₦airaland Forum

Right in the middle of that museum is this gigantic glass Pyramid with two other smaller pyramids by the side.
Popularly known as the Louvre pyramid.
There are so many controversies and conspiracy theories about this pyramid and Illuminati.
It is believed by the conspirators that exactly 666 pieces of glass blades were used in the construction and that the French President that commissioned the constructions, François Mitterand is a Masonic occult grand master.

The Louvre Museum- This is the largest Art museum in the whole world.
According to our tour guide, this used to be a fortified palace for successive Kings for hundreds of years before it's final conversion to a museum.

madamgrace:
My brother, please how much is the Demo ticket?

Meanwhile, it's official trip o, I may not have luxury of touring and Babagrace is not coming along.

I didn't pay for it.
If you can't get, just send me a PM with your name, exactly how it is on your passport, and I can help get that for you.

olayide01:
Me and my wife also wants to apply, but I have an issue, I'm a business man and my business is not yet registered so I'm considering using that I'm a masters student on break of which I am but my wife works in sky bank. Will I also need bank statement as a masters student apart from sponsorship bank statement of account. Plus how many weeks does it take to process the schegen visa

The simpler you make your process, the better.
Let your wife be the lead applicant, it's easier for salaried earners as all documents required from her will be handy. I will suggest you tag along as a student because once you mention the business you must provide all documentations.

madamgrace:
May God forever bless you sir!

Is 500k accommodation for a 7 Day trip fair enough?

Please, the flight reservation I did online with Lufthansa has just been cancelled (sad). How do I make reservation that won't be cancelled after 3 days? Will Travel Agency help? (I mean those travel and tour companies not scamming visa agents)

Talk to any IATA Certified travel agent to get you a demo ticket that matches your travel dates.

Chai, madam you want to flex real good on hotels oo. I hope BabaGrace is joining on this trip oo.
As per accommodation, 500k for 7days will surely get you plenty luxury suites. I budgeted max of €100/night and that's like 42k/night. But some cities are more expensive than others like we experienced, moving from Frankfurt to Paris.
Good thing is that while searching, you can change the currency option to naira or just go straight to booking.com.ng so you'll have your choice hotels prices in Naira.
But remember that it's not only accommodation you need- transportation also takes huge chunks- Inter city flights goes from about €250 to €400 per trip for Light, and can reach double of that for flex tickets.
So, the best thing is to pull out your spread sheet and plug in all the expenditures you will likely bear.

Let's go...

Oya o... Big Bus, take us to the city monuments!
We are all seated in this double decker open roof bus.
The rule is you must not stand up on the roof, you can go down at any of the sites, have fun there, and then join another bus to continue the trip. Buses come around at roughly 10mins intervals, and they run all day.

sandrawole:
thank you very much. do they conduct interview or you just submit your documents and do biometrics.

You get interviewed one on one. And that's a good thing about the German Embassy, unlike the UK that you submit and go.

madamgrace:
Thank you sir. I was worried when I saw on their website that hotels reservation from portals aren't allowed.

I really appreciate

You are welcome.
Ensure that your check in/check out days tallys with the duration you quoted in the application.
Also, chose a moderate hotel so that the bills won't raise eyebrows.
Then print out the confirmation letter and attach to your flight ticket (don't pay for the flight ticket yet ooo.lol )

madamgrace:
Please, I want to confirm if German embassy allows hotel reservations from Booking.com or if you use it. If otherwise, which platform did you use to do your booking? It's important as I have appointment with the embassy.


Thank you

Confirmed.
I use booking.com all the time.
But be careful to chose hotels with FREE CANCELATION clearly stated in the confirmation mail they sent you.

sandrawole:
please do you use an gent to process your Schengen visa, or did you apply yourself?

Some of those agents will get you banned for life after scamming you of your hard earned money.
I filled the forms online myself, printed them, chose my appointment date, and headed there together with bae on our appointment day.
No middle man at all.

There is no better way to have a holistic view of this historic city than to get on the Big Bus Paris!
It's a hop-on, hop-off tour service that takes tourists across the city to most of the iconic sites, and you also get to see the city at bird's eye view, rather than just street-level on foot.

So, we already got out tickets down! The cost is €38/person online, but we got €3 discount from the hotel @ €35/ticket.

And those 'submarine roofs' are called Mansard roof.
The rebuilding of Paris city made it popular across Europe and America.

I'm now thinking of getting a French architect to design one for me, for my palatial home.

Guys,
My bae and I were discussing the possibility of these almost uniform Paris style of building.
How is it possible to have everybody build the same style in a whole wide city! (Usually you can only see same style in an Estate by Naija standard)
Why are all of them about 5-6 stories max?
How did the individual developers raise enough funds to build these gigantic structures, where a single structure has the length of a whole street?
So many puzzling questions...

Then I went to Google, and I fell in love more with Napoleon and what quality leadership can do to a nation.
It happened that Napoleon III commissioned my man, Haussman in the 1850s as a kind of Minister for works and Housing to redefine Paris landscape.
The result is this beauty the whole world can't get enough of!

DisGuy:
Fast Food is always a life saver when in foreign land. At least McD. Kfc. Burger King etc all taste similar and cheaper too!!

Unfortunately we are not given to junk foods.
We are advocates of healthy, well balanced diet, so fast food joints doesn't cut it for us.

One thing I noticed with these Europeans is that once you enter any hotel they will give you the city map.

