MM4.Travel

London to Paris – Day Seven

Saturday September 7 – This was our first train journey of the trip, we caught the Eurostar to Paris.

On the way to the station was Aldgate Gate Church, which was up the road. There’s been a church there since 1200

Us on the Eurostar, the food was great. We won’t mention that I booked the 1.31pm Train rather the 11.31am Train. Clever.

In hushed tones… the French landscape isn’t terribly different from the English countryside.

Paris

St Vincent-de-Paul by the Gard de Nord Station

First impressions of Paris is that it is definitely not ugly, and Parisians are definitely not badly dressed. Where we were staying in London there was literally a Pub or Church on every corner. Paris seems to have a several Bistro’s on each of theirs. During our stay we noticed that the coffee is noticeably better and the Tea is noticeably worse in Paris.

Street Artist – Space Invader by our hotel

Sacré-Coeur

After dropping off our kit at the hotel we headed to the Sacré-Cœur in Montmatre in the 18th Arrondissement. Where we’re staying in the 9th Arrondissement is fairly close by.

Us at the Sacré-Coeur. There were only a couple of other people nearby.

What’s surprising about Paris is how relatively new it is with most of buildings dating to 1800s. The Sacré-Coeur dates to 1875 and was only finished in 1914. This is ironic and slightly tragic for the following reasons, the church was founded as penance for the pantsing that the French received in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. The Prussian dominated army thought in 1914 that they’d again pants the French in WW1. Which led to a Bavarian Corporal with a serious chip on his shoulder kicking things off in the 1939. None of this ended well. Nice church though.

Louvre

From there we decided to head to the Louvre. We were lucky enough to catch some of the tail-end events for the Paralympics. It was the last night that the Paralympic Cauldron was going to be raised. It had a great atmosphere lots of families, we waited a long time and unfortunately it was eventually cancelled due to the weather conditions. Marnie also avoided being attacked by a giant spider. It was seriously big. A French lady kindly resolved the situation with her shoe. There was a lot of phew gestures as everyone nearby didn’t speak each other’s respective languages.