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Published: August 13th 2007
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Sacre Coure
At the bottom of the hill of Sacre Coure For our first anniversary we decided to celebrate by taking a couple of days off work and visiting the city of luuurve. We arrived quite late on a Wednesday night and found our hostel pretty easily.
We were staying quite close to Sacre Coeur so that was naturally the first stop. Next up the Tour Eiffel, yes we climbed to the top. But everything is quite tiny from up there. Just “co-incidentally” there happened to be an evening bike tour leaving from the South leg of the Eiffel Tower and Barrie had been all up for a bike tour. I had my reservations, given that I had only ridden a bike once since I was 12 and that was in Amsterdam where the lanes are wide and dedicated to cyclists. This was Paris, drivers hate cyclists, 2 tried to run me over, intentionally. Then I nearly ran over a pedestrian, unintentionally. But it was worth the hand cramps and white knuckles just for the boat ride. They take you on a boat ride from the Eiffel Tower right round Notre Dame at dusk and it’s pretty amazing. They also feed you copious amounts of red wine to ease the bike
ride back - score!
Deux Jour and we thought we’d head to the Louvre. The lines were astronomical, as usual, and after ensuring that I had a photo, Barrie decided that he really wasn’t that interested in seeing the Mona Lisa live. So we climbed the Arc du Triump and visited Le Institute du Arab, which has a fantastic little rooftop bar, and made our way to Notre Dame.
That evening we decided to do what everyone else was doing and take a couple of bottles of wine to the steps of Sacre Coeur. And whatdaya know, there’s a Chateau Barrie. Not a bad drop either.
We’d been recommended the restaurant Le Grand Corbet, which stared in the movie Something’s Gotta Give. It’s the Parisian restaurant where it all happens. Anyhoo, so this is where we went for our anniversary dinner. And it was wonderful. The service was great, the food was fabulous, everything about it was wonderful.
The next day we did a day trip to The Palace of Versaille. That place is so impressive, it’s huge. We toured through the building and then spent the better part of the afternoon chilling in the gardens.
Notre Dame
Back of house Even hired a row boat and rowed around the lake. How very romantic.
That night Barrie was adamant that we needed to find a bar to watch France play Brasil in the soccer world cup semi final - this coming from the guy who refuses to watch all sports and doesn’t follow rugby or cricket despite coming from New Zealand.
As luck would have it, the restaurant down the road from our hostel was playing the game and had a dinning table available. What a game to watch. They had all the windows open and people were standing outside in crowds and hanging in the windows trying to watch the game. It was the same with every place we walked past on the way. Every single shop, café, restaurant, bar, street stall had a TV, was tuned in and surrounded by crowds of people wanting to watch the game. It’s like Parisian life stopped. And then, they won. We figured this would be the best night out in Paris and we’d get in there to join the celebrations! Little did we realise that the Parisian way to celebrate is for everyone to drive, fly, walk, make their way
Le Institute Du Arab
This has the wickedest facade. The panels are all made up of metal plates on hydrolic rams that change during the day. any way they can to the Arc du Triump and start a riot. No exaggeration. Cars were set on fire, molotov cocktails were thrown at shop fronts, people were throwing anything they could and damaging as much of the Champs Elysees as possible. From the Arc du Triump we could see fires burning all the way to the end of the Champs where it meets the Louvre gardens. Then the cops came. In tanks. The water guns were out, tear gas was thrown and people were tackled to the ground. Time to exit stage left. Unfortunately because there were so many people crammed in and around the Champs, there was no possibility of getting a taxi. The trains had all stopped running so there was only one way to get home. Walk. And of course, I had assumed that we’d be bar and club hopping having celebratory drinks with the locals and wore a dress and heels. It was a long walk home, 3 hours to be exact.
Thankfully on our last day we didn’t have a plan. We slept in and wandered around Paris, surveying the damage from the night before and found a cute little place to
Le Institute Du Arab
View of the panels inside. have some lunch (with the worst Rose either of us had ever tried) before heading back to Gare du Nord to get the Eurostar back to London.
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