23 Feb - 12 March 2016
Went to to these two amazing place during that period of time with Shuqi. Spent almost 3 weeks in these two countries and sometimes I got kind of home sick and miss my dog so much. Minus the cold wind and missing home, this trip was awesome. I have always wanted to visit Europe and was delighted that Shuqi wanted to visit there too. We actually wanted to surprise our friends and keep this trip as a secret (only becca and jialing knew) so we can surprise them when we reach there. Well, that didn't go quite well though.
This trip took around 2 months to plan, I think. We booked our flight from JetAirways which cost us about 800 bucks each, but we need to transit at Mumbai though. Since both of us are travelling alone and we have no relatives living there, we booked our accommodation from an app called Airbnb, a very useful app for us as we managed to booked 2 places, one for Paris and another for London, at quite a cheap price.
Paris
We were very lucky that we found this listing. This whole place only cost us 50 bucks each per night. Very convenient as it is less than 5 minutes walk from the metro and the station is exactly where we need to take our Eurostar to London. We could also see the Eiffel Tower from afar and it looks so pretty when it is lighted up at night.
London
Found this cute room which is only about 6 minutes walk away from the tube. However, the whole place does not belong to us. There are total 4 rooms in the house so we need to share the kitchen and toilet with other people which we rarely see them. They were very friendly though.
Ready to fly....
D-day! Showered my baby girl with tons of hugs and kisses. Can't believe I survived 3 weeks without her.
Mom, Sis and Becca (plus Shuqi's parents and brother) went to the airport to send us off. I won't be able to see my sister for 2 months as she have to go to Dalian for her internship and will only be back on mid April.
DAY 1
Touched down at Paris around 8 in the morning. Had a long sleep on the flight from Mumbai to Paris but we still look so tired. Didn't plan any events for that day as we were scared we will be jet lag so we recharged ourselves with wifi for the rest of day.
DAY 2
DISNEYLANDDDDDDD!
Okay, I have to admit, I didn't really enjoyed my trip there. It was like freaking 4 degree celsius and we were shivering like mad when we were walking from the metro toward the gates. Since we didn't expect it to be so cold, I only wore like 2 layers underneath my jacket.I don't know how Shu Qi can stand the cold without her jacket while taking this photo. Look at me, I actually wanted to zip my jacket all the way up. I think I look like a chinese dumpling.
Didn't managed to take any photos with the mascots as they entertain young children only, so here's a picture of us in the cold.
One thing that I enjoyed the most is the finale of the day. The castle is lighted up with fireworks and it's like watching a movie showed on the castle. It feels so magical. I had goosebumps when my favorite Disney song is played ('I See The Light'). Nothing much to write for that day.
DAY 3
The day that we explore Paris. Shu Qi found a web site that gives free tour (but it's better if you give them tips, they did a very great job showing us around) and we decided to give it a try as it saves the hassle of us planning for the day.
This is our tour guide, Paul (?), I think and behind him is his wife. One thing bad about writing after 5 months of the trip HAHAHA I couldn't remember his name. Both of them gave us a nice tour and we almost covered all the places that we are suppose to visit. A very great experience. We also found out that there are three other Singaporeans in the tour, which means almost half of the people in the group are Singaporeans, including us.
First stop is the Notre Dame, which is the location where we are suppose to meet the guides. Very easy to spot them as they were wearing bring orange vest. The tour started at Notre Dame and ended at the Eiffel Tower.
Paris is such a beautiful city. I'm really glad we made this decision to visit.
Here's the Love Bridge, they put boards around the fence to stop people from putting more locks as one of the fence came off due to the weight of the locks. For safety reasons, they have to stop people form adding more weight to the bridge. It's such a sad thing that we didn't get to put ours (even thougj both of us are not a couple lol)
AND HERE WE AREEEEEEE
After around two hours, we finally reached the Eiffel Tower! (which means photo-taking time hehe) And that was the end of the tour, I really enjoyed the whole experience. We book the tour through this website ; http://www.wegowalking.com/ Spent around half an hour or so to walk and take picture on our way to the tower.
We paid around 4 euros to climb the tower, much cheaper than taking the lift and it's at your own pace. The problem is I don't exercise much and I need to climb around 700 steps to reach level 2. I was already out of breath when I reached the first level HAHAHA ShuQi looks fine as she's a frequent jogger. The view at level one is already breath-taking. We rest for a few minutes before we head on to the second level
Okay, I swear my heart was racing like mad when we climbing up, it's much more harder than I thought T.T
Panorama view of Paris.
We had our dinner and went to tour around the neighborhood to let time past as we want to see the night view of the tower. It was amazing. The tower lights up when it's dark and sparkle for five minutes in every hour.
DAY 4
FaceTime with fam and friends after settling down, missed them so much.
That's all for now, will blog about our London trip soon I think?
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