My Scribblings Journeys of a mom and wife

Just after arrival in the opera district, we quickly noticed a 24/7 restaurant. The food was unexpectedly good. The plateau fruits de mer was fresh. I loved my dessert "Crêpes flambées au grand Marnier", and the dessert Spawn ordered was also super delicious.

At a Vietnamese Restaurant in China Town. We got big portion of nice food for little money. 11 euro for a 3 course menu. That is super cheap. I have not seen these kind of prices in the Netherlands.

This time we did not go to my favorite macaron shop, we tried two other shops that are listed in the top 5 of macaron shops: Pierre Hermé and Lenôtre. We both liked the macarons from Pierre Hermé better then the ones from Lenôtre. The structure is slightly heavier but the taste is really nice.

Although the macarons from Pierre Hermé were nicer, the icecream and salmon mouse from Lenôtre were excellent.

We took a plateau the second evening as well, but this time it was not so good as last night. We just filled up our stomach and continued our journey.

Our set lunch

 

Our last dinner before we left. You could even order marrow at that restaurant ("os à moelle" in French).
 

There is really an incredible amount of good food in Paris. Too bad we just could try out a few restaurants. How can it be that those French girls remain so slim with so much nice food everywhere?!

To be continued…

First thing we saw exiting the metro station "OPERA", we saw this. So beautiful.

Standing at Montmartre with this nice weather, it is really relaxed. There you could come across with a lot of performing artists. Of course they are all performing to earn some money, but some of them are really good.

Montmartre, Sacre-Coeur

Metro: Anvers

 

Almost mid-night at Arc de Triomphe, everywhere we went there were a lot of people.

Metro: Charles des Gaulle Étoile – Av d’léna

Initially we planned to go upstairs by foot, but in the end, we did not even go up, because the long long queues… Btw, there was something that kept drawing my attention. And that were the "Gendameries", they are so muscular and strong. They are not at all like the Dutch policemen (with big bellies).

Metro: Champ de Mars

At a Sunday morning, there was nothing better than go to the open-market in Paris. Here we could find a lot of pre-process food like grilled chicken, paella,..etc. Besides that, there were sea food stalls all over the market.

Le Marché 11e du dimanche

Metro: Brequet Sabin – Bd Richard Lenoir

Where ever we went, we kept running into street artists and beggars. At a certain moment we felt a bit annoyed by some of the performing beggars. Especially in the metro playing very loud music with their instruments, mics, sound boxes…etc.

Pombidou

Metro: Randuteau

This time we have not been to any museums except for this one: "Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris". In the underground’s corridors to the metro, there are a lot of billboards, but especially one of those billboards drawed Spawn attention, because it mentioned a very famous name in the world of photography "Henri Cartier-Bresson"

One of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s notes displayed in the museum:

Le raportage est une opération progressive de la tête, de l’oeil et du coeur pour exprimer un problem, fixer un événement ou des expressions. Un événement est tellement riche qu’on tourne autour pendant qu’il se developpe. On en cherche la solution. On la trouve parfois en quelques secondes, parfois elle demande des heures ou des jours; il y a pas de solution standard; pas des recette, il faut être prêt comme au tennis.

Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris

Metro: Léna

To be continued…

 

As 90% of our trips are booked last minute, this trip was no exception and we booked the trip and hotel in the morning and we had to depart in the afternoon. We didn’t plan any activities upfront for this trip since Spawn didn’t want to hurry around. So we agreed that the focus would be on eating and taking it easy.

This time the bus was the only option that we could book so last minute, since Spawn didn’t feel like driving to Paris. Although the bus stops about every 2 hours, so you can take a break and buy some food at the gas station, we bought a lot of snacks before boarding the bus in case I would get hungry, since I don’t like the food at gas stations.

Spawn was sitting in the bus and complaining about the seat. I didn’t have any problem at all, I even found it quite convenient.

After 6 hours + 1,5 hour delay, we finally arrived in Paris. It was almost mid night. My first impression of Paris this time was clean as you can see in the picture below, the cabin of metro was quite clean. It was probably just cleaned. But unfortunately the first impression is not always right.

After arrival, first thing we had to do is check-in in the hotel. The hotel we’d selected this time was suprisingly good. Quite comfortable, clean and is super close to the center of Paris. It took about 2 minutes to walk to Galeries Lafayette. Plus there were a lot of restaurants in the neighborhood, and some of them are open 24/7.

The room we had also includes a tiny balcony. And because of the balcony, it felt quite romantic.

Outside the hotel was quiet. We were satisfied about the overall environment of the hotel. It is often difficult to find a hotel in the center of the capital without too much noise nuisance.

To be continued…