The Neva Endin Journey

A lot of good Photos, So PLEASE check the photos ( for God's sake, it was pain taking them! lol ! ) and look at the beauty of paris and you will know why it is called the " City of Love " or Either Click on the photo or RIGHT CLICK ON THE PHOTOS AND OPEN IN A NEW PAGE!

First Rule : Always check for the things to do in Paris as it is massive and impossible to cover all the attractions of the must see places and we had just 3 days! Every place you go is different, beautiful and a treat to the eyes!

It is a massive post, so please take your time to read it or come back some other time after you read a part of the post and trust me it will be a good guide if you ever decide to go to Paris someday!

We started off from Eindhoven, as usual reached late to the station!
Arpit who was so excited with his first trip out of Netherland's, that he came to the station at 6:30pm when we asked him to come at 9:30pm especially when he stays just 2 mins away from the station! We had to catch a train to a place called Breda and after that we were supposed to catch the international Bus to Paris! But as we reached breda and got out of the station, the bus was not there! We waited for an hour searching for it and the only things running in the mind was " Wtf " and " Where d fuck is the bus " and we thought the paris trip was over before we even started. We were not sure where the bus would stand so we eventually lost hope and stood were one of the taxi drivers asked us to stand! But then it finally did come and we got the feeling that the trip is finally on!

Phew it was tension as we would have all counted stars had we missed the bus for all the hype we created before leaving to paris (the facebook status messages , gtalk status n etc)!! :P

We climbed the bus, removed all the documents and saw that the bus was full and the only seats left were at the last row! Those seats could not be adjusted backwards! So we were literally sitting the entire journey for about 6 hours! The biggest mistake we did was we drank a lot of Coke before climbing the bus, so that made it even worse and we were waiting for the bus to stop! I officially got the worst place of all, the last row of the bus right in the middle and had the driver put the brake, i'd have gone flying all the way and to make it worse i was sitting in a upright position!




First View of Paris outside the station! Felt Real good, happy and Excited!


We reached at 6 in the mornin, and went to Arpit's friend's place and freshened up. Its true Indians are there everywhere but these guys where very friendly and were really excited to see some other indians for a change! They prepared for us a good breakfast with coffee, tea , choco's and etc. They told us about the places to visit and some important suggestions and all the required stuff! After getting all the information, we finally decided to go to the palace of Versailles which is away from the main city! We had a lot to cover and thought we'd see the palace in 2 hours and get back to the city(We thought). We took the metro to this place and as we passed by we tried getting a glimpse of the eiffel and guess what, we never did!

It is often said that " The metro of Paris is designed in such a way as to confuse the visitor's " but we luckily had one of our friend Vasu who was like an expert is looking at the maps! :P



Standing outside the college, where we freshened up when we just reached Paris! Its called " The international University of Paris "! I would have really studied if i was in such a beautiful college like this! Amazing buildings and gardens, Phew Paradise!! I would have seriously studied, lol! ;)


The Palace of Versailles!

Now This is a beautiful Palace where the King of France , Louis XIV Lived and probably had the best palace in the world. This palace is so huge with a garden section ranging to about 8 kms! The gardens are beautiful with a lot of fountains and amazing sculptures ( dont believe me, we look the photos below), its beauty lies in the perfection and varieties! Almost all of the statues are gold plated and a wonderful sight to sit and admire! Probably seeing the entire garden might take a day or more, we went only to a few sections looking at the map which was even more confusing!



The Golden Gate of The Palace of Versailles! It must be the most expensive gate in the world! Made out of pure gold !!



Statues on the pillars of the gate, The distance of the entry of the palace to the gate is so much, that you can literally play any sport in the courtyard!




One of the hallways inside the palace! Similar statues made of marble or god knows what along the room to the end! Guests did not have access into this! No one knows where it leads 2 ! :( ! But it looked really really good!



