4 days in France

I thought I would take you through some of the highlights and lowlights of my time in Paris...seeing as I have some interesting stories!

Highlights
* Walking up (and back down) the Eiffel Tower - all 700 stairs! Worth every penny!
* Seeing the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, with 7 security guards surrounding the room and screaming in French everytime someone took an unauthorised photo of the painting (subsequently getting kicked out for breaking the rules). Its quite ironic that this painting is so revered and yet it was originally meant to hang in someone's toilet!!! Also much bigger than I expected, I think because everyone always goes on about how tiny it is, when really its just an average size painting.
* Eating a Nutella crepe everyday! They are so good, especially in cold weather (when they're made fresh off the hotplate). If you want to be really indulgent you can get a huge Belgian waffle drizzled in chocolate as well for only 3 Euro! Add on the croissants, baguettes...its not hard to see why 90% of the French diet seems to be carbohydrates.
* Watching the girls I hung out with on the tour eating frogs legs and snails - no thanks! I'll stick to my creme brulee and French onion soup.
* Seeing the Eiffel Tower "sparkle" (as I called it) every night on the hour - one of the most gorgeous things I have ever witnessed in my life.
* Going to a French cabaret show and seeing the authentic Can-Can.
* Seeing the city at night. Everything is lit up at night with gorgeous white lights and its stunning. The Opera House looks best at night, its the place that inspired 'Phantom of the Opera' as they discovered an underground lake while building it!
* Going on a cruise down the Seine River (despite it raining heavily towards the end) and seeing all the ponts (bridges) lit up at night.
* Eating great food and drinking great wine every night at awesome little restaurants and cafes in the Latin quarter. You get charged more for service/food the closer you get to the sidewalk though! This is because the French are obsessed with watching people go by - the seats around a table all face the street rather than facing each other because of this.
* Walking down the Champs Elysee/Arc De Triomphe and looking at all the lavish store window displays. The shop signs down the street used to be all white neon lights until recently (most still are white), as a tribute to Neon who invented the neon sign/light. It has the only McDonalds in the world which has non-gold arches (in picture, cooler at night).
* Looking around the Notre Dame Cathedral and admiring all the gothic architecture and stained glass windows. No sign of the hunchback though.

Lowlights
* Being harassed by a group of scammers at the bottom of the Sacre Coeur. These guys hang around in packs and target females. They give you loads of compliments, distract you and tie a piece of coloured cotton in a knot on your finger, or make you a bracelet. They then demand disgusting amounts of money (like 10 Euro or more) to either cut the knot off or to 'buy' the bracelet. They are incredibly aggressive and quite frightening if you have no idea about them. Luckily we we warned, but all of our tour group still had trouble with them. After telling them several times to go away, I told an old lady who was being spoken to by one guy to walk away. The guy was obviously pissed off at me and began walking after me, screaming 'British bitch' and threatening me. I told him in no uncertain terms where to go and kept walking. His mate also followed me and I had to quickly scamper into a French cafe to get away from them. Luckily the cafe owner realised what was going on and yelled at them in French. Some of the guys on our tour also saw what happened and formed a ring around me so I could leave without any trouble (my bodyguards! Haha). It was still quite scary and really put me off ever going back into that area again.
* The beggars and gypsies that hang around ALL the touristy areas. I've never encountered so many scammers in my life, and it really made me wary of my bags/belongings every time I went somewhere. Gypsies would work in packs and try to show you a picture of something asking where it was, while the others would try to snatch your belongings. At the Palace of Versailles hundreds of merchants would surround your bus and ask you to buy all their crappy French souvenirs - glow in the dark Eiffel Towers, keyrings, general junky items including this bizarre flying bird that was the colours of the French flag!
* Being charged 7 Euro just to walk around the gardens of the Palace of Versailles (because it was Easter and the place was packed with thousands of tourists - I have never seen so many tour coaches in my life!).

Randoms
* Seeing the house/apartment where Jim Morrison died.
* One of the girls in our group had a massive seizure just as our bus was about to leave the hotel Sunday morning for the Palace of Versailles. She made this horrible screaming sound and then fell face first to the floor (doesn't remember a thing). Ambulance came, she had to go to hospital and apparently this has happened to her before and she just brushed it off!? If I blacked out and woke up on the floor previously, I'd be a tad worried personally!
* Fouquets is the restaurant on the Champs Elysee where Jackie O met Mr Onassis and hence became Jackie O.
* Saw the Ritz Hotel where Princess Diana & Dodi Al Fayed spent their last night before being killed in a car crash in a Parisian tunnel (which we didn't see).
* All the shops were closed Friday & Sunday due to Easter, so I only managed to get photos of the Louis Vuitton store (which is stunning inside). When you go shopping in there, you are only allowed to purchase 2 bags - apparently to make it more exclusive? Do they realise the amount of 15 year old girls walking around Garden City with spot on fakes?!
* The Palace of Versailles cost the entire French national income earnt in 6 months to build! King Louis 14th and Marie Antoinette moved there after finding their old palace 'too small' (you should see it too, small psssht). They had 5 000 servants, 5 000 chefs and 10 000 rooms!
* Napoleon's Tomb is solid gold at the top spire of the building (see the pics below). The whole thing!
* Napoloeon built most extravagant things in Paris. You name it, he created it. Totally egotistical!
* I was warned about the amount of dog poo on the streets of Paris, yet I hardly saw any? I think London is far worse!
* Lots of homeless people - we saw little villages of tents/cardboard houses on the way to/from out hotel everyday. Some were sleeping on the concrete, chairs, above the grates where the underground train runs (for warmth).