running to catch the metro that head to the station we want to go. i felt like if i ran more that night, i could break my legs and start walking with my hands. to make it worst, after we hopped in the right metro there were no empty seats available.

still out breath, in front of us there were bunch of drunkened youths in the middle of train making noise. we're making assumption that they were too drunk and got kicked out of any disco. :P at first its pretty annoying but then it started to feel funny. and we started to move our body to the song that the drunkened guy sang. it was eddy murphy's party all the time. seeing our response, the group start to sing even louder and performed some acrobatic stuff on the train. haha!

and guess what happened next? we counterback the group, we sang rasa sayang to them. its damn hillarious and i felt like the whole train is roaring with our voice singing rasa sayang! we were granted with a huge applaused from them right after we finished the song. it felt so good! and they jumped out of the train at the next station and we still couldnt stop laughing like we're on sugar high. perhaps too much running?

we called it a night when we reached our hotel at almost 1 am. i am sharing room with mat and we have this spacious room up on the 6th floor with lot of beds! two single beds and one queen sized. we throw our stuffs on the single beds and tuck ourself into the comfy queen bed. its too cold to sleep alone, heh! the goal has been set for the next day, we need to get up as early as we can to queue for the line to get on the eiffel!

Labels: france, paris

posted by syik s. @ 4:22 AM