One Of the hundreds or more Antique items present! We were worried if Arpit or Vamshi would put any of these items down as they used to examine the item so closely as if they knew what it was! Had they put it down, they would have to live their entire life cleaning the bathrooms which the visitors use!


The Palace has hundred's of paintings and wonderful antique items and visitors are given the opportunity to see the King, Queen and his Son's rooms and many other rooms! The palace is massive and it is impossible to see the entire palace if you look at every item present and the details in each part! We had to rush through! It has more than hundred rooms with every room being different and wonderful paintings hung up on the wall and at the ceilings of each room! It only got bigger and better as we moved on! But this was exactly when Arpit who was busy admiring the french chicks and all the antique stuff that we lost track of him! This place is probably the worst place to get lost and luckily Aprit realised he lost us and he somehow managed to find us in the palace itself.



Another hallway with carved statues of the various kings who rules France! I wonder who was the architect who did all this! But its a pity no one does all this now! I think its time for you guys to start doing something creative in life! ;)



The first thing we actually saw while we entered the palace! Look at the paintings on the ceiling! How can anyone possibly do all this? The symmetry of this room was perfect!



The details at every room was impossible to capture, However i tried getting atleast how much ever i could including my friends taking the pictures! :P Look at the concentration!



A room to have a relaxing chat with a place to burn wood for a warm night! The architect could have made it simple! But he had other plans in mind too! The paintings, the gold coated walls! Compare the people to the size of the room and you would know what i am talking about!



Do not ever do the mistake of touching these pieces because if at all you make it fall, your life's over!



Another room! We just saw a section of the palace ( 1/10th of the palace which was almost about a hundred rooms )! I am so glad i did not see more than this else we would have taken days to get out of this palace! Every room had statues and paintings and gold coated walls! I wish i was atleast 1/zillion times as rich as the king! Not in this life or for hundred's more to come!



The ceilng paintings once again! How many years do you think they must have taken to do one room? 2-3 years atleast!



I need atleast one of these sculptures in my room! :(



The Queen's room! :) The bed was small so i wonder how small she actually was! Its a pity the queen and the king had seperate room's! Sheesh! What'z the point? ! Lol!!!



The chandeliers in one of the rooms! The lamps are still lit! No use of bulbs and etc! :) The paintings at the ceiling goes without saying!



One more part of a room! Why would i ever sit in the side of the room under a painting with three gold plated statues around me on the world's smallest chair? I'm sure it was never used! :P



This palace was all about Gold, Statues and chandeliers! :P! Dont ever go here, You will feel more poor with every room you go!



The Hall of Mirrors ! Do i even need to explain what this is? A Hallway, 20 - 30 gold plated statues, Lit chandelier's, mirror's on every side of the wall, easily one of the most beautiful room's you will ever see in your life!



The hall of mirror's is probably the size of my house!



The kings room! Phew, i wonder what the curtains were for! Privacy? If he wanted privacy he would have closed the door's! Mosquitoes ? Even Mosquitoes would be be lost in this palace!



The King's dressing room ! I never saw any bathroom's in this palace! Wonder where he used go to the Loo! ;)




Arpit thought he owned this palace and wanted a photo in every possible room! Luckily we pretended to click his snaps in every room, so he was satisfied! He still doesnt know or probably will know only after reading that this is his only single photo ;)



The Son's Room! I really would love to have a lavish life like this but not such a life where only thing i can see is gold in color!



Ernest, Pavitra and Vamshi admiring the statues and the paintings! If you are an horrible artist, do not come here! You will feel pathetic looking at these wonderful paintings and wonder how sad you are! :P



Capturing Ernest taking a photo of my other friends! :) Deciding whether to quit studies and continue in the art of photography!! ;) Anyway computer Science is going down! Id rather make sure i have some backup plan!



Outside the Palace! The beginning section of the garden! You would probably faint if you knew how big this garden actually is!



Trying my hands in Photography!! Worth every photo taken! I need a SLR camera !!!!! :( Is anyone Listening !!! ;)



Posing and smiling happily for the fact that i could see some other color other than Gold outside the palace! :) It soon became a sad one after the palace trip because we were realy really tired walking!



