Thanks to the rugby tickets I got from Sue & Phil I went on a nice little break to France from 6-10 September. My old flatmate Lach came too and since he hadn't been to Paris before we stayed there for a couple of days before heading down to Lyon for the Rugby and then back to Paris for 1 more day to get our flight back to London.
We stayed in Montmarte for our first 2 nights in Paris, the area where Picasso, Renoir & the like used to hang out, its such a beautiful area with lots of nice cafe's & restraunts for dinner & a delicious patisserie for breakie's on the go. We went on the Free Paris walking tour for 3.5 hours on Friday and learnt a little about French History & the Revolution, but compared to the tours we'd both done in Berlin & Amsterdam by the same company the history was a little dull, we wandered around Paris from the Arc du Triumph to the Eiffel Tower for the rest of the afternoon and rested a bit before going on the same company's pub crawl...not recommended, the people that came were pretty cool, mostly aussies and brits, and we caught the end of the france v argentina game at one of the stops and lets just say the froggies weren't very impressed with the result, poor guys, they all thought they had that one in the bag! anyway ther pubs were dodgy, not to even mention the 'club' at the end (we walked out after a minute).
We also learnt that night never to stay out after the metro finishes, we now know the 'well known fact' that its almost impossible to get a cab in paris, it was at least an hour & a half wait but after a long walk up the street we managed to nab one as it stopped to let people out, at least the cabs are pretty cheap though!!
We left at around 6 the next morning still very groggy to get our train to Lyon, i tried my best to stay awake and checkout the country side but it just wasn't possible... once in Lyon we had about a 20 minute trip to our next budget hotel near Parrache station, a nice place only a 10 or so minute walk from the city centre, there were wallabies jerseys EVERYWHERE and lots of noise coming from pubs and cafes that were probably much more peaceful and quite, we had lunch & walked around the 'new' side of the city before heading to the game at 3pm (i've got a seperate entry about the match 'Aus v Jap').
On Sunday absolutley everything in Lyon was closed but there were geourgous markets almost everywhere we went, a fresh food one close to our hotel where we got baguettes, cheese and sausage for a morning picnic, we walked down the pet section of the marke where there were the most gorgeous cats and puppies for sale (in no way cruel) we then wandered across the river to the old tow part of lyon and up a hill and lots of stairs in search of the old roman section where there is a big remains of the ampitheatre, it was amazing, and had a wonderful view over the city, we walked back down past the most beautiful church i have ever seen (you all know im not the type to say this, and dont worry im not making ANY plans, but it would be an amazing place for weddings) we continued on down some windy little streets and lots of stairs to get back to river level, the houses around here were georgous, we had a quick beer at about the only pub that was open and walked back to the hotel past a jewellwry etc market and another big fresh food market and headed back to the metro station to get back to lyon part dieu station where we absolutley ran to make our train... we got there just in time, but it was a really tough run after all the hills and stairs that morning! we couldn't get to our carriage so spent the 2 hour trip in the dining cart but it was nice and we stayed awake this time so saw some nice country side, lots of sheep and cows and pretty looking farms & fields.
Back in Paris for the rest of the afternoon and the next day, this time we stayed by the Luxembourg Gardens close to the Latin Quarter, we had dinner at a little restraunt on Boulevard Montparnasse where I had my first taste of foie-gras (so delicious, it was on top of boiled fruit, we think it was pineappple and something similar to a pear, it just melted in your mouth!) and I had a steak with risotto and lach had duck, both were very rare, i couldnt believe lach ate all the duck, it was rarer than my steak, but he said it was still nice, just a weird texture (warning: the french do everything a bit 'rarer') my steak was delicious though, easily one of the best ive had in the last year!!
On our last day we found another nice patisserie for brunch and got some baguettes, there were about 20 different fillings to choose from, the most amazing croissants ive ever tasted (they would be spoilt if you put anything on them) and a piece of apple and rhubarb crumble, we took it all across to the beautiful luxembourg gardens and finished off our wine from last nights dinner with it, a picnic fit for royalty, can you tell one of my favourite things about france is the food?
After the picnic we walked (rolled?) around making our way to the musee d'orsay and accidently found the nice proper french version of the latin quarter backstreets with beautiful restraunts, cafes and clothes shops (the touristy backstreets on the st germain side are dubbed 'bacteria alley' and its easy to tell why) unfortunatly d'orsay was closed so we spent the day at the louvre instead, then it was eventually time to get to the airport and head back to london (for my last week of work before i go to spain for (hopefully) a whole month on the 24th)!!
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