One of the many wonderful things about Europe is how close everything is together. Relatively. Compared to Australia! When we randomly discovered that there was a gig on over Easter that we wanted to see down in Paris, we booked it, and jumped on a train! Four hours later, we were unpacking in our hotel.
Given that this was my second time in Paris, we decided that our best course of action was to see things that I hadn’t seen the first time around, but also that were open for the long weekend. This left us many options of things to see, while still giving us some focus of what we could to get in to.
I think the theme of this trip could have been summed up by “eating our way around Paris”. We had a night of cocktails, I managed to drag Himself into Laduree, we had dinner at our favourite Belle Epoch restaurant, and snacked at Haagen Dazs… But first …
… we headed up into Mont Martre first so I could fulfill my dream of visiting the café from the movie Amelie. It was a wonderful experience and I was really impressed with how they dealt with the multitudes of tourists that walked in just to get photos of themselves in the café and then leave again!
Neither of us was fabulously well for this trip, but, how often can you say that you are in Paris? So we soldiered through and made it along the Champs Elysee to the Arc de Triumph then took one look at the queue and decided that we didn’t need to go up the Arc.
At the Eiffel Tower though, the queues appeared to have a decent flow going, so we did brave them and went up as high as we could. Which wasn’t right to the top, as it wasn’t open, but we made it to the viewing balcony.
Our trip was right after the Brussels bombings. We went by train, and as we went through Brussels, all the flags were at half-mast. When we got to Paris, all the buildings were lit in the colours of the Belgian flag. It was sobering. It was omnipresent over the weekend. There were armed soldiers all around, but especially around the tower.
I’m not sure what I’m trying to say. If anything. I guess, that we decided that we won’t let our lives be stopped by tragedy. We are affected, but will not be stopped.
ghoti industries 