It's an old culture and I think that's what inspired Google and other electronic navigation maps.
Meanwhile I noticed also that taxis use Waze more than Google.

992finland:
everywhere organized .......bro am no longer travling with wify she need to attend to important stuff at work.in this case do i still need to add my marriAge cert alongside other supporting documents?

Sure. Once you indicate that you are married, you must provide proof.

Please who knows the science behind these submarine looking roofing in Paris.

It's the only roofing style here, and I'm even surprised that Nigerians are yet to replicate it, giving our penchant for copying nice styles.

Street view... nice something.

Window view from the Hotel Victoria, Cite Bergere.

The view ain't inspiring sha...

This is all my Paris hotel could offer for breakfast at €12.
Croissants, dates, yoghurt, muesli cereal, tea/coffee, egg (seems they hoard the eggs, because my wife had to discover it somehow. Lol)
No green energy from fruit platters.

So, we got to realize that Paris is a way too expensive city, at least compared to Frankfurt.
If we go for that quality of Hotel we stayed in Frankfurt here, we will be burning like €200-250/night.

Anyway, the street here is lined with all kinds of restaurants- from Mexican to Thai, Chinese, Japanese, name them.
No African sighted yet sha...

This baguette is actually a dry stick bread. It's very popular around here. It's length is about 2-3 feet.
I first saw it in Frankfurt and unlooked but when I saw it in Paris I decided to have a go.

Funny thing is that when my wife saw it in my shopping trolly she said, ' what are you doing with a machette?'

LUCAS99:
True, but Steak are usually more expensive...

Was the Salmon cooked thoroughly?

It looks uncooked to me...

Just like the ones you buy from Grocery Stores like Whole Foods & Publix.

Nna eh...
I doubt if the Salmon saw any heat at all, not to talk of being cooked thoroughly.
But as others dey whack am, no be me go carry last nah. Lol

davodyguy:
No wonder. This your first trip is really sharking you. It's allowed Sha.

By the Time you travel more to some other cities, you would stop the comparison and just accept that Nigeria can't be fixed in this our generation

Bro!
This is a shocking reality!
It makes me both sad and happy.

Sad that what others did over 500years ago, we have not even started, and that means Nigeria will never make sense in our generation.

Happy that there is still hope for our generations yet unborn, because if you listen to their history, they once were at the exact point we are today.

Tired, so we branched into a restaurant to grab something.

I looked at the menu from A-Z and the only name I recognized was Salmon. Lol

Oya bring nah... guys, I don't even know the name of this concoction but the only thing I know is that it is absolutely tasteless!

Chai... we just need to fill up our tommy sha...

Clean street with lovely trees.
Pix taken from inside of Balenciaga shop.

BNP Paribas Bank on the Boulevard

...So, the silver lining is that the hotel is directly off one of the most famous streets in Paris- the Boulevard Haussmann! So we don't need a taxi to take the street.
This double lane Boulevard is like our own Adeola Odeku, but it's longer with beautiful trees lining both sides.
I like the way Europeans build their restaurants. While they have sit outs on the streets, it does not in any way obstruct pedestrians as enough spaces are provided for both.
This boulevard is arguably the shopping capital of France, as it houses the famous Galeria La Fayette, the biggest shopping mall in the city with every single store represented- Gucci, Diesel, Chanel, H&M, Loius Vouitton, Prada, just name it.
And then it's situated at the junction of the Opera Ganier- another imposing monument!
Now, we are balling with exciting sight-seeing experience and dope shopping options.

Our hotel in Frankfurt- Hampton by Hilton is a stand-alone building. Cost was about €80/night and the facilities are quite impressive.
You can see that breakfast room picture for an idea. The environment, the ambience, the rooms- Everything was just tight!

So, as we planned to head to Paris, I used the same price range on Booking.com to look for a similar hotel. To say that we were disappointed on arrival will be an understatement. In fact my wife was asking If I'm sure we are in the right hotel. Lol
This hotel is just a basic bed and breakfast facility. And the breakfast is NOT FREE! We pay €6/ person. They have no fresh fruits servings, no baked beans. Just tea, coffee, cereals, croissants and fresh bread.
Situated in the middle of a 7 floors giant apartment building. The lift that takes us to our 4th floor room takes only 2 people at a time as it is so small. The same building houses like 4 or 5 other similar hotels- you know the way we build shopping plazas in Nigeria - those U shaped buildings.

This hotel is a disappointment guys- but there is a silver lining...

Hold your breaths guys...

Now, I know the reason for that statement- See Paris, and die!'
This city is astonishingly beautiful, like a well sequenced musical notes.
The buildings are like hand molded giant sub-marines carefully lined up on the streets.
You will also notice that the paint color is same or closely similar - cement/creamy color for ALL the buildings.

Wow! Wow! Wow! The beauty of this city is simply hypnotising.

Guys, something funny happened during our shuttle from CDG to Paris city center.

As we drove through the high way, passed the Stade the France (France '98 Finals stadium) and got to the first traffic stop, our car was swamped at the sides by homeless African immigrants begging for alms, typical of Lagos traffic.
The whole environment was littered with trash, and for us coming in from Frankfurt it was quite shocking. Frankfurt is sparkling clean! Asides the leaves falling off the tree-lined streets, you can't see a drop of nylon or paper on the streets.
So, I called some of my guys that live in Paris to expresse my disappointment as the sight falls short of my expectation. They said we should chill, that we will be wowed when we enter the city...

Still CDG...