| Here's the lucky group of Students that went along for the "Capitol Connection" (the France/England Trip - much thanks to EF tours - Note: EF stands for Education First) from Campbell Collegiate. | |
April 2nd (Good Friday) 1999,
Regina Airport.
18 students and 3 chaperones climbed onto a very crappy and very
loud little bush plane that would whisk them off to their final destination...
Winnipeg Manitoba. Obviously, our flight wasn't as direct as it could have
been.
Anyway, between Regina and Paris, I only got about 20 min. of sleep. There is a good side to that. I got to see the sunrise from my window. It's so cool! It was as if someone divided the sky in half with an invisible marker. The west half of the sky was still dark blue/black so you could see the stars, while at the same time, the east half was all red-orangy-pinkish and light blue!
April 3rd, Saturday, 1999.
| Finally, we arrive at Charles de Gualle Airport, almost 24 hours after we left our beds back in Regina. The airport is bloody huge (so is Heathrow - a mega airport in London)! Here, we met up with a small group from Consort Alberta. When we arrived at our hotel - the Camelia) we met up with two other groups that would be joining us on our adventure, a group from Cleveland Ohio, and a group from Santa Ana California (sorry if I spelled anything wrong there!). |  |
After dumping our stuff at the hotel, and introduced to our tour (hmm, to our tour... try to say that five times fast. And while you're at it, NAME TEN CHOCOLATE BARS!) guide James, all 52 (or so) of us walked to a restaurant called the Hippopotamus. At one point during the meal, my lettuce leaf, in a desperate attempt to escape before its execution, leaped up and attacked me. But I stopped it before it could get away. After the meal we had a very RICH dessert, but were able to work off the calories with a nice walk through the RED-LIGHT DISTRICT. The Moulin Rouge (a topless/strip bar with a huge Red Windmill - hence the name) resides here. We didn't go inside but the outside of the place was pretty cool.
Some more walking
lead us up 210 (give or take) steps to the top of Mont Martre (Martyr Mountain/hill).
The highlight there (besides the wonderful view of Paris lit up at night)
was the Basilique de Sacré Coeur (Sacred Heart Basilica).
| It's beautiful! Some of us took
the opportunity to go inside and watch a few hundred people participating
in Easter Services. Candles and incense created an ethereal cloud of smoke,
rising up into the dome of the church, and eventually escaping into the
Paris night sky.
All around the church, there are several tourist type stores as well as many coffee shops and handfuls of people, asking if they can sketch your portrait (for lots of money of course), offering to immortalize you in graphite, or charcoal. If you ever journey to Paris, I highly recommend making the climb up to the top of Mont Martre at night. |
 |
After that, it was back to the hotel to try to sleep for the first
time in over 36 hours.
April 4th, Easter Sunday, 1999.
The next day, we all hopped onto a bus and drove to Versailles. The
town of Versailles is kinda like a suburb of Paris. And within the town
is the enormous Palace where the kings of France (and the Queens) would
live. Some would even describe it as fricken huge. We saw quite a bit of
it, but I'm sure we couldn't have seen the whole thing! And as if the area
of the palace wasn't big enough, the gardens are even bigger. (It broke
my heart to hear about the storms that destroyed so many of the trees up
there around Christmas).
| All who was there would have to agree that Versailles was "très cool". We spent the better part of the morning there. Oh, if you ever venture out into that neck of the European woods, you have to go EARLY in the morning if you want to beat all the other tourists and not have to wait for an hour and a half in line. |  |
After Versailles, our guide for the day, François, took us on a bus tour of Paris. We saw most of the major sights (L'Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame etc.). We also learned (with a small skirmish) that its illegal to take pictures of Police Officers/Cars/Trucks in Paris. It was a little surprising, but the cops there are rather scary, for several reasons (the #1 reason in my book would be the fact that they carry around BIG automatic weapons).
