Bonjour from Gay Paris!
Once we landed, we headed straight for the area near the hotel, which was close to Cathédrale Notre-Dame. We were so sad when we heard about the fire, just a few weeks before we were due in the city. Understandably we couldn’t get very close, but still had to visit. It is such a shame and we hope they manage to reconstruct it. We had a bit of time to kill before we could check in, so after a quick snack we went in search of a “local” and found the Galway Irish Pub. As with many bars in Paris, they had a “house beer”, which was actually a fairly tasteless lager, but the cheapest thing on the menu and a way to stretch our money out longer. Two pints of house beer then please!
An hour or so later and we could check in to the hotel. We were staying at the Hotel du Mont Blanc. The location was the best thing about the hotel, it was in a vibrant and busy area close to some great street food places where we could eat not too expensively, which meant we could fill up on gyros and crepes and have more money left for the extortionate prices of everything else in Paris. The room was nothing like the photos and judging by the layout printed on the back of the door, it was in the smallest room in the hotel, where the roof slanted, eating into the room space. It rained heavily on the first night and it leaked into the bathroom through the light fitting. We advised reception and their action was basically to send a cleaner up to mop the floor. The lift was tiny – one human or bear plus one item of luggage at a time – and it didn’t go right up to 6th floor where we were staying. Definitely not worth the price, but we got the feeling this is a typical hotel experience in Paris.
The agenda for the afternoon was a visit to Musée du Louvre. It depends how in-depth you want to see the Louvre, with over 38,000 pieces of art, you could spend days and days walking around. If you just want to see the main highlights while learning about the history and stories behind each piece, you probably need about 3 hours, that is if you can stand the crowds. The highlight should have been Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, but it was a bit underwhelming to be honest, much smaller than expected and obscured by thick glass designed to be resistant to bullets and any other object hurled at it! Time to go back to our newly designated “local” and a few pre-gig drinks during “happy hour”, when the nicer beers were cheaper! No matter where in the world, Guinness forever 🖤 cheers guys. Then off to see Dead Can Dance – which I’ll tell you about in another post – and walking back to the pub in the absolutely pouring down rain for one more crafty pint before going to the hotel, by which time we were well and truly shattered and ready for our bed.
Day two and the main reason – as well as the gig – we wanted to visit Paris! So happy we managed to find this absolute thing of beauty, “Dengju” by Fin DAC. This stunner is in Pont Delizy in Pantin, next to a bridge over the Canal de l’Ourcq. In 2018, the Ourcq summer festival Été du Canal created a street-art path long the canal. Of varying size and scale, these artistic works are scattered all along the banks and surprise the casual walker at a street corner or at the intersection of a bridge. The artworks stretch out over 10km along the banks. We took a short walk along the canal to capture some of the works on camera, before heading back for a drink at Le Delizy. The barman and locals took great pleasure in laughing at us asking for dark beer “like Guinness” Dad said. “Ah non! We have only Stella!”, well needs must, two Stella’s it was.
That afternoon, we visited Tour Eiffel and chatted to an older American couple after Dad took their photo with the impressive tower in the background. We bought a few cold bottles of Heineken from a beer seller and sat in the gardens in the shadows of the tower, basking in the glorious sunshine. Just time to visit Place Igor Stravinsky to check out the painting of Salvador Dalí and then to Le Comptoir de Mathilde to buy some chocolate goodies. While in Paris, we just had to have some posh chocolate 🍫 and not so posh wine, drunk from plastic cups that Dad liberated from the gyros place over the street from the hotel 😂
Then on to our last day and a trip to the Arc de Triomphe. It is sooo impressive ❤️💙 and so enormous and oh goodness, I was tiny in comparison. Just one last thing to do. I needed to visit Galeries Lafayette – an upmarket French department store – to buy a beautiful beret to complete my french look and now I blended in with the locals. Tres Bon! I’ll let you into a little secret… the beret was actually a decoration on the lid of a jar of Strawberry jam, so we got Croissants from a market stall to eat with it. Delicious! We had a bit of time to kill, so we went back to Place Igor Stravinsky again – such a nice square to just sit and chill. Time to go… Au revoir Paris! I will miss you, not the prices but everything else 😉