IITB and Paris

This was a trip to Paris by me and Saurabh a day prior to our Amsterdam trip. We did not want to waste a Saturday at Nancy and so we started from there at 6:47 and reached Paris at 10:00 (our train was 20 minutes late). After a long search we finally located Madhur with whom we had to go to Emirates office to get our return tickets preponed. He said he would meet us at Eiffel Tower.

So I and Saurabh started off with a day pass and a metro map in our hand to find the Eiffel tower (we knew it wouldn't be difficult because of it's size). As we were getting closer to the destination, we could see it from our metro and this was exciting (we were finally going to see "The Eiffel Tower"). We got down at the metro station and when we came out we were dissapointed because it wasn't there ... we moved for about 2 minutes and then we could see it .... a dull tall monument of metal standing lifelessly in the cloudy sky. We clicked our first snap with it and then moved towards it. When we were finally in front of it, all of a sudden the sun came out and then we cud see it shimmering in all its bronze grandeur. I just could not move staring at it in awe - no wonder it is one of the seven wonders!!!

After that we spent our time quite quickly taking photographs from every angle and bargaining with the Indian boys selling replicas of the tower. Madhur came around two and then we went to the Emirates office only to find it closed. From here we went to Champs Elysees (the main and the oldest street of paris quite similar to tha Rajpath in Delhi) ... we asked a policewoman standing there about the way to Arc de Triomphe and she pointed a finger ... we could see it right from here ... so we started walking thinking that we would reach soon but it took almost 45 minutes and we were very tired when we finally sat down at its base. Arc de Triomphe is a gateway similar to the India Gate built to commemorate the victories of Napolean I and his grand army. There was some kind of function going on there that day and so there was a huge flag on it which was making it even more royal. We took rest here and then went to MacD for an icecream.

From here we went to see Obelix which is an Egyptian monument gifted to the king of France. I and Saurabh sat down at one of the fountains because we were very tired. There Saurabh challenged me to sing so loud so that the person sitting nect to me should run away. I started singing "Gareebon ki suno woh tumhari sunega ....". Even after a long pursuit the person did not budge but I got the attention of some tourists there so I kept on my flow. Later a huge Indian group came and I did not stop even then. When we were going back we asked the Indians that how come such a big group was travelling together. It turned out (to mu utter dismay and misfortune) that these people were from Agra and knew my mom very well. We just bid them goodbye and escaped sheepishly from there. After that Saurabh kept singing the song whole night .... and I kept laughing over it !!!