The day began violently at 4.20 am when someone from oz decided to ring us on rohan's phone which had decided to reset its ring tone so that we all lay in our beds wondering who had a bloody phone going off....oh that would be us...so I guess we were awake now. Our crazy minicab driver hurled us through the city streets on the way to St.Pancras, we zoomed through check in and then we were in the eurostar cabin and being brought pain au chocolat and other pastries for breakfast - I like this first class train journey already! In no time at all we were alighting at gare du nord and the queues to get metro tickets were ludicrously long and so we headed out onto the street to find a different metro station where we could grab a carnet of tickets. Soon we were on the metro and heading for the palais royal to see the anish kapoor exhibition.....when we got there emery looked at her tickets and realised that the exhibition was being held at the grand palais! Pas de probleme - we just wandered around palais royal where they were setting up for a georgio armani thing and then headed off in search of aux lyonnais, the restaurant I had booked the previous day for lunch. Emery had seen it recommended in a number of guide books so we decided to go check it out. We wandered in and I used my very bad french to explain we had a booking, the waiting staff were fantastic here and the food was great too! Midway through lunch some little gypsy kids wandered into the restaurant and descended like flies on people's tables - the waiting staff who had been so mildmannered and gentle suddenly transformed and chased them round the restaurant, grabbing them by the scuff of the neck and dumping them on their bums on the street outside. The head waiter in a beautifully tailored shirt was spotted chasing one up the street and kicking him up the bum! After lunch we thought a walk in the paris sunshine would be the best way to get to the exhibition so we headed down towards the louvre and through the jardin des tuileries where people were lying in the sunshine or crowded round watching little wooden sailboats drift across the ponds - it seemed like a perfect paris afternoon. As we wandered past the tacky eiffel towers on sale, Rohan steadfastly ignored the man thrusting a survey (sure!) for him to sign (we'd like to keep our euros ourself!).
We arrived at grand palais and the queue stretched out for miles as it was the last day of the exhibition, as we arrived the sky turned dark and the rain began to fall....yay for having prebought tickets as we just wandered inside. It was amazing! People wandered around looking at the kapoor creation and I wandered underneath it feeling totally dwarfed by its size. In another queue to go inside and as I went through the turnstile door into the dark I was totally disoriented, bumping into the wall and then bursting out through the door into a heady pink glow and music- awesome!
We hung around people watching and loving that parisian woman chic! Then onto the metro and back to gare du nord, back on the train and a desperately needed cup of tea and petit fours! Home and fell into bed - strange how only after a couple of days here when I came back through the streets of London I felt like I was coming home!
.....mon premiere visite a paris! I still can't believe I was there....or that I'll be back in a couple of weeks for longer...
This morning we're up and getting ready to head off to Ireland for the weekend - I'm so looking forward to this!
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