Paris

We arrived in Paris via train and headed straight for the park for a snooze and to kill some time as we were heading to the other side of Paris to couchsurf with a Mexican girl for the night. For those unfamiliar with couchsurfing, it consists of people offering up their couch or floor for the night for free to help other travellers and I guess to have a bit of a cultural exchange themselves. 

Before we met up with our couchsurf host Sylvia, Louise surprised me by taking me to the Eiffel tower where I was actually surprised that I found the Eiffel Tower to be really impressive. There are a few sites in the world that on first glance you go ‘Wow’ but its definitely one of them…even through the thick crowds of people visiting it too. I guess it is such an iconic structure, and can pop up on the skyline as you travel around Paris. We went and had a laze around on the park below the Eiffel Tower and it was definitely one of the highlights to Paris for the both of us.

 

We made it to Sylvias place late that night and were grateful for a blowup double bed on her lounge floor in her really nice apartment. Only problem was it was 6 floors up and didn’t have any elevator so I got to put in some training for Everest by carting both our bags up and down the steps.

The next day was spent exploring some of the sites of the city, and like in Lyon we decided on biking for a bit, but found the roads a bit hectic so that idea was shortlived. We were able to take a look around the Louvre (but we avoided going in as a) there was a massive line, and b) my art history knowledge would’ve made a lot of it irrelevant for me…so Ill study up for next time), Musee D’Orsay before heading to Notre Dame to have a look through. Europe is full of amazing churches, and even though you do get a bit ‘churched out’ I do still find them pretty captivating. After Notre Dame I insisted on another nap, so this time we went to a much nicer park called Jardin du Luxembourg before meeting Sylvia for dinner. Seeing as we were staying at her place we had a picnic beside the Seine river watching all the river boats cruising up and down as the sun began to set.

The next day we headed off to a hotel for a night for a spot of luxury. We found a small boutique which would help for our day watching the Tour de France on the Champs Elysses the next day (refer to the Tour de France blog post). To be honest most of the day was spent lazing about enjoying the AC and comforts of a hotel room, only venturing outside to head to the nearest patisserie. That night after checking out the Arc de Triumphe we headed out for a quiet dinner together and ventured across town to a little french restaurant where I jumped in the deep end and tried snails. Believe it or not but they were actually pretty good (helped by the fact that they were coated in oil and garlic)! They were followed by the main course of quail fillets, potatoes, and courgettes. It has been the best meal I have had to date, and one to remember.

Before heading to Paris I jumped on facebook to ask if anyone had any contacts for us to spend a night with in Paris. I was really fortunate that my friend Dana from California came back to me and told me to get in touch with her mate Francois who she knew from his time in California on a uni exchange. Francois was an absolute champ! Couldn’t say enough about him. He took us around Paris before the tour, and showed us the Montmarte area, before heading back to his house for the night.

Spending the night at Francois has been one of the highlights of my trip so far, as it was very unique and just really enjoyable to be spending a night with him and his family at their home. Their home is about 30-40mins outside of Paris in a picturesque French village. Although we arrived at about 8pm, his folks came out to welcome us and knowing that they didn’t speak any English I was pretty stoked to use my “Bonjour, J’mapelle Simon”…but that was about where my French stopped before Louise was able to impress them later on in the night using far better French than me after gaining a bit of dutch courage after some red wine and champagne. As his parents didn’t know any English, Francois spent the entire night translating both for them and us. But even though we couldn’t talk directly with each other we learnt all about each other and had plenty of laughs. I asked how his parents met as she was Polish and his father French, to which they told a pretty amazing story of them meeting during a communist period and having to wait years before she could move to France. For dinner we had a lovely home cooked meal (we savour those on the road!) of steak, and potatoes, but was accompanied by beautiful red wine, champagne and of course cheese. Once we couldn’t eat anymore, Francois insisted on showing us his village and take his dalmation pup for a walk. It was great to work off a bit of the food we had consumed, but the village was a really quant little place with the village school, church, and of course patisserie (which unfortunately wasn’t open at 11pm). I was really bummed to leave Francois and his parents the next morning as I couldn’t have asked for a better way to leave France, but I left knowing that I would love to be back as I just found it to be an incredible country, even from the little that we were able to explore of it so far.