France in pictures..

*someday i'm gonna look back at this post and feel nostalgic Good times-Good Friends*

Bonjour Francais!!!

The Emirates A380 double decker flight. Up to today im not sure whether i sat on the lower deck or the upper deck of the plane. But fo' sure the A380 is spacious and super comfy.

This was the view that greeted us on the way to the 'hotel'. First stop was Paris. Stayed at Formula F1. It was ok. Generally clean hostel. hehe.. We got a....get this... graveyard view from our room. HAHAHA...
The hotel lobby has several vending machines which were utmost popular among Taylors students. Haha.. I love their coffee vending machines! Hot chocos from there early in the morning =yummeh~!

Along the streets of Paris..

So, we wasted no time once we landed in Paris. Checked into the hostel, took a bath and headed straight to the streets. First stop, THE EIFFEL TOWER.. Because it was the first night in Paris, I didnt know what to expect. Big regret when I didnt bring out my thick coat that night.. =( That night was fun. First time taking the metros and stuff. Got lost, asked directions which led to lost in translations..hhaha.. Our French is an epic fail there. Of course we could ask how to get to a place in French but when the Frenchie replies, keywords are all we catch. Haha.. Most of the times it's good enough..>.
So, that night we ended up walking to the tower from the Arch de Triumph because according to a policemen we asked, she said it was just 3 roads away. Mana tau, it was a freaking 40 minutes walk! But hey, thats what i did in France, walk, walk and walk... Anyway, so the tower was beautiful with the lights shimmering. Bought a ticket to go up to the highest floor but ended up only going up to the 2nd highest level cause of time constraints and the number of people at the lift.. I guess we were all tired also that night therefore didnt mind not going up right to the top although we paid for it. The higher the level, the more expensive the ticket is.

View from the tower.

The next day was planned for pure sightseeing. We visited the Versailles Palace, Lourve and Notre Dame Cathedral- All the famous hot spots in Paris.
For me, the Lourve was meh~! If ur not an art lover/appreciater, the Lourve is just paintings after paintings and the occasional naked paintings..LOL.. And i think the Mona Lisa is so overated.!! Okay okay, maybe i dont appreciate whatever story there is behind the picture but still, to me its just a weird lady with a werid smile staring at you..HAHA..

Of course the most popular room in the Lourve was the room where Mona Lisa was in. Soooo many people in the room i tell u. Theres even a barricade around the picture so that people couldnt get too near to it. So really, u can only see it from afar. And its also the only picture in the whole building with a glass protector. U can see from the reflection from the picture above the crowd that were all eager to view the Mona Lisa. But hey~! at least now I can tell people that I actually saw the real Mona Lisa~!! Teehee!!

Nah~! Our expression after seeing Mona Lisa.. LAME-O~!

Arc de Triumphe~!

Taken at Le château de Versailles or Palace of Versailles. Super beautiful gardens over there. We were there for 3 hours and yet couldnt not cover the whole area. Loads of walking to do over there. I told myself if i ever visit this place again, I will definately pay 30 euros and hire the buggy. It will be damn worth it. hehe..

And so at the palace gardens, all our super model pictures were born

Outside the palace with Louis XVI


At the Notre Dame Cathedral. I tried to catch a glimpse of Quasimodo but too bad he wasnt there..LOL..
This looks exactly like the one in Vietnam.. Heheh...



Next stop, Toulouse!! It was a 6 hour train ride with the TGV from Paris. The train is something like our KLIA Ekspress train though. Haha.. All this while I thought the TGV was like a super speed train cuz TGV (Train Grande Vite-> English: Very Fast Train) and also our French lect use to tell us how 'fast' these trains were. Ala.. tengok x2 their 'fast' not that fast lah.

