One night (left) in Paris

I last left off on my lazy day in Paris where I'd bought a camera and basically sat around doing nothing but writing this blog.

That day was, as you can probably tell, pretty uneventful. The following day I headed off by myself to see Sacre Couer, the surrounding area of Montmarte and Notre Dame.

I started the day off bright and early, my first stop was Sacre Couer. As I emerged from the underground metro stop at the base of the steps that led up to the basilica I was absolutely shocked at the sheer size of it. For some reason I hadn't expected it to be such a huge building. The entire area was crowded with people but this didn't detract from the majesty of Sacre Couer at all.

I'd planned on going in but a service had just finished and the area was packed, so instead I walked around it and wound my way down the hill towards the Moulin Rouge. Along the way I stopped off at a square named after Salvador Dali that had all sorts of artists sketching and painting. I ended up getting a drawing done which actually doesn't look a whole lot like me but is nice anyway.

The Moulin Rouge was well, how can I say this? A massive let down! It sucked. I took a few photos but it was hardly worth it. Quite quickly I left and headed for Notre Dame. No let down here! It was amazing. The detail around the doorways was phenomenal and I couldn't believe the sheer size of it. I went inside and felt a little religious for about 10 minutes... Then I left. But it was beautiful inside, very awe-inspiring.

That night Pru and I cooked a great carbonara with plenty of garlic in it. We had our last meal with Jayne and Bunny before they headed off the next day back to Melbourne and we to Brussels.

Hoi An to Paris and everything in between

Having not added anything to my blog in quite some time is going to make this very lengthy and difficult. I created a whole new blog post the other day and my mobile phone completely stuffed up and I lost all of it.

So here goes...

The rest of our time in Hoi An was fantastic. We cycled down to the boulangerie and got some great tiramisu and ice cold Vietnamese coffee. Cam and I spent the morning cycling around Hoi An then went for lunch at a restaurant called Sunshine across the road from our hotel. Lunch was awesome! That night we did a private cooking course for USD$8 each, and we got to eat everything we made; spring rolls, pho bo (Vietnamese beef noodle soup) and marinated pork cooked in banana leaf. Very yummy. The cooking course was a lot of fun. We went down to the market with Hoi, the lady who ran the restaurant - which also happened to be on her front porch, and wandered through that crazy place with her. The smells made our tummy's rumble and by the time we returned to the restaurant we were definitely ready to start cooking. And for those of you that are interested, I have all three of those recipes written down and ready to go for when I get back to Melbourne.

The following day we left for Nha Trang, which turned out to be quite a disappointment. The bus ride to our hostel from the airport was very scenic and comprised of beautiful coastline reminiscent of our very own Great Ocean road. The hostel, however, was an entirely different story. It was a hostel designed for backpackers that wanted to sleep all day and party all night - nothing like us. We'd planned to stay there for 2 nights but left the next morning for Mui Ne, Vietnam's prime beach destination.

Mui Ne was gorgeous, the beach was nowhere near as good as any Australian beaches but if anyone can find me a beach anywhere in the world that IS, I'd like to know about it. There was a main street that was a few kilometres long and we spent most of our time by the pool while at night we'd walk along the road until we found somewhere nice to eat or drink, which wasn't hard.

Mui Ne's claim to fame are the famous white and red sand dunes that create a very unique micro-climate in the area. We visited these on a motorbike tour (we didn't drive obviously, passengers all the way). It was like being in the desert with the ocean on one side, a lake on another and shrubbery the rest of the way round. Very bizarre. Cam thought it was a great idea to hire a plastic slidy thing, as a way of sliding down the sand dunes. Bad idea. It broke pretty much straight away and he bunny hopped down the dune. Not very impressive. We watched the sun set over the red sand dunes and then made our way back. Photos of all of these will be published on facebook VERY soon.

We left for Saigon the next day. Crazy, crazy, Saigon.

With the amount of motorbikes we'd seen in Hanoi there was no way we believed people when they told us that Saigon was far worse. Well, they were right and it was. I had a great video of the traffic which is on my lovely long lost camera so you'll just have to You Tube it to find out just how hectic it really is.

We arrived late at night after a 6 hour bus ride and had a pretty crappy street meal for dinner then went off to bed, the following day was going to be a busy one.

