Paris with Jessie

You can't go home from Europe having never visited Paris, and so on Jessie's last full with us weekend we boarded the Eurostar train bound for the 'city of light'. We were on the first weekend running since the move to St Pancras (not St Pancreas) international, and the train was packed. Jessie made a new friend (although I'm not sure she got a word in edgewise), Sarah went to sleep, and I got the chance to notice the 15-minute faster running time that was worth the £800m to achieve.

We arrived into Paris in the middle of a transport strike - although some lines were shut, the 'every 15 minutes' running time of some of the others put Sydney's regular trains to shame. They were, however, a little crammed, as this means 5x as many people had to fit onto every train. But we managed, and crammed in quite a bit of sight-seeing, along with more walking than we'd anticipated.

Stephen also managed to catch up with Sumana, a friend from Sydney who (with her husband) quit her job in Australia, spent 4 months in an intensive language school, and is now working for one of the best consulting firms in Europe (and living in an apartment with views of Notre Dame and Isle de la Cite) . We finished up with a really yummy dinner in a really cute restaurant recommended by our hotel.

Dinner at a local braserie

Our hotel, the Best Western Derby Eiffel, was nice (for a Paris hotel), and was in a great location for sight-seeing, close to Les Invalides, the Eiffel Tower and the Seine. It was the most beautiful stroll in the world down to the Musee d'Orsay.

The Eiffel tower was just near our hotel - pity about the weather...it was very cold (below zero overnight!)

We finished up with a stroll down the Champs d'Elysee, before heading back to Gare du Nord to catch our train. Since we were a little worried about whether we'd make it on the Metro, we ended up there a little early, and set off to find one last chocolate éclair. This took us on a fascinating journey through the back-streets of Paris - if you turned left you found the red light district, to the right you found wedding shops (dozens of them) - quite a dichotomy.

Jessie at Place de la Concorde

Jessie and Sarah at le Arc de Triomphe

We never did find our Patisserie (apparently this is much more of a morning thing) and so caught our train empty-handed. Jessie again made friends with her neighbour, who gave her some travel tips for London from when he'd had his parents over - which we followed up on the next weekend (but more on that soon...)