Hope everyone had a Happy Easter!
We must admit that we have been slacking on posts, it seems like a while since our last entry. Happy to tell you that veggieleaf is on the move again! On the Easter weekend, wind took us to Paris.
We had an early 5am start on Easter Friday morning. With caffeine fix in our hands, we hopped onto the 7am train at St Pancras International station. As it turned out, our ticket actually included breakfast. Their coffee was so strong, by the end of the 3 hour train ride, I was really feeling the coffee buzz.
We arrived around 10:30am at Gare du Nord station. After we picked up a local map from the Information booth and purchased the 4-day Paris Musuem Pass, which is a pre-paid entry card that allows entry into over 70 museums and monuments around Paris and in most cases queues for these passes are shorter! We then caught the Metro to Porte Malliot station and checked into our hotel to drop off our overnight bags before heading out for a wander.
Our first stop was Arc de Triomphe, the famous arch was built to commemorate those who fought in the Napoleon wars. We climbed 200+ stairs to the top and the view from the top was great despite the rain and strong winds. Next we walked along Champs-Élysées for a bit, we couldn’t help but noticed that in the short period of 30 minutes, the rain had stopped and clouds started to clear. It was perfect timing as we ended up at a really nice spot with that postcard view of the Eiffel Tower. From there, it was a 15-minute walk to the Eiffel Tower. Only the first and second levels of the Eiffel Tower were opened due to the strong winds. The panoramic view was clear and amazing.
We bought freshly-made crepes with Nutella from one of the many snack stores around the Eiffel Tower and ate the hot crepes while strolling along the Seine River. Along the way we walked past a mini car-show then the Grand Palace (which is now a museum) and Les Invalides (where Napoleon Bonaparte’s tomb lies). We crossed the Place de la Concorde and headed towards the Louvre museum via a nice park called Jardin de Tuileries. Inside the park, we found a huge spider on the lawn… literally. This happened to be the Louise Bourgeois’ Giant Spider which I vividly remember seeing outside London’s Tate Modern museum earlier in January. I hate spiders! It was around 5pm when we arrived at the Louvre museum and we still had to queue. Little did we realise how exhausted we were from the day’s walking, we only managed to see one painting – Mona Lisa, before calling it a day.
On Saturday we went back to the Louvre museum to see it properly. We managed to spend a good 4 hours there and saw what we wanted to see. Next stop was the Notre Dame de Paris. We barely had time to find our umbrellas from my bag when it started pouring cats & dogs and suddenly it changed to snow then switched back to rain again after 5 minutes. By the time we reached Notre Dame, it was clear again! And all this time I had thought weather in London was bad!
On Sunday we went to visit the Versailles (or Chateau de Versailles). We went by the RER regional train from Neuilly Porte-Melliot, changed at Champ du Mars Tour Eiffel before catching another train to Versailles Rive Gauche station.
On our way back, we got off at Champ du Mars Tour Eiffel and walked directly to Musee de Orsay to spend the rest of the afternoon. Here are a few photos Ian took which were focused 
On Monday, we were going to do a bit of window shopping. To Ian’s relief, it was a public holiday, most shops were closed. Coincidentally as I was going through the tourist guide to work out our next stop, Ian suddenly got really excited when he spotted Laduree on the directory. So we gave up shopping and decided to go there for lunch instead.
Lunch was nice. Ian had a club sandwich (boring) while the salad I had was fantastic. For dessert, Ian had a deliciously smooth dark chocolate mousse cake. I had chestnut ice cream with bits of candied chestnuts which were quite sweet. In fact it was sweeter than my coffee with 2½ sugars so you can imagine how sweet it really was.
We made a few more photo stops, including the Paris Opera House (or L’Opéra), Moulin Rouge with the infamous windmill and the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur before we headed towards Gard du Nord to catch the train back to London.
On another note, my parents are here for a few weeks. They are currently in Rome. In the blink of an eye, two and a half weeks had come and passed already. I can’t believe it’s nearly time for them to leave. Wish we had done more sightseeing together but really happy with the time we spent together plus all the goodies they brought with them, some including Tim Tams and Aunty Nellie’s home-made almond crescent cookies!
