Paris
A full collection of the photos from this trip can be seen in Paris Flickr Album
The Guinness
There was no problem finding Guinness in Paris. The challenge was deciding which of the many places selling the back stuff should we pick to spend the evening in. There was a fair collection of the normal faux Irish bars but we ended up choosing Autour du Moulin in the Montmartre district, a traditional French bar that both served Guinness and nice food. |
| The bar is so named as it stands next to Moulin de la Galette, also known as Blute-fin painted by Van Gough etc. |
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| Cheers! A Parisian Guinness. |
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| Jeff, the barman, soon grasped why we were there and did the honors of picking out my next destination, Helsinki. |
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| Angelitta pours us another Guinness |
The Sights
Having based ourselves in the Montmartre district we found there was plenty to see and do there, certainly in terms of atmosphere. The area is full of cafes, craft and food outlets. The tourist hotspots of Maotmartre include the large terraces in front of Sacre Coeur where touts sell anything from religious memorabilia to bottles of larger. Around the corner from there is Place du Tertre where artists of seemingly every nationality sell their wares or entice passers by to have their portraits painted. It was a short walk from Montmartre down to the Pigalle area and the Moulin Rouge.
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| Sacre Coeur in Montmartre |
One day we took in some of the more alternative sights of Paris such as the Père Lachaise cemetery, hunting down the tombs of Edith Piaf, Chopin and Oscar Wilde.
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| The tomb of Oscar Wilde designed by Jacob Epstein |
On another day we visited some of the more traditional sights along the Seine before going to the Musée Curie, a museum celebrating the life and discoveries of Marie and Pierre Currie.
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| Marie Curie's desk at Musée Curie |
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| Louvre |
Transport
We took the train from Coventry to London then the Eurostar to Paris. It almost went horribly wrong right at the beginning as there were no trains running between Birmingham and Coventry because of overhead line damage. Fortunately we heard about this before leaving, left early and got a train to London just fine.
In Paris we used the metro sometimes which was pretty quiet. I'm guessing that people were somewhat nervous of using it given the recent bombings in both Paris and Brussels.
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| Entrance to Abbesses metro |
Accommodation
We stayed in a somewhat quirky hotel Hotel Jardins de Montmartre, with its colorfully decorated rooms and vertical gardens on the walls. Each room is decorated differently and we ended up in room where the theme was purple. The friendly staff and complimentary afternoon coffee and cakes were most welcome.
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| Outside Hotel Jardins de Montmartre |
Team Makeup
As you may have guessed there was little chance of me not taking Margaret with me to Paris in the springtime. This had the advantage of course in that there were two of us to do the organizing and as usual Margaret found us somewhere ideal to stay.
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| Surprise, surprise! I din't know who was going to turn up for a Guinness. Lovely to meet up with old friends. |
Food
Montmartre offers some lovely small and quirky restaurants. We particularly liked Bululu Arepera, a small Venezuelan restaurant that served arepas traditional Venezuelan cornflour flatbreads filled with avocado and black beans served with sweet potato chips.
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| Place du Tertre - Painters of Montmartre |
Quirky Moments
We met an American in the cemetery who was looking for Jim Morrison's grave. We got onto talking about music and festivals and I was asked if I was at the Woodstock festival. You know you are beginning to look a bit old when someone asks you a question like that.
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| ............... and no we didn't buy one. |
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| Something chemical seen on the side of a house. |
