Paris

Christmas is over and so is over short holiday. We had 4 days off so we decided to use them well and go on a short trip to Paris. I had always wanted to go to Paris - so now i can cut off one name from my list of things-to-do-before I die :) And belive me the visit was surely a dream come true. It waaaaasssssss beeeeaaaauuuutiiiifullll (hope adding so many extra letters to the word gave you the exact idea of how I found it) :)

Ok - we decided to drive to Paris (read here - my husband loves driving) Well it wasn't that long a drive so we decided to go for it. According to the navigation system it was 4 hrs 22 min drive and we planned to cover it up in around 6 hours counting dinner breaks, coffee breaks and baby breaks :) ok ok ...like dinner and coffee we were not planning to have any baby *wink* ...it was rest break for our baby when she would get tired of sitting in her car seat or just crave for some special attention from us. We started our drive around 6 in the veening on 24th Dec. After one dinner break and 2 more short breaks (crying-baby breaks) we reached our hotel at 12:30 in the night. Christmas morning was beautiful. After lazying around a bit and gulping down some delicious frenc breakfast we were all set for a touristic round of the city. Our first destination - which everyone would have guesse by now - was Eiffel tower. It is an iron tower built beside the Seine River in Paris. It is gigantic. Huge lacy iron structure. Besides Eiffel tower, we saw Arc de Triomphe, Champs-Élysées, cathedral Notre Dame, palace of the Louvre, Palace of the Tuileries, Place de la Concorde, Parc du Champ de Mars, Les Invalides, Grand Palais and many more such touristic places (many names have already left my not so strong memory)


Food options in Paris were great - millions of cafe's and restaurants from all over the world. And it wasn't all that expensive too ( compared to prices in Netherlands). Also, the best part was you could get a huge variety of warm food all through the day - now that might not be a great thing for anyoen from India but yes - for people from Nethetlands and around, it is something of great value :) Warm Lunch is not the concept here. It's almost like winning a lottery if you get warm lunch somewhere. The only warm meal dutch people have is dinner. Warm-Lunch term is alien to them. Ok back to the trip recap now.

Moving around Paris is very very easy - infact by the end of three days we realised that we were going round and round the same 5 km diameter area. Everything was easily accessible by metro or even on foot. (Though we didnt use any of these means - we preffered our car to get some warmt in otherwise freezing weather) IT WAS VERY COLD. Hopefully these bold letters are conveying the true temperature feeling :) It was around -5, -6 all the time.

Evenings in Paris were heavenly beautiful with lights all around. Effel Tower was a sparkling wonder. It was illuminated in blue to celebrate the French presidency of EU. It even had twelve golden stars of the European flag. Few minutes every hour the whole tower would start sparkling with millions of lights. We couldn't go to first floor or above as we had Prisha with us and babies are not allowed and moreover there was such a long queue - we had no patience for that.