through the eyes of the a70

I decided to start processing my Eurotrip photos again! For those that have been on my photoblog for a while, you know that I was in Europe a year ago on a backpacking trip with my university friends. As a refresher and for those that haven’t seen the posts for the first 7 days, here they are: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7.

Day 8, Tues. May 5th. It was decided the day before that we were going to split our group into two, one half will take a short visit the Palace of Versailles, while the other four of us will stay behind in Paris for a somewhat slower-pace and more “relaxing” day (and turned out to be the right choice! more on that at the end of the post).

I apologize in advance if museum artworks aren’t really your thing…

Since we never made it to Musée d’Orsay on Free Museums Sunday, I wanted to spend a couple of hours in there since it had so many famous pieces of artwork in there. Alex, Andrew, and Brian wanted a break from museums (already!) so they went and wandered around Paris.

I loved the museum – the architecture was exquisite, it was originally a train station. Being able to spend three hours of the entire three week trip alone was rewarding, going by my own pace. I would go back again next time, there are just too many things to see! We met up again 3 hours later to have lunch and coffee. Those that know me knows that I’ve always wanted to just sit at a Paris coffee shop and watch as pedestrians go by on the sidewalks, haha! Well I did get to sit coffee at a coffee shop, but not on the sidewalks. Next time, next time.

A couple hours later we had to meet up with the others coming back from Versailles and head to the train station for our overnight train to Milan.

Finally boarded the sleeping train en route Milan, Italy. Goodbye Paris, see you soon!

A bunch of tired but happy backpackers! 6 to a train compartment, me and Andrew were next-door.

Now here’s an interesting story. Since each train compartment could only sleep 6, me and Andrew had to stay with 4 other locals next door. Turns out that’s what backpacking is supposed to be about! Meeting new people!

Fortunately for both of us, we knew a bit of French from high school just to get by, and we were able to stumble through a conversation with mixed English and French (probably the most foreign language we used the entire trip).

The couple on the right are Julia and Francois, and he’s a medical doctor living in Paris. The mother and daughter on the left are Vivienne and Samantha, and they live in Paris, but need to go to Milan occasionally for their fashion shop. They’ve never travelled outside of Europe, but we assured them that Vancouver was a great place to visit!

Need to travel more like this in the future – the interesting things you get to learn about the local culture.

Oh, and why was staying in Paris that day the right choice? The other four apparently forgot to get off at the right train station and had to backtrack a couple of hours, so instead of spending more than half the day at the Palace, they rushed through in an hour… oh well.

To be continued…