France 1 - Postcards From Paris

We did it all in Paris!

We ate, shopped, were major tourists, and even turned into big kids for a day in Disneyland Paris. It was a grand four days.

HOS (Hunk of Spunk, alias my hubby, for any new readers) and I had the privilege of showing The Princess a little of this famed city. I should introduce The Princess, she's a new character in this tale. The Princess is my youngest step-child (I have 4) and this trip was her 21st birthday present...happy birthday to you...she hadn't been to Paris since she was 9 years old, so it was fantastic to be able to show her around again - she was a total hoot, and oh so glamorous (I think there are men all over Europe still with cricks in their necks from staring)!!

So...we offered The Princess four days covering the basics...

Basic 1: Sight Seeing
Let's face it, if there's any city in the world where the tourist hat needs to be donned, it's Paris (though The Princess' tourist hat would have definitely been Dior). So, off we went.

We covered alot of ground in one day. We started at Notre Dame, the wonderful home of the Hunchback (pic 1), where we were awed by the flying buttresses (thanks to Mr Gant from my year 7 Art class, I gave a little art lecture), then walked and cabbed our way to the Eiffel Tower for a quick squiz. I think the Princess was more awed by the hundreds of people selling tiny little Eiffel Tower replicas than the grand structure itself!

We then hiked up to the Arc de Triomphe, including climbing it's 4,456 stair spiral staircase (just kidding, really about 360 I think), and saw the most amazing views of Paris (pic 2) - all the avenues all radiate out from the Arc, and it's a breathtaking scene, well worth the heart attack on the way up!

The Champs Elysees is a must - but only do it once, I really don't like it, it's sooooooo crowded and way too touristy, but do it, and tick it off the list. The best thing is that the Champsie leads you from the Arc down to the Tuileries (those beautiful structured gardens) and straight to the Louvre. And Paris isn't Paris without a Louvre visit (pic 3 - me with the Venus de Milo)!

We left Sacre Coeur and Momtmartre for the next day - these are MUST DOs - the view from up there is the best of Paris, I think, and you can wind your way down the hill, after seeing the Cathedral, to find yourself lost amongst quaint local shops and restaurants, all the way down to the red light district of Pigalle - from heaven to hell in such a short space of time!! You've gotta love Paris!


Basic 2: Shopping
The Princess has quite a few passions...and shopping is one of them. She is a shopping pro! We showed her the delights of Galleries Lafayette and Printemps, the two big French department stores, right in the heart of Paris (and luckily close to our hotel which was in the Opera district). Galleries Lafayette is more traditional, but I do prefer the more modern Printemps - you can see pic 4 above is the glass ceiling of the Printemps cafe where HOS and I sat while The Princess played! Having said that, the Galleries Lafayette foodhalls, in the Men's Store btw, are AMAZINGGGGGGGG...to die for!!! OMG, MAKE A TRIP THERE.

The shopping just didn't stop there, HOS took The Princess to the posh stuff, and Paris is full of posh stuff, and of course she had to stop at the oh-so-understated Louis Vuitton store on the Champsie (pic 5)! There was a bloody queue. Tourists!

Of course, Paris is also full of charming little stores and arcades to explore, and fortunately we were in the right area for that. You can see HOS and The Princess, above (pic 6) in one of the arcades just near us...soooooooo cute, and full of quirky things from cardboard chandeliers to mounted moose heads! One of these arcades was home to a wonderful patisserie, Valentin...read on...

Basic 3: Food
Food for me is more than a basic, and in France, well, food is everything! From the strawberries in the daily street markets (pic7) to the cliched, yet wonderfully garlicy, Cuisses de Grenouilles (frogs legs - pic 8 - and they just tasted like fish to me), we ate well in ol' Paris!

Of course the patisserie isn't equalled anywhere in the world, and we found the most wonderful little place that was a Salon de The, Chocolaterie, and Patisserie all rolled into one, in one of those gorgeous arcades mentioned above. Valentin. Sigh. There's the next two pics above...we had breaky there on Sunday morning, you can see the cute inside, then there's a pic of one of the wackiest things I've ever eaten. No, it's not the croissant (which was divine btw, as was the Croissant des Amandes or Almond Croissant as we call it), it's the brown goopy stuff next to it.

That brown goopy stuff, my friends, is Chocolate and Raspberry Jam!!!! Yes, you read right. Chocolate and raspberry jam. Wow wee. HOS, The Princess and I all looked at each other - and dug in. I've written in my little black book (which I keep with me at all times to record important food/travel/contacts info) "Chocolate jam - CRAZY! Tangy raspberry with creaminess and shocking hit of heavy duty, intense cocoa!" Valentin make it themelves and sell it as part of their confiture (jam) range. I would highly recommend getting your chops into that.

Unfortunately, there was one very low point. This has never happened before in the history of my trips to France. Never. Never ever. We had a very very bad meal in Paris - and it wasn't even in the tourist area. Dear me. It was my fault, I take full blame, I chose the restaurant. I broke my golden rule of never going into a local restaurant with hardly any customers. I deserved punishment, I deserved the terrible so-called "orange sauce" on my duck, but poor ol' HOS didn't deserve his caramelised tomato (yes, tomato) and honeycomb icecream for dessert. I've never wanted to spit something out of my mouth in France - until now. I took one mouthful of that tomato and my first instinct was to let it fly across the room - not only was the flavour so so so awful, but it had fermented, so it was all tingly on your tongue. There are no words. One of the worst food experiences of my life, and definitely worst French food experience ever. HOWEVER, the lovely waitress, who I believe was also the owner, did manage to take a wonderful photo of the three of us (pic above)...laughing together over what was indeed the joke of the holiday!

Disneyland Paris
I didn't put this as a basic, because let's face it, it's not a basic of your first trip to France. But The Princess was busting to go - we had taken the kids years ago, and there were memories to be rekindled. I also had a sneaking suspicion, which later proved to be all too scarily correct, that The Princess wanted to hang out a bit with the other princesses, like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella! I won't mention that one of us made the others stop to watch the live Cinderella show, nor that this person wanted to do Lunch with the Princesses at the only posh restaurant at the resort, nor will I mention the discussion of the possibility of fitting into the biggest kid size Cinderella costume in the gift shop. Nope, I won't mention any of that! Instead I've included a couple of pics at the end, above, just so you can see our very own Princess in her natural surroundings!