Bonjour my lovely friends and blog followers, is it travel time again, YES IT IS!
So this is now our Valentines trip to Paris and 6 Nations weekend at the Stade De France.
Now I know what your going to say "That weekend wasn't Valentines day you cheap skate". Now you all listen here, It cost me most probably half the price of the proper Valentines weekend and we got to take in a international rugby game. The sights all looked the same, the food all tasted the same, the weather was glorious, the only difference was France were playing Italy not Ireland and there wasn't a day called Valentines, that was the only difference as you shall see.
Off to Bristol airport we go, car booked in, check, all tickets and documents double checked, check, bags packed, checked. Paris here we come............or so we thought.
As we get to the gate for speedy boarding we were all excited and big smiles only to be told we will not be allowed to board as we took our Antigen test 36 hours before departure when it was meant to be 24 hours. This we had checked and double checked and it stated everywhere 48 hours before departure so we were well within the time but on the 1st Feb Easyjet had changed their website stating 24 hours before, we were traveling on 4th and were sent no notification of this.
Sian bless her was so upset and felt like she had let us down. Nonsense young lady, we both went over everything with a fine tooth comb on the 28th Jan, dry your eyes and it will all be fine, I promise. We got ourselves booked in for Antigen tests at the airport which came back negative an hour later as we knew we would be and I booked new flights later that day to Paris CDG instead of Orly, not a problem at all.
10 hours later we were off after a sleep in the car, good job we drove to airport.
We landed at CDG and the train in to central Paris was there waiting as we got to platform, travel cards bought to top up as we go, nice!
On boarding the train the first impression was, what a hunk of junk the train was considering that's the first thing most would see at the airport.
An absolute dump of a train and a bit smelly.
We get off our train and get on the bus to our hotel, just a 10 min short ride away. Exhausted but happy to be there we had a quick microwave meal, a beer and sleep until morning. Nigh Nigh now.
GOOD MORNING PARIS!
We look out the window and couldn't believe how close we were to the Stade de France. Couldn't have got a hotel in a better location.
I had booked us into a suite at our hotel and it was a great suite.
The living space area with sofa, table and kitchenette facilities.
The kitchenette
A movable TV unit like R2D2 which is a good idea as you can turn it around to face your sofa and then at night turn it around to face your king size bed.
For some reason they seem to think you maybe performing an interview or hosting a chat show in your room.
We decided to walk to the metro from the hotel. It was in fact quicker to walk to metro than the bus we caught the night before, how stupid is that.
On to the metro and in to central Paris just a short 10 min journey, perfect.
I'm not going to bore you with loads of holiday pics but will add the most popular places as I have so many of buildings, architecture and scenic views you may fall asleep reading it and die of boredom.
Such a shame that the fire destroyed all that history. I had been to Paris 38 years ago when i used to be able to speak French fluently now i know as much French as Del Boy, Sian had a good grasp of the language though and it was her first visit to Paris.
The Louvre, being as it was such a good day we decided not to go in anywhere today just in case Monday was a grey day and we would need indoor things to do. I know what your thinking "Davinci Code", no trace of Tom Hanks anywhere.
Now as we all know I hate selfies and if I were to attempt one it comes out crap like this one but you can see the Arc de Triomphe in the background as I stand waiting to be hit by a Citroen CV in the middle of the Champs Elysee
We decided to stop at George V cafe on the pavement of the Champs Elysee. We did as most would do order a cappuccino and croissant and watched the world go by, until.......
As we sat in the sun enjoying our coffee the table next to us was empty. Then we heard the whining strain of drawn out words from two millennial females of about 20 from what I could gather the London area, maybe they thought people would mistaken them for Made in Chelsea (whoever they are).The waiter started his patter rolling of the list of wonderful foods and pastries, Salmon belinis, fois gras, escargot, pain aux chocolate, crepes. The list was impressive and elegant. The two dim and young females came back with "Do you do hotdooooooooogs?" yes they did say it like that with the extension of every last word of anything they said. The waiter replied " we can make it but with cheese" both looked at each other at replied "EEeeeeeeeeeew, Ooooooh, OK then i gueeeeeeeees with frieeeeeees". Drink up Sian, we're off. The drone from their voices and the constant changing of seats for selfies with flicking of hair and pouting drove me to almost pop their botox inflated lips.
Nice cafe, shame about the dead heads.
Arc de Triomphe, here people just stand around on the outside of the round about waiting to see a crash, it is quite exciting as it's almost like a stock car race, could have stood here for hours.
The most photographed landmark of Paris...........
It's a rusty old tower that if it was in a town or a minor city no one would bother with it, move along, better places to visit.
We had walked miles, in fact 14 miles on this day and it was almost kick off time for Ireland V Wales, lets get to the pub The Great Canadian.
What a great bar, nice atmosphere, good ice hockey memorabilia, great beer (Eidleweiss) and Poutine.