All i can say is the king was crazy about water and gardening! And the guy who designed this palace must have been even more crazier! Where has all the talent gone?



The garden facing the back of the palace! It must be in kilometers, we walked atleast half of it!



He dint live the water also! Made works of art in the fountain's too! This is a picture of a man coming out of water with a horse with crazy looking fishes around! :P



A statue in the middle of nowhere in the garden, i have no idea what this means! An Angel holding something! Look at the carving at the cieling!



Capturing the beauty of the palace from a part of the garden far far away! :) The sun, the reflection, the trees! :)



Time to see the old houses of france! This was built within the premise of the palace for the king to getaway for a vacation with the queen and the children where he used to do hunting and etc! Imagine he has a place for a quick vacation in the palace itself! These houses were beautiful! So old and traditional! I'd really love to have a house like this but the interiors has to be hi-fi! ;)



This is the queen's house in the vacation part of the palace premise! WTF ! Wasnt the palace enough? ;) Anyway these show the old french houses! It looked really really good with a combination of wood, water, trees, a lot of animals, a lake and NO GOLD! :)



Posing at the old french houses! We Could not walk anymore! :)



It would really be an honor to have a house like this! So simple and so beautiful!



One of the old french houses! But we thought it would be better for a quick photo! Thank the timer option in the camera! :)



One more beautiful snap! A natural snap, no posing, just took it on the go! :)
Dont ya think i must be a little into serious photography ! :)



Look at this French house! Amazing aint it... The cart's, the domestic birds and animals! Seriously think about having a house like this! It's different!



A Weird looking tree! You never know the king must have got this from somewhere too!



A statue made of Gold! Can you even estimate how rich the king was?!!!! A love this photo!



We took another way to go back to the palace after the 3 hour odd trip in the garden which never seemed to end and once again we saw a lot of statues and learnt more on how to make a garden for a palace, as if we will ever do that! ;)



The golden gate with the palace entrance at the background!



In Amsterdam, it was all about using design's of animals for a " you know what "! But guess what, to our surprise we saw Eiffel tower taking shapes of animals this time! :P

I only wonder how many people worked here, must have been easily more than a 1000! The conclusion i can easily come to is, we must have walked about 3 kms within the palace and more than 5-6 kms in the garden! We reached back to the entrance of the palace after 6 hours! We were so tired, that we literally could not walk anymore, we finally landed up in Mc Donald's and had a meal which was so relaxing!


After having a refreshing meal, we headed back to the place we were supposed to stay in - A Youth hostel for guys ang girls! It was already about 6:30 - 7pm in the night and as we headed back by metro, we looked through the train hoping to catch the glimpse of the Eiffel tower and guess what! WE again did not! :(

We finally got down at the station where the hostel was supposedly located in! Vamshi had come to Paris with a aim - To get an Haircut after 4 months and that too, in Paris! We were searching for Eiffel tower and Vamshi was searchin for a saloon!
As usual, how is the trip complete without getting lost! We could not find out way to the hostel as we took the wrong turn and had to make some calls to the Hostel regarding the directions ans we finally reached it!

It looked pretty cool when we got in! We really expected it to be sad and dirty! But guess wha ! It wasnt! :)
It had a small bar at the bottom, a kitchen ( if we wanted to cook, only if )! We took the room keys and reached inside and we saw 6 beds!

The room was colorfully painted with probably every color known to mankind! It looked bright and energetic! But unfortunately we were not! We were so tired walking in the Palace of Versailles, that we decided to just rest for a while! All of us charged our batteries because it would be first time we actually walked in the city of Paris to some place we actually wanted to go - THE EIFFEL TOWER! We took the map and we walked in the direction of the eiffel:

Rule 2 : I walk very fast, so my friends used to literally curse me every minute. I used to look back and say " Guys, cmon Walk fast" and they would be like " Wtf , How fast can we possibly walk" ! Who ever thought the worst of walking was yet to come!

