Paris Weekend

I spent last weekend in Paris. Who says that?

Thursday:

Between booking the tickets in advance, and traveling at the weird times of Thursday evening, and Monday morning, we got a great deal for around €70 round trip. A 3.5hr train ride...how could we resist? After work I met my travel buddies Josh, Ashly, and Rachel on platform 10a to take off for Paris. Josh packed us snacks...or should I say...packed us each an individual tupperware with a sandwich, tomatoes, crackers, carrots, nuts, banana, and tangerine. It was adorable...hence, the first image of this post:

Friday:

Woke up early and hit the ground running.

Our Apartment, and the view of the church across the street:

Walked past the Louvre. Took some photos. Kept on moving:

Went into Less Art Décoratifs museum to see a Sagmeister show. Turns out the museum workers were on strike, so we were able to enter for free. Thanks guys!

Museum entrance and Jean-Paul Goude exhibit:

Sagmeister Exhibit:

After the museum, we wandered over to the Marais district with the intent of eating at Schwartz cafe.

The lovely Hotel de Ville:

We just missed the last seating for lunch at Schwartz cafe, but the area was overflowing with amazing places to eat. After stopping in a bakery to grab some fresh backed Challah, we settled on this little crepe shop:

My first official French crepe! Huzzah!

Next we headed over to Cimetière du Père-Lachaise. This is the cemetary Jim Morrison is buried in, though we did not take the time to find him. We just wandered around and enjoyed the beauty of it all. After the cemetary we headed to a little restaurant, Obododo, for a wine, and then took the metro to Notre Dame.

Notre Dame was beautiful. Of course. It also had the city's Christmas tree out front. For the record—Rachel was not impressed with their tree.

Then we hopped the metro south to eat a Chez Papa—A restaurant Josh and Ashly had been to during their last visit here. It was amazing! If I'm ever in Paris again, I'll definitely go back:

When the waitress took our group photo, the joining table decided to join in the pose. Makes us look like we have quite the gang :)

Saturday:

Got up and headed to the George Pompidou Museum. There was a long line, and we had a lunch date to make, but we were still able to make it in to view the Edvard Munch exhibit. Then we hopped over to lunch, and back to the museum again to finish up.

For lunch we met some friends from Amsterdam and Paris at Glou. The food was amazing. The company was amazing. It was a proper 3 hour French lunch. Wonderful!

Back at Pompidou after lunch:

Enjoying the sweeping scenery from the top floor of the Pompidou:

After the sunset at the museum we attempted to head in to the center to scope out the Eiffel tower. The rush-hour traffic on the metro proved to be a bit of a challenge, and we had a tight schedule, so we made it this far:

We next ran back to the apartment, grabbed a quick bite, and headed off to an ONRA show:

Sunday:

As per Pierre and Neeza's recommendation, we headed to Ladurée for tea and macaroons. The place was very lovely. I grabbed some macaroons to go. They wound up a bit smashed in the end, but my belly still enjoyed them:

Then we headed across town to grab a proper breakfast/lunch/brunch. We initially tried to eat at the Charlot, but it wound up being a bit of a mad house. While waiting for a table, I wandered across the street and discovered a market with tons of places to get food. So our crew decided to head there for lunch instead. It was delicious!

Turns out the market (Marche des Efants Rouges) is the oldest covered marked in Paris:

From the market we headed up to Basilique du Sacré-Cœur (pictured above in a view from the Pompidou):

The basilica was very beautiful, and had a little Christmas market in the courtyard in front of it. We were a little Christmas-marketed out from last weekend in Cologne, so we cruised through it quickly and started wandering the streets around the basilica.

We happened upon this place, Restaurant Le Basilic. It was serving French Onion soup, and was too adorable to not go in. So we had a little wine and soup:

 

After warming our bellies, we wandered the rest of the way to Moulin Rouge to quickly scope it out, and then hopped on the metro to head to the Eiffel Tower:

We walked the stretch of lawn leading up to the tower and out the other side. I took way too many pictures, so here are just a few:

It was getting late, and we had an early train to catch, so we headed back to our area of town. I don't remember the name of the first place we stopped at, but we grabbed some hot chocolate to warm up and snacked on a cheese platter:

Then we wandered over to another place, Les Philosophes, to have our final bottle of wine, and say goodbye to Paris!

We woke up at 5:20am Monday to catch the 6:30 train home. Sure, it was early and I was running off of no sleep...but it was worth it!

Happy lap on the way home:

Köln Christmas Markets

Saturday morning I took the 2 hour 45 minute train down to Köln (Cologne) with Rachel and Ashley to visit the city's festive Christmas markets.

When we exited the train station, I was immediately overwhelmed by a beautiful Cathedral (Kölner Dom) right in front of us. It is enormous, and has such wonderful detail very typical gothic architecture. I spent a bit of time staring at the thing both during the day, and also later in the evening when it was all lit up. I was very impressed. I just looked it up online, and it turns out it does have some bragging rights: "The cathedral is the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe and has the second-tallest spire and largest façade of any church in the world. The choir has the largest height to width ratio of any medieval church."—Wikipedia

As for the markets, there are 4. The first one, was set at the base of the Cathedral. A very nice backdrop to do some Christmas shopping, drink some glühwein, and feast on some delicious potato hash-brown fritter things dipped in apple sauce. You'll notice a few pictures of the glühwein below, and this is because every market had their own mug. So, the many cup pictures are to show the different mugs for the different markets.

After spending a couple hours wandering the stalls and loosing track of each other in the sea of black coats, we hopped the tractor/train to the next market.

The second market had a gnome theme. As you were wondering around, at any given moment you could look up and see some gnomes peering down at you from the rooftops. I admit, it was kind of adorable and not creepy at all.

The structures at this market were also quite impressive. They were all wooden and had an impressive amount of detail to them for being temporary structures. I think this was my favorite of the markets. Felt very Christmas-y, and I can just imagine it being amazing in the snow!

Next stop was the pirate market. Because every pirate needs a Christmas market!

Ashly made a poor shoe choice for a rainy winter day. Pretty much right after arrival, her feet were wet. After buying fresh socks, and looking in a store for some replacement boots, we decided to try our luck with plastic. Fresh, dry sock, then bag, then boot. It seemed to work pretty well! Below we have Ashly swapping socks and showing off her lovely boot-shaped plastic bag.

The last market was, I believe, the market of angels. I don’t recall seeing angels everywhere, but I do recall how beautiful the lights were. We got to this market around dusk, so everything was beginning to glow very nicely. There were tons of lights. My favorite were the star-shaped lights up in the trees. We were a little shopped-out at this point, so we spent most of our time at this market sipping glühwein. We also tried the smoked salmon, and a waffle. And no, not together.

We caught our chariot back to the starting point to be greeted once again by the massive cathedral—this time all lit up. I once again lost my party because I stopped to stare at it just a bit too long. I think I gave it a good, solid, 3-minute stare down.

By 7:30 we were back on the train, bags full of treasures and bellies full of treats!