We have a flat in Paris!

When planning this trip, I was wonderfully pleased to find a B&B website that listed a little flat in the south of Paris where we could stay four nights for a very reasonable rate, and make our own meals when we didn’t want to eat out. It was every bit as perfect for our needs as I had hoped!
We arrived in Paris by train from London, so that we could have the Chunnel experience. Man, that train is fast! Apparently, the top speed for our journey was reached in the French countryside when we hit 198km/hour! We were moving! We had ordered Paris Passes to museums, attractions, and transportation, so we had to pick them up first at a most unexpected location—the Hard Rock Café! I hadn’t planned to start our French experience with an American one, but we were hungry and tired; the music and food were good; so, why not?

While in Paris, we focused on a combination of cultural and culinary experiences. On our first day, we planned to visit the Musée de Moyen Ages (Middle Ages Museum) and try some authentic French cuisine, so we set out for Cluny. Sadly, the heavens opened, so we got to buy our second umbrella for the trip! We had an excellent lunch at Polidor, a little restaurant that has been faithfully serving its customers for about 150 years! Fortified and warmed, we set out to find the museum, only to discover that it was closed on Tuesdays! NNOOooooo!!!!!! That was a clear indicator to head back to the flat for quiche and pizza from the local bakery!

The second day, in better weather, we took a boat tour down the Seine to find our bearings, then travelled west to east from the base of the Eiffel Tower (where we sat in a park warding off the September chill with hot crepes filled with Nutella, bananas, strawberries, and Chantilly cream!),
to the Orsay art museum, and back to Cluny where we got to visit the Middle Ages museum after all.



We still had a wee bit of energy left, so we walked up to the Notre Dame Cathedral and searched for Berthillon, the ice cream shop extraordinaire that my friend had made me promise to visit before we left Norfolk. Well, I’ll tell you—it was worth the search! It’s not by mistake that they claim to have the best ice creams and sherbets in the world.

Our final day of touring around Paris, we devoted to a trip out to the Palace at Versailles. What an experience!