Paris February 2019 Friday

How lucky are we? All it takes to do a weekend in Paris is to book the tickets on the Eurostar, meet up with Tarryn at London St Pancras (making for a very early start) and get on to the train. There are queues, but the sun is shining, the forecast is good, Paris!, no problem.

This is the speed of the train. I found myself motion sick! That was a first for me, not pleasant.

Two hours and fifteen minutes later .... voila!

I have been to Paris before, but it was only a fleeting visit and on a tour bus. This time we booked a very central hotel and the plan was to walk and see the city.

Arriving in time for lunch we found ourselves at a bistro around the corner from the hotel. It would become our local for the weekend. Great staff and good food.  I practised my 10 words of french, Tarryn did better, but everybody we came across this weekend was very tolerant of our struggling attempts to communicate. There wasn't any overt sneering. We did laugh a lot though. Perhaps that was the wine. When in France .....

What to do?  What to do?  We didn't really have a plan.  Our hotel - Hôtel de L'Océan in the 9th arrondissement. Walking distance for pretty much everything so perfectly situated for a base in Paris. That first afternoon we headed up the (steep) hill to Montmartre just taking in the sights. 

The sun is shining and it is warm, but you can see from the lack of leaves on all the trees, it's still February and we are not yet into spring. 

Church of Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre, Rue des Abbesses

The Wall of Love - in the Jehan Rictus garden. Created in 2000 by a calligraphist Federic Baron and mural artist Claire Kito. It's 40 square metres of tiles with messages of love in 300 different languages. The little red bits all come together to form a broken heart. Isn't that lovely?

Montmartre is full of examples of art deco.

Up and up to the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur. There is a funicular, but really, why take the easy way?

Built as an act of penance after the bloody 1870 Franco-Prussian war, every hour, day and night since 1st August 1885 (even during WWII), there has been a relay of continuous prayer offering called continuous adoration of the Eucharist. Every evening, after the doors close at 10.30pm, the prayer relay continues, ensured by persons registered for the night, who stay at the Basilica Guest House.

Pictures of stained glass windows seldom do them justice. They are just beautiful.

The view is really worth the effort of getting there.

Heading down the hill we came across this amazing fresh food market. This is the way to shop in Paris!

Time for more wine and feet up - it'd been a very long day.