Anyways, the main reason we headed to Toulouse was to participate in the management game whoc carried marks in our exam (20%). The game was hell but thats a whole other story man..haha.. I was grouped with 4 Malaysians and 4 Frenchies (2 guys, 2 girls). All the Frenchies were Masters students btw. 1 guy i found hot but nearly choked when i found out he was 34. Im so serious he looked max 25!! and the other guy was a botak 40 year old Frenchie who got sent to further his studies by the French government. So yea..=meh=


So anyways, we had two day trips organized by Taylors. We went to Albi and Carcasonne both about an hour away from Toulouse.

At Albi we visited the biggest cathedrals there. It is known as St Cecile cathedral. The only cathedral in the world which is built out of 5 million red bricks. And also, Albi was recently awarded as a UNESCO heritage site. Later, we went for wine tasting at err... Domaine Du Moulin (or sumthing..lol) Too bad most of the grapes were already harvested so no chance for us to go grape picking. There was an extensive meat buffet prepared for us and of course different types of wine for us to taste. Me being the Malaysian that I am didnt care much about the wine and straightaway indulged in the meat buffet which was meant to complement the wine we tasted..LOL.. There were at least 10 different types of meats served from beef, pork, chicken salamis to all types of hams.. Yummeh..haha..

Wine vats

We managed to have a 10 minutes visit to the Albi morning market that day. Interesting of course. All the types of veges that we seldom see. As u can see from the above pic, they made a swan out of the squash by drawing some eyes and noses on it.. LOL..

The cathedral at Albi

There was a wedding that day and these ol ladies were about to sing

The gardens outside the cathedral

Lunch at Albi. The restaurant was full and we had to sit outside. omg! The most uncomfortable meal I had ever eaten. Funny thing-i ordered a hot chocolate and 2 minutes later my hot choco wasnt hot nemore =(

Taken at Cacassonne. The whole of Cacassonne is a medieval city. Very much like our Malaysia's Bukit Tinggi =)

Super cute horses/ponies (im not sure) in Cacasoone.. They're so fat!!

You cant actually see in this picture but it was taken along the Seine River in Paris. It was also our last night in France =(

We made it all the way to the outskirts of Paris (Serris) on the last day to get to this factory outlet area called La Vallée Village. It was one stop before Paris Disneyland.. Yea, we went that far.. Longchamp were selling like hot cakes here since its all at much much MUCH cheaper prices. The handbags here ar not rejected items or anything but just back dated fashion ie: the oh so common foldable water proof bags..

One funny thing u will see in France are how the ASIANS jam pack Longchamp stores.. Its so funny that wherever we went, we were bound to see one of our batchmates in a Longchamp store. The funniest was in Toulouse where the area that we stayed only had one Longchamp store and the Asians aka us, bought soo many Longchamp bags till the store out of stock.. ><

But according to my Frenchie mates, Longchamp in France is just a regular brand. Nothing exclusive. U wanna talk about exclusivity, and they straight away said Hermes. Hmm.. Funny eh, how we malaysians look up to Longchamp and u'll see those Malaysian girls flashing their Longchamp bags when its just another regular brand in France. But them diff country, diff situations larh.. ><

The picture was taken in La Fayette in Paris. La Fayette reminds me of Harrods in London. One big branded place.. Anyways, look at the freaking queue. This queue was just to go in the store to VIEW the bags.. We havent talked about the queue to PAY for the bags.. So, yeah thats how crazy it is. Sabby, who had a bag to buy manage to cut queue nearly at the front as u would have guessed, we had one of our batch mates who were nearly at the front of the queue and still she took nearly 1 hour despite having a the bag code which she wanted to buy. Conclusion: crazy queues.. ><

And btw, the Louis Vuitton queue.. omg... i fly back to Malaysia and fly back to France and i still wouldnt have gotten into the store to VIEW the bags..LOL.. very exaggerated but u get my drift..!! =)

Well, that concludes my post this time.. Next up, FRENCH FOOD!!! and no, French Fries isnt one of them..haha..

au revoir~!