A weekend in Paris

Paris, lovely Paris! I was really looking forward to spending a weekend here, it’s been a while since our last visit. I wasn’t even put off (too much, at least) by the fact that I waited about 45 minutes for my luggage. I did, after all, arrive at Charles de Gaulle airport – lost/delayed luggage is an essential part of the experience!

After an hour spent in the RER and the metro, I finally arrived at our hotel in Montparnasse, where I was reunited with Mathilde. Our hotel was quite a nice little establishment, with very friendly staff – our only complaint was the fact that our room seemed to be designed for dwarves – a bit of a problem for me...

We headed out to dine in one of the local eateries, “La cantine du Troquet” (it wasn’t an easy choice – Montparnasse is a fantastic place to eat out) – a very trendy place, apparently. We can confirm that – we had to wait 1 hour for a table (they don’t take reservations). Well, our wait at the bar, sipping wine and eating saucisse for apero, wasn’t any bother at all. The meal was a real delight – for starters we had a selection of starters, followed by some fish, pork and finally desert. Not bad for 32 euros, in Paris, I would say? Nice start for the weekend.

Saturday, we got up at reasonably early, and make our way to Muriel’s house – who lives just down the road from our hotel. After a relatively intensive 20 minutes of so (mostly thanks to Paul & Lucas – who have lost none of their considerable amount of energy – rather the opposite!), we took Alix with us and made our way towards Denfert-Rochereau, where we were planning to visit the famous catacombs of Paris. On a Saturday – you are kidding me right? After taking one look at the queue which made its way around the block, we decided to do something else.

After some deliberation, we decided to try the cinemateque, where they were hosting a Tim Burton art exhibition – we are both fans of Mr. Burton, so we were quite keen. Well, so was the rest of Paris, apparently – the queues were again totally ridiculous. What next? We were in Bercy, so we decided to cross the Seine and go to the National Library of France – the place intended to be a repository of all that is published in France.

The construction of the huge, modern structure was ordered by Francois Mitterrand. I guess it’s one of those buildings which will have its opponents and proponents – it’s a pretty uncompromising structure, that’s for sure. I have to say I like it – especially the big garden in the middle of it. We started our visit by checking out the “globes of the sun king”, the two globes both measuring 4 meters in diameter; one showing the earth as seen at the 17th century, the other one the sky (the reason the sky is represented as a globe is, of course, since the earth was considered to be at the center of the universe at the time). Quite impressive pieces of art… The rest of the museum was pretty impressive as well...

Our next stop was the Musée d'Orsay – the plan was to buy tickets in advance for the Gallen-Kallela exhibition we were planning to check out the next day. You’ve probably guessed already – the queues were absolutely ridiculous, so we decided to buy them at the FNAC instead… Instead, we crossed the Seine and headed through the Jardin des Tuileries, passed the Louvre, along the river towards the Town Hall (Paris is such a fantastic city to wander around that we actually really enjoyed our day, even though it might seem that we spent most of the time watching people queuing.

Our plan had been to check out an exhibition at the town hall as well, but I suppose I needn’t say that the queues were just ridiculous, so we decided to make our way back to the hotel instead. Anyway, I certainly don’t want to sound negative – we’d spent a fantastic day taking in the beautiful sights of Paris (even if the weather was pretty cloudy…).

After dropping off Alix at her mum’s, and resting a bit at the hotel room, we made our way to the Montparnasse train station, where we were planning to have dinner with some friends. The plan was to celebrate mine and Ollie’s birthday (both a bit in advance…), CoCo, Aniko, Isabelle and her new partner showed up for the occasion. For the venue, we had chosen Chez Bebert, a real institution of Moroccan cuisine, apparently. And it can’t be denied – the couscous was definitely a delight, and the dessert was nothing to frown upon either. They did seem to have some problems working out the bill though – but we eventually got there...



We continued next doors with a couple of beers – catching up with our friends. We also took the opportunity to start planning our trip to Hungary with Aniko (she’s from there, and we’re planning to visit in July)… Great to catch up with everybody again, great night out!



The next day, we had a proper lie-in, and really made the best of our buffet breakfast (which was better, and more filling, than hotel breakfasts in France tend to be). The plan was then to meet up with Muriel and the kids at the Orsay museum, for a bit of culture. We decided to go there a bit early, to check out the Gallen-Kallela exhibition, before the others came along (we did after all have a flight to catch in the evening as well!). It was really good, showing a good mixture of my fellow Finn’s famous works of art, and some more unusual works from private collections (I didn’t for example realize he’d spent quite some time in Africa).

After Muriel and the kids arrived, we explored the rest of the artistic treasures the Orsay has to offer. It must be one of my favorite museums, I really love the place – both architecturally speaking (it’s housed in an old train station) and content-wise. The kids seemed to be well impressed as well. Paul and Lucas must’ve been somewhat awed, they didn’t run around with quite the same energy as usually… ;-)

That brought an end to a fantastic weekend in Paris – as it was time for us to make our way to the airport. What can I say? Paris is just one of those magic places that just has so much to offer – hopefully we’ll be back before too long!