Well we we´re unsuccessful at writing a blog on our first leg of this trip but here it is now in retrospect:

DAY 0 - Aislinn continues to practice carrying her bag (which she packed in plenty of time) whilst Maia packs and then has to repack hers. A mad rush to St Pancras results in Maia getting over excited, running, and falling over. This was followed by a leisurely glass of bubbly at the worlds longest champagne bar and then we we´re off!

we were staying at a nice hostel called Le Monclair Hostel in Montmartre, sharing a room with a noisy American couple and an old Brazilian dude who was either sleeping or wandering around in his grotty old pants. Nice! After exploring a bit, a long search for a restaurant for dinner lead us up to the Sacre Coeur and some stunning views of Paris by night.

DAY 1 - We got the Metro to Parc de la Villette. A strange sculpturey themed park thingy where we stopped for a spot of lunch (or rather, some food we nicked from the hostel when the breakfast nazi wasnt watching). We then stumbled across a submarine! Not a working one or anything, it had been turned into a museum. It turned out that that was attatched to the huge building we had completely ignored behind it, the city´s science museum. That was full of all sorts of exciting things to do with fish and space and sound and genes and I think its safe to say we all regressed slightly for the aftrenoon.

DAY 2: A proper cultural day. The museum of Modern Art (a bit of a let down apart from a huge Dufy mural with a robot in front of it), the fashion museum (with a 20s exibition on), the eiffel tower (we didnt go up it cos the queues were a mile long), and Palais de Tokyo

......

Well that was just taking far too bloody long to write. its actually april 6th now and we´re in valencia so heres a quick run down of sone paris highlights:

*palais de tokyo´s crazy installation exhibition thing cellar door with paintballing and flashing lights and a forest all controlled by the artist fron a little roon (see our facebook photos for more...)

*visiting christine (maias parisian au pair from when she was 5). she fed us alcohol and saucisson and little mini croque monsieurs. travelling is hungry work so these things excite us

* another food point - if you´ever go to paris, get a crepe du chef fron chez nicos and a felafel especial from L´As du Felafel. two of the most delicious meals ever and we had them both on our last day

*the road with the felafels in le marais also has a v cheap and exciting vintage shop. we bought it all (well, a jacket 3 dresses and a bag for a grand total of 45 quid)

* there were sad sights too. the road along the seine near the louvre is full of pet shops were people buy those mini dogs. we spent a very long time looking at their cute sad little faces in their tiny cages. further down the river, by gare d´Austerlitz we discovered a parisian shanty town. there was a whole little community of people living in tents and corragated iron shacks. there was also a man who´d built himself a little house on the main road out of left over building and road works materials.

so that was paris! look at the facebook albums though cos a picture tells a thousand words and we´ve got thousands of pictures!!!