As promised, Hong Kong picture below. We look hot and we were. 32 degrees and humid as hell. Anyhow, I digress. Back to the journey on our way to The City of Light - Paris
So we left the heat of Hong Kong and have arrived to the heat of Paris. Both vastly different types of heat, one being bearable and the other not. You tell me which is which..Hong Kong was fantastic and it is somewhere that we will definitely return to. Its is clean, vibrant, friendly and delicious! The only negative was the heat really. We found ourselves longing for the air conditioner like we never have before.
Our flight left at 11.30pm Hong Kong time. It was a 13 hour long flight with a 2 hour stop over in Zurich followed by a 1 hour flight to Paris. This followed a full on day in the heat of Hong Kong on only a few hours sleep. By the time we arrived at Charles de Gaulle Terminal 1, we were rooted. Our plan was to catch the Air France bus to the Gare de Lyon train station then catch the Metro to St Paul in the Marais and attempt to find our hotel on foot (with all our luggage). Daunting to say the least. As we left the airport, a man approached us and offered us a shuttle ride directly to our hotel door for 20 euros per person - this was not much more than it would have cost us if we had stuck to our original plan. We thought really long and hard about it for about 5 seconds and next minute we were zooming along the highway towards Central Paris!
Then I got nervous. What if he was a crook and was going to rob us? What if he was going to drive off somewhere where his thug mates were waiting and try to attempt to play with my bottom and then sell my wife and children? All these scenarios and more were crossing my extremely tired mind and a cool sweat fell over my brow. I even grabbed my 2 cards with Euros on them and stuck them down my socks! No shit. I left the cash and my credit card so if they were robbing us, I could give these up and swear on Ben's life that that was all we had on us!
Then I got nervous. What if he was a crook and was going to rob us? What if he was going to drive off somewhere where his thug mates were waiting and try to attempt to play with my bottom and then sell my wife and children? All these scenarios and more were crossing my extremely tired mind and a cool sweat fell over my brow. I even grabbed my 2 cards with Euros on them and stuck them down my socks! No shit. I left the cash and my credit card so if they were robbing us, I could give these up and swear on Ben's life that that was all we had on us!
Clearly I needed some sleep. The man was lovely. He took us straight to the hotel, unloaded our baggage and was off. Phew - we were so lucky and the kids will never know how close they got to ending up as slaves in Eastern Europe.
The time in Paris was about 11.30am. Jeanne d'Arc (our hotel) is amazing. Affordable, perfect for us and in the best part of town - the Marais district in the 4th Arrondissement. Its the super funky Jewish quarter. We are literally surrounded by cute little restaurants and a wonderful little square where musicians play as the Parisians smoke their Gauloise and drink their rose, is about 30m away. Parfait!
The time in Paris was about 11.30am. Jeanne d'Arc (our hotel) is amazing. Affordable, perfect for us and in the best part of town - the Marais district in the 4th Arrondissement. Its the super funky Jewish quarter. We are literally surrounded by cute little restaurants and a wonderful little square where musicians play as the Parisians smoke their Gauloise and drink their rose, is about 30m away. Parfait!
We found a little place and kicked off our Paris experience with a cheeky little 3 course lunch (for 19 euros each) and a bottle of rose. Terrine, crudites and mozzarella salads to start, pasta and steak au poivre next (me and Chris cooked "saignant" or rare and Ben cooked "a point" or medium) followed by tarts and fromage blanc to finish. Straight into talking French and straight into great food. Encore parfait!
It was 2.30pm and we thought it would be smart if we had a little sleep before hitting another cafe for dinner. Personally, I was so tired I thought that my eye balls were going to fall out. I was dizzy and very disoriented. The whole bottle of rose might have contributed to this somewhat. Anyhow, so we have a nap.
It was 2.30pm and we thought it would be smart if we had a little sleep before hitting another cafe for dinner. Personally, I was so tired I thought that my eye balls were going to fall out. I was dizzy and very disoriented. The whole bottle of rose might have contributed to this somewhat. Anyhow, so we have a nap.
We all woke up at 4am! No shit. That's about 13 1/2 hours of sleep. Damn - we missed dinner! Classic. I guess we needed to rest a bit. Hopefully that has now got us into the routine of sleeping when we should be awake and vice versa. We will worry about reversing that back in 6 weeks.
We spent the day in Paris.We tubed to the Eiffel Tower. Queued up for 3 hours to get in. Went up to the top, checked out the view and came back down then walked back to our hotel. Yip - walked. Paris is quite a large city and the temp was about 27 degrees today so once again we were hot. Check out my photo below...
Lunch was as pictured below. A falafel that is reported to be the best in Paris (again, something that we had researched). It weighed about a kilo and was pretty fabulous. Could have done with a it of salt though...
Tomorrow, we leave for Montpellier in the South of France via the Train de Grande Vitesse - or the TGV. Not enough time in this spectacular part of the world but we have other plans. We will be back though - next time, without the kids. Paris and the Marais, a bientot j'espere.
Au revoir mes amies
Love Jason, Chris, the blond assassin and the ginger marauder xxxx
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