Very busy by the end of the Wales game.
And of course YOU SCREAM, I SCREAM, WE ALL SCREAM FOR POUTINE!
After 9 hours of mainly walking around central Paris it was time to head back to hotel for a couple of beers and rest before our rugby day tomorrow.
Goodnight Stade de France, see you tomorrow.
Good morning Stade de France. A little bit of a lay in as not going anywhere apart from the stadium and we feel a little bit broken from the walk yesterday. Grey and misty rain but that's fine as we are in Tier one under the roof and not far to walk to our gate, in fact our gate was just at the end of the street.
And what great seats we had. These seats in the Principality Stadium (Wales) would be £95 each, here they cost £45 each and we got a free French flag, what a rip off the WRU is.
Our sixth ever selfie. Please note, we're not being serious in this pic, we're actually mocking the selfie pouting brigade, YOU ALL LOOK RIDICULOUS!
What an amazing experience and it makes it so much better when you have a partner like Sian who loves rugby, knows the rules, knows the national anthems which is impressive and not just about a booze up.
If you did watch the game and saw a Welsh flag in the stadium, that was us.
The game lived up to all of our expectations and before we knew it it was all over.
Back to hotel through all the outdoor bars and fans and order a delivery, PIZZA! Due to the crowds we had to wait another 2 hours but that was fine as we wanted to sit in bar for a while of hotel as it was open to guests only which was a good job as the bars and outdoors were all packed.
The best delivery pizza's we have ever tasted, so good.
Our final day and another glorious sunny warm day. We have never had bad weather on any of our trips, maybe just one day out of a whole trip but we've been really lucky as almost all no matter what time of year have been sunny.
Had to wear my Cardiff Devils jersey out during our second central Paris trip.
We decided to do lunch this day and sit outside at a pavement cafe.
And lovely view across the river seine.
Coffee, crepes and yes for me you've guessed it....escargot or snails for non French speakers.
This arty style pic shows that our view also took in the back of Notre Dame Cathedral.
All gone and they tasted so good. They look absolutely gross out of the shell, green and phlegm like but if you eat with your eyes you would never touch them which is wrong, be open minded about food, after all it's the taste that matters. I can now add this to goats head, lambs testicles, goats butt entrails and on my first visit to Paris 38 years ago horse willy casserole (bit chewy). Bear Grylls got nothing on me.
We took a little wander in to the shopping district of Paris, Sian isn't in to shopping but if we find a posh department store we like to go in to bring the tone down a notch and this was the unlucky one in Paris, Samaritaine.
The view from the ground floor looking up at the stair cases.
The view from the top looking down through the floors which are all designer clothing, shoes, furniture and perfumes.
It is a Valentines trip after all and Sian deserves a perfect present. Sian has wanted a specific Guerlain perfume for about two years I think and being as Guerlain is made in Paris they must have it....and they did. Happy Valentines Day, I love you xxxxx
Had a quick walk around the streets of the shopping district but only went in to Samaritaine and being as we had walked another 10 miles today it was time for a little drinkie.
We knew it was back to The Great Canadian but on our way we past a very familiar sounding pub......."THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!" Highlander Pub, it was closed, BUGGER!
This is our local now when in Paris. Why go anywhere else. All the bars prices are exactly the same 6-8€ for a pint, it seems like there is an agreement on prices among the bars, i may be wrong but all prices for certain beers were all the same.
Ice Hockey stuff.
Our last metro trip back to hotel, one last beer and up to bed before our morning flight from Orly to Bristol. What and amazing trip and to share these adventures with Sian makes it even better.
To sum up Paris. As a cult welsh film "Twin Town" would say "A pretty shitty city" and i mean that in a nice way, after all we walked around 31 miles in total so couldn't have been that bad
Paris as a whole is beautiful, we loved the architecture, we loved the diversity, we loved the individuals styles and the food and bars were great. I know it's an old city and highly polluted with traffic but the areas look scruffy and dirty apart from the very main visitors attractions but we know there isn't much you can do about it as you would need thousands of people working around the clock to maintain Paris. You must look past the rubbish, graffiti and dirt covered buildings that you first see and there is beauty, elegance and stunning architecture.
Would we visit again, yes we would, yes we are, already booked an apartment in the centre of Paris this time for April next year.
So folks that's trip 2 of the year over with. Next stop was Nottingham for ice hockey weekender in April but they have changed the dates to a week later which is no good for us, that trip is now scraped BUT we are looking at flights maybe to Amsterdam for a weekend in between now and Milan in June.
People must think we're followers of fashion and design, London for New Year, Paris in Feb, Milan in June.......Naaaaaaaaah! I wear what i'm comfortable in, fashion is for people without a mind of their own to be an individual.
So until our next unknown trip.........
Serve All, Love All, Peace All, Kevlar Out!
