A weekend in Paris...the concept alone is already romantic! In January, deep in France's (freezing!) winter, we took the Eurostar to a very cold, but nonetheless stunning Paris. The Eurostar is a train that travels from the centre of London, underwater (under the channel!) and into France. It's a strange concept, getting on the train then three hours later ending up in a completely different country, and sometimes it doesn't really feel like you're going somewhere special... but then you're in France and what a relaxing way to travel! I love the Eurostar! There're very short visa and passport control process, no weight restrictions to worry about on the luggage front, a little cafe on board, specious seating and the rhythm of the train puts you straight to sleep! We arrived in Paris early on a Saturday morning and headed to our little boutique hotel (tiny but nice) near the station, before exploring the Montmartre area, Sacre Couer, Champs Elysses and the Louvre. I had booked a bus tour in advance for the Saturday afternoon, mainly to ensure we had a 'skip the line' ticket for the Eiffel Tower, which can be hard to secure in advance, so our plan that first day was to catch the main sights, then take the bus and end up at the top of the tower as the sun went down...a romantic concept, but we had most definitely not factored in the incredible cold! Paris was absolutely freezing that weekend and despite wearing multiple layers including several very unfashinable, (un-Paris!) thermal items, we still shivered our way through the streets and sights. What struck me about Paris was the sheer size of the city. I mean, in theory it makes absolute sense, of course Paris is a huge city - it's one of the big four - (Paris, Rome, New York, London - tick, tick, tick, tick!) and is a powerful and influential city, but in my imagination it has always been a large cobble stoned village! Paris is actually enormous, and the size of everything in Paris is enormous too - the streets are wide, the buildings are vast and the parks and wide open spaces. It's so big that it's difficult to capture Paris in photographs; you're always missing a corner of a building or fountain! We started in Montmartre, walking distance from our hotel and easy to spot, from the towering cathedral at the top of the hillside, the very famous Sacre Couer. Montmartre is stunning, a rambling series of cobbled streets full of that neighbourhood charm you always imagine to be 'very Paris'. There are crepe stores on each corner, biscuits and sweet stores and delicatessens, men in berets and horizontal stripes playing musical instruments, artists offering to paint a likeness of you, the Moulin Rouge nearby and all of the old world charm you expect...though it is predominantly for the tourist trade. It's a lovely part of Paris, and it's a close tie between that area and the Latin Quarter as to which is my favourite for that sought after experience of Parisian charm. From Montmartre, we headed to the very fashionable, very en vogue Champs Elysses, the famous shopping strip. I've recently read that Parisian locals are disappointed by the fact that Champs has become so fashionable now that anything reminiscent of neighbourhood stores (pharmacies, newsagencies etc) cannot afford to be in the area. Just last month, the last post office in the area closed. Not having to live there, and loving being closed in on all sides by flagship designer stores and walking such a beautifully landscaped street...I didn't mind at all! It is a stunning street and a great chance to people watch and marvel at the madness of traffic as it careens around the Arc de Triomphe. From here, it was a straight, long walk down Champs, past beautifully landscaped gardens to the Louvre, and the planned meeting place of our prebooked bus tour. We had baguettes at a little sandwich shop in my favourite part of Paris, the Le Marais then headed to the meeting place, only to find that the map we'd been provided with was wrong and we were at the very much closed head office of the tour company. These sort of things aren't uncommon for us, so I barely flinched when Ross asked a kind man for the correct directions then took off at breakneck speed, running through the streets of Paris! I half jogged, half walked and 100% hoped he'd call and fill me in on his master plan. We met up at the tourist office minutes after the tour bus had left and thankfully the tour company realised their error and rebooked us, on to a tour the next morning. They made arrangements for us to rejoin the tour group an hour later at the base of the Eiffel tower so we still got to view it as the sun went down. That solved, Ross and I explored the gardens nearby and took a close look at the glass pyramid and surrounding buildings that make up the Louvre, then walked along the riverfront and admired the Musee D'Orsay; the sometimes overlooked museum and art gallery that is situated in the now-retired train terminal on the Parisian riverfront. From here we took the train to the Eiffel Tower - a magnificent building, the sight of which left us completely breathless. There's really no way of explaining just how unbelievable it is to come face to face (face to tower?) with a sight of this magnitude. I recall the same feeling when we hit Venice, when we saw the Colisseum in Rome, Michaelangelo's David in Florence, Kinkakuji in Kyoto and regularly when I catch a glimpse of Big Ben... all of a sudden, you're hit with a feeling of 'I'm here. I'm in Paris' (or Italy...or Japan...or London...) The Eiffel Tower is my favourite sight in Paris, even though it will forever be embedded in my memory as the coldest sightseeing experience ever. Logic lost to romance when I insisted that we stay on the tower to view the sun going down and the city lighting up...despite the fact that it was minus 5 and snowing on our heads! Ross forced us to pass the time and keep warm by running laps of the tower - particularly cold as we hit the west side of the tower. I'm sure people would have been very amused by the shivering couple jogging the circuit of the tower, yelling 'please no, not the west!'...had anyone else been foolish enough to stick around at the top in the mad, cold weather with us. :) Our trip to the tower was polished off with crepes at the bottowm (of course), photos from various angles and distances, and a follow up crepe, before we made our way to the Latin Quarter for dinner. The Latin Quarter is a series of rambling streets clustered near Notre Dame and comes alive at night in a lovely, dramatic way. The resturants there are quite small, tend to specialise in French or Swiss food or both and are all alike in their ability to squeeze many, many people into their tiny storefronts (many featuring the expected checked tablecloths!). We ate a three course French meal, made friends with a lovely couple squeezed in next to us on our tiny table then wandered back to our hotel. Day two began with our long awaited bus tour - a real bonus considering I only booked it to get us speedily up the Eiffel Tower. Though Ross and I often remark that we're not 'tour people', we have come to realise, all over the world, that a tour is often a good option. Without a tour in Rome, we'd have wandered around for hours at Palatine and the Forum, pointing at piles of rocks and having no idea what we were looking at. In Paris, the morning bus tour took us, in order of cultural and/or historical significance, past loads of monuments and streetscapes we'd never have had the chance to experience on foot. It was a magnificent way to take in Paris. In the afternoon we wandered around La Marais, catching sight of some AMAZING French fashion and eating chocolates and croissants then finished our weekend back in Montmartre at the Artists Square, where hundreds of artists are clustered at the top of the hill around the cathedral; a picturesque French neighbourhood, and a favourite place from our visit.
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