Paris in the Springtime

I couldn't think of a better way to finish one job and start another than to spend the weekend in Paris.

James told me a couple of weeks back that he had booked us a weekend in Paris to celebrate finishing one job and starting another. Then he told me that I shouldn't drink too much at my leaving drinks on Thursday night as we had a 2.5 hour train ride on the Eurostar on Friday afternoon. That and apparently one of the most romantic parts of the journey was the bottle of wine we would have with lunch on the train.

Nothing better than hair of the dog!

So after a late night on Thursday and an early morning on Friday getting ready and packing, I met James at Waterloo at noon where we got "provisions" and then boarded the train.

It turns out that James was feeling as rough as I was as he was in Amsterdam on business for 2 days before we went away and spent most of the time drinking. Unfortunately he was out until 2:30am on Thursday night and was woken at 5:00am on Friday to get his flight! Poor boy.

Regardless, we still had a drink at the station and then a bottle of wine on the train with our sandwiches and snacks. The journey went fast enough and we found ourselves in Paris at about 5:30 at night on Friday.

Our hotel was very easy to get to and super central! We got the metro from the Gare du Nord to Saint-Germaine which only took a couple of minutes and we walked from there to our hotel which was in the latin quarter.

After settling in and changing into something slightly nicer and fresher...we went for a wander, found some lovely cafes and bars where we sat and chatted until a more "decent" hour for food which in Paris is definitely not before 9pm!

We found a great little restaurant which James had been to before where we had amazing french onion soup and cheese fondue - SO good! And of course with dinner we had a couple of cocktails followed by wine. When in France......

As we'd had a long day we just went back to the hotel and crashed. The next day we woke up, got ready and walked down the road to a Boulangerie to get coffees and pastries - clearly my diet would have to wait until Monday... We then headed off on a walk to Notre Dame and then onto the Louvre (I had to see the Mona Lisa!). I had bought a new camera before leaving with the intention of taking loads of pics but in the end the only one I took was this one of James in front of Notre Dame! Next time.....

Enough touristy stuff for a little while - so off to the Champs Elysées. When we got off the metro, we found it was starting to rain a little so the only rational thing to do was to go for lunch and drink some more wine (or in James' case - beer!). Once the rain had stopped and we were quite merry after our drinks, we walked down to a road I can't remember the name of (remember - we'd been drinking all afternoon) and went into all of the fancy shmancy shops. Prada, Gucci, Chloe, Bvlgari, Versace, Yves Saint Laurent and the list goes on.

Of course I didn't buy anything which depressed me so we walked a little further to another lovely little cafe where I drowned my sorrows when James bought me a bottle of Pinot Noir. When we had polished that off, we walked down to another area of Paris to the Hotel Le Costes for more wine and some great tunes!

Then back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. We decided that we would go back to the same restaurant as the night before because it was close by and one of the most amazing meals I had ever had. After dinner we wandered over to a little bar where we sat drinking wine and beer until 4:30am!!

Sunday morning, James woke up and went to get breakfast which was of course lovely pastries! Then we got packed up, left the hotel and wandered in a completely different area for a little lunch before heading back to Gare du Nord for our train back to London.

Paris was absolutely gorgeous but 2 days wasn't nearly enough to do and see everything that James and I had planned so we'll have to plan a trip back. Any excuse eh...