We started it off by walking to the Reunification Palace, where the big bosses surrendered at the end of the Vietnam War. It wasn't a particularly beautiful building - very sixties with far too much mission brown - but it was interesting to wander around. After that we headed to the War Remnants Museum. It was very informative, perhaps too informative, and quite depressing. It basically chronicled all the horrible things that happened during the war and had a lot of photos which were pretty confronting. Outside they had a collection of tanks, guns and artillery left behind by the Americans.

That night we made our way over to Ben Thanh marketplace. During the day it's a huge enclosed market, much like some of the ones we saw in Thailand and by night the inside area shuts and everything is set up outside. There were great seafood restaurants set up everywhere making it very difficult to choose somewhere to eat. But we did, and it was delicious.

The next day we didn't plan to do a lot, mainly because the heat was suffocating and we just couldn't be bothered. We had a little wander through the market and then ended up deciding to go to the Saigon Zoo. It was great and was very reminiscent of our own Melbourne Zoo. We saw rhinos, a few hippo's, lots of monkeys, elephants and plenty of big cats. The most exciting thing about this zoo was that the animals were right up close, possibly too close, meaning we could almost touch them. Obviously we didn't but it would've been nice to have a cuddle with a tiger.

Finally, it was our last night in Vietnam. We went to the market for dinner again because there was just so much fantastic food on offer. We had barbecued squid, pork, beef and meatballs, the amazing spinach with garlic and oyster sauce and some DIY rice paper rolls. Very yummmmmyyy!!!

It was a sad goodbye the next day because Cam and I wouldn't be seeing each other until after Xmas. I had a pretty uneventful flight to Hong Kong and there it was that I lost my camera, but, I've just returned from buying a new one! Anyway, Hong Kong wasn't too exciting. I did a bit of retail therapy and that was about it, mostly due to the terrible weather there and I was just getting too excited about getting to Paris.

I've been in Paris for almost 5 days now and I'm absolutely loving it. My flight and arrival was nice and easy and the minute I dumped my things at the hostel I headed off to meet up with Pru. It was night time by this stage so we had a little wine and some tapas and then I returned to the hostel.

The next day we went to the Louvre. Luckily for us there had been strikes on all over Paris in the museums and tourist sites but on that particular day they decided to let people into the Louvre... For free! We also did a FREE guided tour of just a very small part of the museum then had a wander around ourselves, of course seeing the Mona Lisa (majorly overrated), Le Libertine and a whole bunch of other great artworks. Our lunch was fantastic as we ate in the Louvre restaurant. I had cooked tomato on brioche with goats cheese and a garlic crouton stick thingy - for entree. Then for the main had a braised pork (crackling and all) with some lovely chicory and a really rich plum sauce. Mmmmmm.

The following day was the day for Versailles (and yes, I have heaps of photos) which, luckily for us, we got in to for free as well. It was absolutely stunning. The Hall of Mirrors was especially beautiful. We saw an exhibition they had on the Sun king, Lous XIV, which was very informative and impressive. The portraits and sculptures were great and the history of it all was really interesting. We wandered around outside a little and saw the gardens and some of the 'mini' palaces they had around the grounds.

By this stage I was just aching to get to the Eiffel tower, which I'd seen from afar but hadn't officially visited yet. We decided to go there the next day. When we emerged from the metro there was a huge building to the left and I knew that when we walked around the corner of that building the Eiffel Tower would be in front of us. It was breathtaking! I couldn't stop taking photos as it was pretty much the most photogenic structure I'd ever seen. I couldn't believe the size of it - it was HUGE! We made our way down and stopped off at an artificial ice rink that had been set up and Jayne and Pru had a bit of a go on that. We walked through the Xmas markets down towards the tower and the closer we got the more excited I became. When we got there a sign said that the top level was closed, this was very disappointing, so we bought tickets to go to the second level and headed up. After about half an hour just looking out at the amazing city of Paris we were told the top level had been opened, so up we went. It was spectacular, you could see all the way to the outskirts of Paris, the Arc De Triomphe (which we visited later that day), Les Invalides, Sacre Couer and more.

This pretty much brings me up to date as that all took place yesterday. Today I was planning on visiting Notre Dame, Sacre Couer and the surrounding area of Montmarte but I may leave that for tomorrow. I bought a camera and have to wait for it to charge.

In a couple of days Pru and I will be leaving Paris for Belgium, which is exciting and a little sad at the same time because Paris really is such a lovely place. Well, except for all the snobby French people!