Not bad for rhyming in a language I haven’t spoken in over a decade, huh? So now we’re back from our trip to Paris, and I get to bore you with all the details.
We left VERY early on Sunday morning to catch our flight from Tegel to Charles De Gaulle, and then navigated our way through the Paris metro to our hotel on the edge of Montmartre. Not wanting to waste the four days and three nights we were there, we set off right away to explore the city. We stopped at a little cafe/restaurant, which we went to a few times, to get some lunch, but then quickly realized how tired we were, and went back for a short nap at the hotel before continuing our trip. We started our trip by heading over to Notre Dame, following our Rick Steve’s guide around the area to a park, a memorial for victims of WWII, a bookstore which was frequented by famous expats, such as James Joyce, made our way to the Latin Quarter, and then to dinner at this amazing fondue place.
It was a little hole-in-the-wall kind of place, with two long tables which ran along the walls. There was no space between the tables, so the host pulled out the table, set up a chair beside it, and helped Mel to step over the table onto the bench on the other side. We were then given a small plate of tapas for an appetizer, a sweet wine-flavoured drink, and then asked if we wanted red or white with dinner. I had red, and Mel orange juice, both of which were served in glass baby bottles – apparently a loophole around some tax law or something. A short while later, our never-ending pot of cheese fondue arrived, along with a basket of bread dices, which kept getting refilled. After some fruit cocktail for dessert, and the help of the host to get Mel back over the table again, we waddled our way home full of melted cheese and bread.
The next day it was off to the Louvre. We bought our tickets at the machines, checked our coats, and then headed in to see works such as the Venus de Milo, Winged Victory of Samothrace, and of course the Mona Lisa. After walking around the enormous palace, now museum, for a couple of hours, we made our way out to walk along the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, where we stopped for a few photos, following some salad for lunch.
After that, we made our way over to the Eiffel Tower, arriving there just before the sun set. We waited in line for about an hour or so for the elevator, and then towards the end, an attendant noticed that Mel was pregnant and signed to us that we could have skipped the whole line and gone straight on. We saved that bit of information for later. We went up the elevator, with Mel having a death-grip of fear on my jacket, and eyes as wide as canteloupes, and then took a look around at the view of the city at night, lit up by the lights around it.
We made our way back down, and then headed through the park to the Military College, then down the street to our destination for dinner, where we enjoyed some french onion soup (Mel’s of course without the bread) and some delicious entrees. Actually come to think of it, I think all except for one of my meals had cheese and bread in it – even the salad I had was loaded with parmesean and croutons. We took the metro back to the hotel, exhausted from our 5km walk that day, and slept peacefully through the night.
The next day we headed more towards the center of Montmartre, since we heard that there were some really nice fabric stores in that area. We’ve been making it a habit to buy things from each of our destinations for our home, and wanted to get some material for curtains, pillows, or something of the like. Once we arrived, we realized we had no measurements, and no idea what our future home was going to look like, so we decided to skip on the fabric, and bought a couple of vintage signs for decoration instead. We made our way up the staircase to Basilique du Sacre Couer, where we saw a couple of breakdancers. Mel was also very excited about this location on arriving, as she realized that it was one of the locations in the movie Amelie, where she looks through the telescope to see the guy answering the phone by the carousel. We then made our way back to the metro, and headed over to Musee D’Orsay.
Unfortunately, photography wasn’t allowed at this museum, but I managed to snag a shot of the large clock, which people looked out to get a view of the city. This museum hosted the works of impressionist and post-impressionist artists, such as Monet, Gauguin, Manet, van Gogh, and Renoir. There were also a number of other artists, and sculptures dotted throughout the renovated train station. At closing time, we made our way out, and walked along the river where we stopped for our last dinner in Paris for some fondue, and more fondue. We had meat and cheese for dinner, and then chocolate for dessert.
The next morning, we packed our things, headed over to McDonalds (as my brother had asked for a picture of wine from McDonalds, which they didn’t have, so we settled for a Royale with Bacon, not cheese, and a beer), and then hit the train station to catch the one headed to the airport. We sat in the relaxing lounge (aka. more comfortable seating area), had some fruit salad while we were waiting, and then boarded our flight home. For more pictures, you can check out
Mel’s Facebook album.
