The Local

I had a friend visit the other weekend, so it was a chance for me to be the local for once. My last guests stayed in August, which was my first month of actually living in Paris, but now I have been in the city for 3 and a half months, and I'm certainly better at finding my way around, and deciphering the intricate network of metros and RERs. You get a bit blase after living in the city, you forget what it must be like for someone who has never been to Paris before to see the Eiffel Tower for the first time. Unfortunately Paris didn't pull out it's best weather, in fact it was the worst it has been all autumn, but at least there wasn't too much rain, and we even got one really nice morning.

We did all the big things, the must dos in Paris, Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur etc. and as the sun now sets really early I got to see a lot of these things in a completely different light. I'm not normally wandering around the city late at night, so I don't really know what it looks like with the lights on, but this weekend I got to experience Paris at night-time. I think it is just as pretty at night as it is during the day as well. To the left is the Eiffel Tower during its half-hourly light show, this is seen from the Trocadero, which really is the place to see the Eiffel Tower.

We then have a gargoyle at the top of Notre Dame, with the Sacre Coeur in the distance, ie the thing on the hill.



















Here is Notre Dame in the evening, looking a little spooky really. There was some strange catholic ceremony going on out the front of the cathedral on the day we visited, I'm not really sure what was going on, but it involved a lot of very slow dancing/walking whilst carrying a massive picture of Jesus, plus a lot of incense burning, but a catholic ceremony wouldn't be complete without a whole stack of smelly smoke.

The next morning we went to visit the wedding cake on the hill, as you can see we did have at least a few hours of beautiful weather.


















And finally I just thought I would leave you with a final shot of the autumn colours, this is about 2 weeks after my last photos, and I think this is the last of the autumn leaves. They are nearly all gone now and we are really getting into winter properly.
This week we are in single digit maximum temperatures everyday, I'm going to have to go buy some more jumpers and thermals, because I have nowhere near enough. For some reason I thought Paris couldn't get much colder than Canberra, I have a feeling I'm going to be proved dramatically wrong. Apparently it was snowing in Berlin on Monday, and it is still only mid-Autumn, yikes!