Showing posts with label Paris. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paris. Show all posts

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Au Revoir Paris!

We leave France in the morning! We've had a really great time!


The last 3 days we've been in a teeny tiny totally adorable town called Dampierre-En-Yvelines. They have all these great walking paths and today we walked along the river Yvette in the Bois de Saint-Benoit (it's a forest). The B&B we stayed at was really great -- it's a beautiful area, and the lady who runs it, Jos, has been so nice to us. It's been awesome to relax for a few days before returning home.


But, at last, I've managed to put up just a couple pictures of our adventures in Paris:


Matt & I, who have almost perfected the art of taking pictures of ourselves, at the Eiffel Tower:



Me at that glass pyramid at the Louvre:



Matt at the top of the Sacre Coeur overlooking the city:



Matt & I at the Arc De Triomphe:



Me at the Champs-Elysees:



Matt at Notre Dame with gelato:



Matt and I in front of the chateau in Dampierre-En-Yvelines:


Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Inquiring Minds Want To Know

People are asking how many chocolate shops did we actually get to? Well, the count is 7! One was closed, and the other -- the directions were way too confusing. So we did pretty well all things considered!

We're only in Paris one more full day and then we're going to a Bed & Breakfast outside the city to relax before coming home and gearing up for the Reception. But we're going to bring a good amount of our chocolate down with us and relax and eat chocolate :)

Hopefully I'll manage to get some pictures online on of these days!

Au Revoir!

Monday, September 14, 2009

Paris Update!

Bonjour! Just a quick update! There's so much to do in Paris! Every day I come up with a fairly ambitious amount of things to do and then we do about a third of them. Tomorrow's plan includes 9 chocolate shops (Matt put a limit at 8). I'm not sure we'll make 9 chocolate shops, but it's a worthy plan nonetheless.

It rained on us tonight but we still managed to walk all the way home under our umbrella. (We'll certainly never make 9 chocolate shops if it rains on us tomorrow).

Today we had lunch at a restaurant with two Michelin stars! We've never had any kind of meal at any kind of Michelin starred restaurant. But La Table De Joel Robuchon has a great lunch deal that was too hard to pass up. We got soup, appetizer (I had rabbit pate! I had never had rabbit or pate. It's not something I would usually eat. But whatever, why not!), entree, cheese course (yes, a cheese course!), dessert and coffee. It also came with a bottle of wine. The dessert spoon had gold dust on it and the chocolate that came with the coffee also had gold dust on it. Matt noted: "There's a finite amount of gold in the world, and some people are eating it". Today, we were those people.

I have to tell you about our entree, it was unreal. I wish I had a picture but it was such a classy restaurant we didn't feel we could take out our cameras in the middle of the meal. It was fish and chips -- being that it was fried fish and potatoes -- but it wasn't any fish and chips you've ever seen. It was an entire fish, that had been fried -- tail and eyes and everything (Matt's fish wouldn't stop looking at me) and they cut it open in the middle and folded it over and fried potatoes on top of it. I know I can't explain it. But it was crazy.

Oh wait, I googled and found a picture. Prepare yourself:



Yes. We ate that. It was really good actually. Matt liked it a lot a lot. I liked it a lot. But yeah, it was weird.

We don't usually eat at classy restaurants, so we found it a little intimidating. The kept offering us more bread! They only give you one roll at a time, and if you eat it, they come back and ask if you'd like another one. And come back and come back and come back. They also constantly refill your wine and water glass. At one point, Matt wondered, since they had silently been refilling him -- how much wine have I drunk? Who knows? And since there were a billion courses I never quite finished any of them and every time they took my plate away, they were really concerned and kept asking if everything was ok. It was ok! It was just filling!

We've also had crepes (very good!), falafel (very good!), baguettes (some very good! some just ok!), and macaroons (also quite good!). Eating is very important to us. We have restaurant reservations the next 3 days, so we'll see how all that goes!

Matt, as it turns out, really likes cemeteries. Creepy right? Perfect thing to do on the honeymoon yes? I had only planned to go to one of the famous cemeteries in Paris, but we went to a second since Matt liked the first one so much. The graves are all really cool (they have statues and little buildings and all kinds of things) and Matt took about a thousand pictures. Yeah, it's still weird. But he likes what he likes I guess!

It took a day or two but we finally figured out the 'Velib' here. Velib is a system of bikes that you can rent and return all over the city. We've been Velibing everywhere and it's a really great way to see things. We've seen twice as much being able to ride bikes than we would walking. Matt is still vaguely paranoid about injury since you have to ride with the traffic, but there are lots of bike lanes and we haven't had any trouble.

In general, we've been having a really great time and fitting in all that we can while still trying to relax and take it easy. We went to the top of the Sacre Coeur and you get a really great view of Paris (but there are 300 steps! Feel the burn!). And we went to the Raspail Market and bought cheese and bread and soap from the stalls there. And we went in Notre Dame at night. And we walked down the Champs-Elysees and saw the Arch De Triumph.

We have lots of pictures of the trip, but I don't have time right now to upload them and make them the right size for the blog, but I'll put them up when I get the chance.

Wednesday and Thursdays we're finally going to hit a bunch of museums. So we'll let you know how the Mona Lisa looks. Small I hear. But we'll have to see.

Hope all is well in America! Au Revoir!

Monday, March 23, 2009

Honeymoon In Paris!



We have a truly unusual structure to our Wedding Odyssey. We'll be getting married in Iceland, then going on our Honeymoon in Paris, then returning to the US for our super cool Reception.


Since Iceland is more than half way to Europe, it allowed us to go on a European Honeymoon we may not have been able to do otherwise.


Neither of us have ever been to France, but Matt is quite good with the language. When we went to Italy with the family on Air France, he spoke to the flight attendants in French. And then when they handed out the cards you had to fill out if you were not European, they asked if he was French! He also regularly reads Paris's main newspaper online to keep up on the language.




We're going to rent an apartment while we're there instead of stay at a hotel. If you rent by the week you can get really tremendous deals. Evidently this is how a lot of Europeans travel -- staying in private apartments instead of hotels.




What we're really looking forward to is eating. You may or may not know, that Matt and I are serious gourmet chocolate connoisseurs. I've been researching the best chocolatiers in Paris, and there's a nice NY Times article about renting a bike and visiting 8 of the best, so we're considering spending a whole day doing that! At least you work off all the chocolate =)




Matt is looking forward to sitting in the cafes. I'm looking forward to eating macaroons. I've never had one. I had never even heard of them until I started researching Paris. I've seen some since, but I've decided to wait until Paris to have any -- may as well start with the best!




We haven't really decided on any restaurants yet. It's somewhat challenging because Matt is a vegetarian and in Paris, they really really don't do vegetarian! But we'll make it work =) They have a couple famous falafel stands, and we really like falafels. We're also looking forward to crepes. And of course baguettes and cheese! I've been trying to find an apartment to rent which is nearby one of the big organic street markets.


Although there is only 2 1/2 weeks between the wedding and the reception, it's clearly going to be a challenge to fit back into the same dress after the Paris excursion!




As you can see, we have some ideas, but haven't actually done a ton of planning for the Honeymoon yet, too busy with all the wedding stuff, so please let us know if you have any suggestions! Other than eating, we're certainly going to go to the Louvre and Eiffel Tower -- so let us know if there is anything we must see or do!

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