One of those perfect evenings where even the weather cooperates. We went for dinner at a restaurant in Montparnasse round the corner from our last flat and then went for a walk back behind the Hotel des Invalides and along to the Eiffel Tower, where the sun was setting. The pictures nearly manage to capture the beautiful colours!
[Again, hopefully another scheduled post, if I set the settings right this time...]
Thursday was another touristy day – we went to the Trocadero, saw the Eiffel Tower again and then went out to La Defense and the Grande Arche de la Defense. Photos, as usual, will be below when I get them online. That or maybe I’ll crete new posts with photos in, just because I can. Consistency is over-rated.
Lunch was in St Michel – somewhere where many things they had in their menu were things I could eat. I had an actual choice for once! And the food was lovely – I had chicken breast in a balsamic vinegar glaze and rice with multi-coloured peppers, followed by pineapple carpacio in a caramel sauce.
Dinner was again touristy, as we ate just below Sacre Coeur, at the Maison Rose. Apparently the subject of a famous painting in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and definitely the subject of many, many photos by practically everyone who passed. After the first hundred or so people took photos, I was feeling I might be missing out, so took my own. It’s better than the one they use on the cover of their menus, which is frankly dire.
These blog posts are obviously being written with a bit of a delay, and on an AZERTY keyboard. Any misplaced a's, q's, z's and w's are due to that. What punctuation you'll get is anyone's guess... Photos will follow when I get access to a computer with a SD card slot and internet. Possibly in September, at this rate.
Alors, I left you at stupid o'clock, waiting for the Eurostar. It duly arrived, with very un-British efficiency, and we got to Paris for mid-morning. Our hotel is near the Parc Montsouris, so after checking in, we went for a walk through there and had a picnic lunch, fending off tame (hungry) ducks as we ate. People feeding the ducks at the park may seem like an innocent hobby, but they grow to expect it. Saying "no" doesn't work well with ducks...
From there, we walked through to Saint Michel and Notre Dame - they've finished cleaning Notre Dame now and all the scaffolding is gone. This is the first time I've ever seen it without some work being done - it's lovely! Then we walked along the banks of the Seine, where Paris has opened "Paris plage", a series of cafes and activities to entertain those left in the capital over summer. We walked up to the Louvre and through its courtyards, then headed back to the hotel.
Dinner was in Montparnasse, in a restaurant we go to at least once whenever we're in town. The food was fabulous, as usual, and we followed dinner with a walk past the Hotel des Invalides to the Eiffel Tower, arriving as the sun was setting. It was a gorgeous sunset, and there are many, many photos living on my camera which tried to catch it.
Time is now running out on my internet ticket, so the rest of my trip will have to wait to be written up for a little while. Highlights so far include Chartres, the Louvre, a free concert outside the Hotel de Ville and the Canal St Martin...
I think we left the Christmas story at the point at which we'd found a working Eurostar. I'm too lazy to check, mind, so let's all just assume that's where we were. Train over was fine, except we were next to a bunch of teenagers, for whom Paris was their haven, and they didn't care what their richer friends who went across the other side of the world said. It was their haven. And they were going to meet all these - presumably famous - people, and blah, blah, blah. For hours. Hell really is other people.
Once we got there, we had just under 24 hours (23 hours, 59 minutes, to be precise) until our train back home to Villefranche. We were staying in a hotel near Place d'Italie, which was nice enough - the bathroom was scary though, the tiles had faces on. Distorted faces. And eyes. Horrible. The room was decorated with books though, so I approve of that.
We walked, a lot. I was going to get a map and colour it in to show you all how far we walked. Because I knackered my knee doing it, and wanted sympathy. But I can't find a map, so you can't see the extent to which we walked just yet. But we saw a lot, and had dinner at the restaurant around the corner from our old flat in Montparnasse (called Zazous, I recommend it, if you're in the area - even with the refurb, which makes it look like you're eating in someone's living room. Food is good!) and we walked around the Eiffel Tower and the Trocadero and down the Champs-Elysees. All nicely decorated and full of Christmas Market - and people. So very many people. None of whom paid the slightest bit of attention to anyone else around them. But the lights were pretty, and the giant wheel in Place de la Concorde made a lovely backdrop for the wedding photos the couple we saw were having taken. And the Tuileries was pretty in the moonlight. Blah, if you've been to Paris, you know all this. If you haven't been to Paris, stop reading my blog and go and book tickets. Now.
The next morning, despite my aching knee, we went to Sacre Coeur, then down through Chatelet, past Notre Dame to Gibert Jeune and Saint Michel, and then back to the hotel to get our bags to go home. I recommed first class TGV travel, in case you're interested - huge seats, no screaming children, bliss for several hours. And finally, we were home!
Many photos here - a selection follow, because it's my blog and I can...
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