Monday, August 6, 2012

Day 1 - The Journey Begins

Right….here goes….

So we were up at the crack of dawn to catch our 6.50am flight from Heathrow. I thought I would get into the continental spirit on the plane so went for the Brie and Grape roll. It was perhaps a slightly worrying sign when it turned up without any Brie or Grapes inside! But never mind, there was barely enough time to sarcastically point this out to the air stewardess before we landed in Paris. Just half an hour later (most of which time was spent deciphering the Metro signs at Gare Montparnasse) we arrived at Malakoff in the region Porte de Versailles.

As we couldn’t check in to our hotel for another three hours after we arrived, we followed the rules of arriving in a new place and went out on a recky. Now either they just do things very differently over here or else it’s a strange area of Paris we’ve wandered into.  Just a 2 minute walk from the hotel and you can find a shop which is what Iceland would look like if it had been designed by Steve Jobs. You’ve still got nothing but rows and rows of deep chest freezers, but there’s a weird space-age feel to everything, car-showroom music playing everywhere, and all the freezers are full with things like triple layered seafood terrine!

But the weirdest shop is right opposite the hotel, I don’t know any words to describe it that do it justice so I’m just going to put up a photo of the window display:


But from madness to genius, in the local Supermarche (already cracked the lingo) you can pick up bottles of wine for only 2 euros!



Our room is like a little studio flat, we’ve got a fridge, a couple of hobs and a microwave to make our food, a table to eat at and best of all a proper coffee maker.  We took the standard “view from hotel window” shot when we arrived.


Ok, I reckon that’s enough for Day 1, tomorrow we’re off sightseeing!

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