Bonjour Paris

"Recap of winter trip journey: Newcastle> Manchester> Paris> London"

Day 1

Bonjour!

Manchester to London

If you guys were aware, there has been a serious service disruption by Eurostar, the only train service to Paris from London last December. Their trains broke down due to the heavy snow and their schedule has been cancelled/ postponed. Well, we were travelling all the way to London just to try our luck anyway....

The glass building is St. Pancras International Train Station. We queued for more than half an hour to get into the building alone. Thank god there's volunteers giving out free food, including mince pie (my first time trying and they are yummy) and drinks. It was really cold and Jon wasn't with us and we had so many luggages to carry around. And oh, the queue didn't just end when we managed into the building. It continues for another hour until we reach Eurostar counter and fuh....thank god we managed to hop into one of their train *wink*

Arrival in Paris was a sour one. We tried to get on the taxi, with the address our landlord supplied. We rent an apartment in St. Maur and the place was really cool, with no picture though. So when he saw the address, he couldn't figure out where it is, and attempted to remove our luggages which he has already loaded into his taxi. He's a bit dishonest and I'm pretty pissed with him. 

While we figured out the proper address- me calling the landlord, yadda yadda.... the taxi meter was still running. Taxi is so expensive. We did try to figure out our way by using train but then, the lady in customer service counter speaks French and only French. 

When we finally figured things out and reach our apartment, the lady in charged guided us through our apartment in French, even when we told her that we couldn't understand at all. I've got to say that French is very ethnocentric :)

Day 2 

With the bad experiences, we went on with our free and easy tour. As the day goes on, we think we did great- with intensive understanding of the maps and train routes. Travelling around was a piece of cake then ;)

First stop: Hotel de Ville

A very cool random man with kid offered us help when we wanted to get to Notre Dame de Paris by train and he told us to stop at Hotel de Ville and walked across the river for better view and all. He's right. The hotel was in our itinerary anyway....

Haha. I am too small to be the focus point.

Then, we crossed the river... (ok, now I am acting a bit lame to explain every single detail...)

I like how the trees are in a strrrrraight line :)

Notre Dame de Paris

*my head goes: thehunchbackofnotredame*

Interior of hunch back of Notre Dame

The good thing about Paris is that there's no snow there (I'm in the anti-snow list now btw). The bad news: we weren't having good luck and when we were leaving Notre Dame, it was raining.......

Third stop: The Pantheon

Then, we moved on the Lourve Museum

I think the only regret we really had was not visiting the Museum. It was pretty late and the ticket was pretty expensive for all four of us. So it's a waste because according to someone, it takes one whole day to see everything...... it was later that we found out that students might enter for free. Boohooooo

Day 2

Christmas Day

It's Disneyland

We woke up very early for this but because it's Christmas or whatever other reasons it might be, the train service delayed for so long and we were stuck at the interchange station for close to two hours and freezing..

Lot of photos

Greetings from Mr. Walt Disney and his Mickey Mouse

Arrival

Mickey #1

Mickey #2

I realized that I have a thing for the 'half hang leg' in my pictures... lol

Minnie Mouse

Daisy Duck

See! Look at the leg (again)

I'm not sure it's Chip or Dale....

Us riding on a carriage....

Main entrance to Disneyland Park

We bought tickets to both Disney Studio and Disneyland Park and obviously we didn't have enough time to cover all, what's more with the delayed train service.......

Disney Castle

I think I almost closed my eyes, or they're just too small -.-

Winter Show

Waiting to enter a 3D show

The amazing castle

Last shot for Disney

Day 3

Versailles, Eiffel Tower, Champs-Elysees

Palace of Verrsailles

*Super-duper far from wherever we were from or practically just anywhere -.-*

Huge and magnificent garden of Versailles Palace

Moving on to Eiffel Tower and Champs-Elysees...

With the moon :)

*paiseh but I didn't edit the night photos for Champs-Elysees*

Day 4

Eiffel Tower & Champs-Elysees

continue...

-With my small bro-

I like the bling effects on my shades ;)

That's all for Paris! Tata ;)

Sister's 21st Birthday

So Dionn celebrated her 21st birthday early March. It was supposed to be a surprise (by her friends) but for 'some unexplainable circumstances', she knew something was on. Hint: Angela wanted to text her friend that she could not get candles for Dionn's cake and oops, the message was sent to her instead. Hahahaha

She was still somehow surprised. Her friends managed to manipulate her to think that only 2 of them are coming over to celebrate her birthday at 12am sharp but instead, there were like 10 of them?

There are lot of photos taken with her friends but I'll leave it to herself to post her big day :)

To extend her celebration, we went dinner together at La Tasca and with seven girls and one boy, we ordered about 80 over tapas....and the waiter told us that nobody in the restaurant had ordered that much before. Are we good or what? (Kiasu) 

'Part' of our food

Dionn and I 

Group photo :)

Present time

From Jon and I

Guess what's inside?

..

..

..

..

Hope you like it, sis!

And this present didn't surprise her either! She seems to know everything -.-

Off to work on my not-at-all motivated dissertation. H-E-L-P!

When class is boring...

Make full use of the Haribo 
(in Banana's flavour)