A cultural weekend in Paris

Paris is one of those places you can just visit over and over again. Always something new to do, a new museum to visit, a new restaurant to try out. So when we read about a Hokusai exhibition at Le Grand Palais, we decided it was the perfect excuse for a autumnal weekend in Paris.

This time, we decided to book a room through Airbnb - Mathilde found a nice little apartment located in a lovely part of Paris called Le Butte aux Cailles. After arriving at Orly airport, we jumped on the Orlybus and headed for Paris. We were a bit worried about traffic, but turns out it wasn't as bad as we feared. We arrived at the apartment earlier than expected, greeted by our lovely host Isabelle.

After checking out the apartment (which was perfect for our needs), we headed off for dinner. I'd booked a restaurant called l'Avant Gout for the occasion - apparently a bit of a local institution (as confirmed by our host). And we were not disappointed - the place was just wonderful - a really cozy little modern Paris-style bistrot. I particularly liked the main dish - some absolutely succulent deer.

After dinner, we decided to have a walk around Buttes Aux Cailles to burn off some calories. It really is a lovely part of Paris - a bit like a little village in the midst of Paris (very chic and Bo-Bo...).

The next morning, we got up to a cold but sunny Parisian day. After a lovely breakfast (fresh baguettes down the road form a boulangerie, yummie...), we headed off for the Grand Palais, for our first exhibition for the weekend - Niki de Saint Phalle's Nanas and other works of art were being shown (we had a combined ticket for the Nana's and Hokusai). I'm not a huge fan of Niki de Saint Phalle (although I find it more accessible than a lot of modern art, that quite often completely eludes me ;-), but the exhibition was quite good actually. Gave a bit of background and context about her art - and plenty of those big nana's on display of course!

The cultural bit for the day done, we had our first rendez-vous for the day - we were meeting up with Isabelle for lunch. After sort of randomly wandering around Paris (Paris is of course one of the greatest places in the world to randomly wander around), we ended up in (surprise surprise) a Japanese restaurant called Aki. We had to queue for quite some time, but the okonomiyakis (kind of Japanese omelets) they served were more than worth the wait. After our lunch, we continued randomly wandering around, ending up around the Louvre and then walking along the Seine river (a perfect sunny day for randomly wandering around).

From there, we headed off for our next rendez-vous, this time near the Canal d'Ourcq in the 19th Arrondisment. We'd been invited over to Youcef and Ouarda's place for tea and cakes. Youcef and Ouarda are good friends of ours whom we've not seen for quite some time (not much since Youcef moved from Nice to Paris a couple of years ago), so it was a happy reunion indeed. And much to our joy, their family has been joined by a little one as well! Great to see them again!

Barely had we finished our teas and cakes, before it was time for our next social gathering (we always seem to spend a lot of time travelling back and forth across Paris meeting various people!) - this time we were meeting Muriel and the kids for Crepes in Montparnasse! And what better place to have crepes than Creperie Josselin - one of the oldest creperies in Paris. The crepes were great, and we had a lot of fun as well (gosh those kids are growing up fast - soon I'll struggle to fight off those wild twins...). After the crepes we ended up in a bar watching Miss France - how cool is that !?

Sunday promised to be just as busy as Saturday. After tidying up our flat and leaving the keys, we headed off to le Grand Palais again - this time to check out the great Japanese master Hokusai's work. Hokusai is most famous (at least in the Western World) for his ukiyo-e (woodblock print painting). What was great about this exhibition is that it really shows the body of work of this amazing artist - this man was amazingly versatile! And modest too - he famously stated that he only started to begin to understand art at the age of 73... Very  interesting exhibition!

The cultural bit for the Sunday done, it was time for some food! We'd been invited over for lunch at Paula and Beppe's place. Paula is an old friend of Mathilde from her exchange student times in Perugia. Milene and Kamel also came over with their kids. Paula had made a paella for us - very tasty indeed! After several helpings, plus some chocolate cake for desert, we reluctantly just had to go - as we had a flight to catch!

All in all, a fantastic weekend then - as weekends always are in Paris!