Summer in Paris in April!

Our extra long weekend in Paris began with Lisa and Christos meeting up in CDG airport on Thursday morning and then a cab to our hotel in the 9th. In the past we stayed on the Left Bank (in the 6th) but it was time for a new venue.

Our hotel for this trip was the lovely Hotel Adele and Jules which serves an excellent breakfast and is close to the action of Paris but being on a side street is somewhat insulated from the city's noise.


Although Christos had not slept much on the flight over from Toronto (while Lisa was already acclimatized having been in Zurich on business prior to arriving in Paris), that was not going to stop us!

A couple of coffees and a quick shower later, we headed out for a bit of a walk. The weather was glorious with summer like conditions (blue skies and 27 degrees) and the streets were filled with smiling people.

We had a quick lunch and made it down to Notre Dame and briefly over to the Left Bank (the only time we visited it during the weekend) and 6PM pints of Guinness back in the 9th before getting back to the hotel in the early evening.

While energy levels were low, we knew we had to stay up until dark in order to make the change to Paris time ... we had the best of intentions (ie no drinks) but theses were quickly overcome by the convivial atmosphere at a local bar where we drank white wine and chatted with the locals until after sunset.

A fulsome dialogue was had at the bar regarding the French language focusing on the use of swear words and colloquialisms ... we are now well versed on the use of the word " putain " or simply " 'tain ".

With fatigue starting to creep in, we got back to the hotel around 11PM where we quaffed a bottle of Chablis while sitting on our deck listening to the clamour and bustle of Paris on a gorgeous Thursday night. A strong start to the weekend given the jet lag et al.

The next day we barely made it down in time for breakfast (service ends at 11AM) before heading out on a massive groundpound (as we call it). All in all, we were out for about six hours and covered around 13.5km of the 9th and the 2nd.



We stopped at "Les Halles" (where we munched on food we had bought the previous day at Rue Des Martyrs), passed by the "Centre Georges Pompidou", investigated the six hundred year old "Tour Jean-Sans-Peur" and enjoyed a brief walk along the Seine before passing through a portion of the outside of the Louvre and the Jardin Nelson Mandela.

After relaxing with a bottle of Sancerre on our deck at the hotel, it was off for a visit to Sacre Coeur, always a hot spot on a Friday night. We enjoyed a brief stop for steak frites at a local brasserie and made it up the hill just before 10PM.

We soon had cold beers in our hands as guys walk around selling 250ml Heinekens for 2 euros each or 3 euros for 2; about $5 for two small, well-chilled beers served stairside!

After hanging out and drinking our way through a half dozen mini-beers (the vendors certainly are persistent!), we floated back to our hotel, with a couple stops for wine along the way, finally getting back sometime after midnight with another 5.3km loop walk under our belt!

We then stayed up, sitting out on our little deck drinking more wine and chatting (mostly about how awesome Paris is) until late into the night!

Saturday started late but amazingly with no hangovers! While we had imbibed a tipple too much on Friday night, in our wisdom we also had the good sense to drink lots of water before hitting the sack. Nevertheless, we did not manage to get out of the hotel until afternoon and Lisa skipped breakfast for more time under the covers.

On our previous night's trip through Montmartre to Sacre Coeur, the brasserie we dined at was just off Square d'Anvers and we had noticed many (commercial) vans parked nearby and a banner for a farmer's market for the next two days so of course we decided to start our day with a visit to the market and it was great!

We shared a duck burger (OMG so yummy), and bought some foie gras and little ham stuffed pastries, before heading off to the nearby Montmartre Cemetery.

Our primary goal was to visit the grave of the famous singer, Dalida and after wandering through the cemetery for twenty minutes, we finally found it.

Not only was it lovely, it was almost overwhelming. Most of the cenotaphs and graves of the cemetery were bare and some even dilapidated but Dalida's was still festooned with fresh flowers and the monument  itself (the sun/halo emanating from behind her) was also very powerful.

Dalida is still a popular figure in France who after a life filled with professional success but personal tragedy, died by her own hand in 1987 at the age of 54.

After forty-five minutes in the cemetery, we started to head back towards our neck of the woods but stopped off at the Musée national Gustave Moreau which is devoted solely to the works and times of Gustave Moreau and is housed in his home.

While not all of his works are either of our cups of tea, several pieces were and the experience as a whole was wonderful.

The small lower rooms that he once lived in appear today as they were at the time of his death in 1898 while the upper atelier is an expansive space covered in his works.

Christos particularly liked "Jupiter and Semele" while Lisa favoured "The Mystic Flower".

We spent about forty-five minutes at the museum before beginning the final leg of the day's walk and arrived back at our hotel in the late afternoon.

Another bottle of wine, this time a lovely rosé, was consumed while relaxing in the shade on our deck with clear blue skies overhead and twenty-six degree weather.

At 8PM we went for dinner at the excellent Friends&Family, which was just around the corner from our hotel. The meal was superb; we both devoured the white asparagus for starters and for mains Lisa had the steak (of course) while Christos had the fish.

After dinner we went back to our hotel with the intention of enjoying a cold beer on the deck before getting an early night but it was not to be! We downed two beers on the deck and decided we had to go out again for "just one more drink".

It may have been the coffee we had at dinner (in fact it probably was), but our early night turned into a late late of mojitos, copious pints of Guinness and dancing in a meat market pub (where most patrons were half our age) until well after midnight!

On Sunday, it was back to the Farmer's market at Square d'Anvers for more goodies, both for the flight and some to take home. We also grabbed a lunch of duckburgers and fries!

As we started to make our way home we encountered a rubbish bin overwhelmed by the previous night's festivities!

We wandered the streets for about two hours, window shopping and admiring the sights, getting back to our hotel in the mid afternoon.

With a weekend of walking and drinking behind us down time was required and we opted for a couple hours of vegging with some TV before heading out for dinner at 8PM.

Dinner was at a nook in the wall wine bar in the 2nd called Le Denicheur that had a limited but quite good menu. The veal tataki and trout tartare were very good. With an early wake up for our 11AM flight the next day, plus it being a Sunday, we decided to skip a final night out drinking and got to bed early (and sober!).

The next morning we felt a chill in the air as the weather turned back towards normal and we left Paris knowing we had been blessed with Summer in April!