Wednesday: On to Paris

From the pen of Remus Brasier at 8.20pm on Wednesday the 16th of December.

Much to my annoyance, Mum came into Raff and my room and woke us up BEFORE 6am! Can you imagine that? 

You are supposed to be on holidays but there is no such thing as a sleep in.  We walked to the train station, the streets engulfed in darkness.  Normally you wouldn't think that was so amazing because in Winter in Europe even at 8.20am when most people would be off to work or school, it's still dark and freezing.  Anyway, we headed to the very same train station that only a few days ago we arrived in Wurzburg at.  We waited for 10-15 minutes on the platform and then when the train finally came our carriage (carriage 29), we had to run to it in order to get on because the train had pulled up too far along the platform.  Everyone, even business people, had to run to get onto their carriage.  Even while this was happening the conductors whistle was blaring out, obviously driving panic into everyone's heads (most of all Rafferty's!)

Because we had got a very good deal on it, we got to stay in 1st class.  You should've seen the speeds the train hit, at one stage I saw it reach 286km per hour!  But at least a third of the way there we had to stop in order to get something repaired, at the time we didn't know what was happening but it seemed to be so bad it took around 66minutes to investigate and then we had to transfer to another train.  That seemed to be good because that train hit speeds of 315km an hour!!!

When we arrived at the Paris station, we were startled to see young men with camouflage uniforms holding semi automatic weapons.  A little confronting.... Rafferty kept asking questions about them, most I didn't know the answers, for example: One I do know;why are they here?Answer;Security:and ones I don't;What type of gun are they holding?

After arriving at our hotel, called the signature, we decided to go for linner (it is technically a cross between lunch and dinner, like what brunch is for breakfast and lunch).  We decided to go to a recommendation given by the hotel to go to a place called Cafe Verenne.   Raff and I both had duck and chopped up potatoes, we were both tempted by the snails though.  Flis and Dad both had French onion soup and Mum helped herself to steak tartare.  Mum often likes to think her pronunciation of French words is unbeatable.  That was proved wrong by the very nice waiter, when she ordered Tar-tear instead of what,apparently,is pronounced Ta-ta.  We all enjoyed laughing at her mistake for the rest of the night.

Now we move onto one of the most brilliant and special museums in all of the world, The Louvre.  The Louvre is a grand former palace, famous for now being the most famous museum in the world, having one of the biggest collections of art works EVER! Amongst the art works in the collection is the world famous Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci (more on that later).  First we headed on to Napoleon III apartments, not to be confused with Napoleon Bonaparte who is famous for being very short and for winning many battles including the battle of Austerlitz.   The amount of space and the amount of decoration - the grandness, those statutes and paintings - was amazing, just to think Napoleon III woke up to that every day! After that we headed through a few  different areas including the ancient Egyptians.  We also went downstairs and walked inside the former moat of the Louvre when it was still a fortress and a castle (the moat was empty of water though...don't worry!)

Then we moved on to the FAMOUS Mona Lisa.  Many theories go on about this wonderful painting.  Normally people would line up for miles and miles just to test if those theories are true but because we went in December and late at night there were literally no lines.  These theories include whenever you walk around the eyes seem to follow you and that her face is actually of Leonardo Da Vinci's himself.

If this is a show of what my next few days in Paris will be like, I can't wait to see what happens next! Remus Brasier out.