Sunday 7 April 2013

Paris, I miss you....

C'etait la reve la plus importante a moi!  Quoi?   Un sejour a Paris!

From the 14th to 17th March my partner and I went to Paris for a little break..
We booked a nice, cosy little hotel in central Paris, just south of the Montmartre region.
When we got there, the airport bus left us off at Gare du Nord.  From there we managed to flag down a taxi to take us to our hotel.  The taxi driver gave me my first 'your French is excellent' compliment!!  I was so happy but not quite convinced.

Here is what we did:

Night 1 (not long after arrival):


  • Dined in a typical little Parisian restaurant, off the Rue Lafayette. 
  • We headed back to the hotel,as we'd been travelling all day, early night and recharge batteries for the following day.

Our room

Day 2

  • We headed straight for the Eiffel Tower - leaving the hotel at 8.30 am. I was so excited!!  The weather was nice.   We walked along the Champ de Mars - I didn't recall the Tower being so small before!  But there were renovations being carried out...
  • We visited the Champs-Elysees, by foot, starting at the Arc de Triomphe and walked all the way down!   We reached the Place de la Concorde (Egyptian obelisk) and took a nice stroll towards the Louvre Museum....

We passed by a cheese shop on the way.








Giant sweet sculpture on the Champs-Elysees


Street sign

View from bottom of the Champs-Elysees




Obelisk at Place de la Concorde

 

Pyramid at the Louvre museum

 

Day 3


  • We decided to head up to the Sacre-Coeur and walked up the steps to get to the fountain bit, however ~ there was only one local souvenir shop open at 9.15 am in the morning. There was a group of about 20 tourists that seemed to have crammed into that one tiny shop, needless to say I couldn't buy anything.    
  • We took a walk towards the Moulin Rouge area, which my partner had wanted to go - to have his photo taken of the famous windmill!!
  • Later on that day, we managed to come across an antiques market, which sold old retro comics, music, newspapers etc!   
  • We went to the Cemetery at metro stop Pere Lachaise, sort of east of the city. I knew that Jim Morrison's grave was there, as well as that of Chopin (composer) and  writer Oscar Wilde.  This was interesting to see! The cemetery was massive - with an amazing 70,000 graves in it.

  • A visit to 'Chinatown''  except it wasn't just Chinese folk there. (I am Chinese by ethnic origin). There were loads of Vietnamese, Thai and Indonesian businesses there too!  We also came across by accident, an ''Indian town'' in which there were about three whole streets dedicated to Indian restaurants, shops selling Bollywood stuff and Indian clothing! A little odd for us!

Electric car!


The Sacre Coeur


View from the Sacre Coeur


Moulin Rouge


La Patisserie!


French Patisserie (bakery)


Oscar Wilde's grave




 

Sunday 3 March 2013

Paris, here I come!

It was long overdue. Yes. 
Paris!!   My affair with France hasn't finished yet....it took quite some persuading and tears for me to 'convince' my partner we just have to go there!

So, we went and bought a guidebook today, booked the trip etc. etc - to say I am excited is an understatement!!

More updates to follow...




Life's too short!

I wasn't always a Francophile...to be honest I only started being one when I turned nineteen years of age. It began with my very first t...