After walking about 1.5 kms from the hotel, we reached the Eiffel tower and man it deserves to be in the "One of the wonder's of the world category!" It is so big and so beautifully lit up with A shade of orange-yellow from the top to the bottom! We were so excited looking at this massive structure that we couldnt help but take more and more photos trying to get some beautiful snaps! Some of the photos we took of the eiffel are here right below. I seriously wonder how could anyone build something like this! MADNESS! It is impossible to build something so complicated! You need to see this structure to believe it! Luckily there was no big queue for going up the eiffel! Probably it was the cold weather or probably it was our luck.



Below are the photo's of Eiffel tower at night! Check for its beauty and see how enormous it is!






Notice the lights from the top of the tower? Eiffel tower has 2 powerful lights on either side of it which revolves around the Eiffel tower continuously! There is also a light show once every hour for ten minutes where the entire tower starts glittering with powerful white lights! You can probably check that in the video coming up soon!

Next few photos are of the Eiffel tower to show you its true size as we start walking close to it! check the complex structure in the last snap!





We choose the lift instead of walking up the eiffel tower, well you know why! It is free to walk up till the second floor but had we done that, we would not have been able to climb up and would have passed out, half way up the tower with the walking we already did just for the first day!

It was actually built by Gustave Eiffel for his daughter as an apartment! Who in the world would ever build an apartment at that height!



Check below! The route the Lift takes, for the visitors to reach the top most part of the tower! I know, Thank the photography ! ;)




We reached to the third floor and got out of the lift and there we were! The top most level of the Eiffel Tower! Never did i ever think i would go to Paris or Netherlands too a year back and now we are touring some of the most beautiful places in the world. You get to see the entire Paris at an 360 angle and see all the places and buildings lit up! Fear of heights can kill you! I seriously wonder how many people have dropped their camera's trying to take some good photos of the city lit up! You see a lot of people taking photos and looking at those tiny lights being lit up to a distance of infinity! :)
The view from the top of the Eiffel! The White light in the earlier photo is the powerful white beam that keeps rotating around the eiffel!




And Finally the group snap atop the Eiffel! A memory which will be never forgotten!


If you ever go on a honeymoon, i guess this should be one of the places or Italy ( that's what iv heard ), because its an honor to see such beautiful places and things and being with someone you love will only make it look more attractive and romantic! No wonder Paris is called the city of Love! It deserves this title! There will not be even a minute where you wont see couples holding each other and having these special moments.

After about spending an hour at the top of the tower we decided to get have dinner! One of my friends Vasu luckily on the way back had spotted an indian / pakistani hotel and we rushed back at about 11:30 and it was open! We ordered Tandoori chicken, Lassi, Prawns, Nan's, Paneer, Coke, Ice cream's, Gulab Jamun and some sweets! Yup the bill came about 135 Euros! Quite a lot for a meal right! Welcome to Paris!! not to mention Ernest got high eating Gulab jamun! I still have no idea how! Pavitra ate Veg along with arpit(who requested for a jug of water in the restaurant like 5 times).
To the next table was one weird female who laughed for approximately about 10 minutes non-stop, so we were wondering who was high, if it was ernest after having the Gulab jamun or this female after having just a glass of wine! She laughed so much that even we could not control laughing! ;)

After having a nice dinner we headed back to the room and could not use the bedsheet's as we dint know how clean it was, So everyone somehow covered themselves only till half the body with the blanket!

This was how the First day at paris ended! Overall very tiring, did not see many places but whatever we saw was massive! Initially, we had a lot of places we had decided to actually visit ( pre-planning over the internet) but with the fact that we just visited just 2 of the attractions in 1 day made our future plans seem impossible!

About 1:30 AM We slept till continuous alarms started ringing at about 6 AM and then ...

To Be Continued,

Click here for : Day 2
Click here for : Day 3