Paris Part 2
The answer, sadly, turned out to be not all the way, for construction work is being done to it. However I intend to go back because it looks a bit spooky and mysterious, this thing plonked down in the middle of an urban park:
After seeing this I realised it was past time for me to eat something, a fact which was underlined by me spending 15 minutes basically walking in a circle while my brain tried to decide wtf to eat. The answer, naturally, was Indian. I don’t know what was up with the bistros in Paris but everywhere seemed to be doing the same thing, and I didn’t really want any of it. On the plus side, Le Gange was excellent. I had a menu midi with chicken biryani and some pudding thing which was lush, but sadly I have failed to remember the name.
Having got to sit down and eat, I felt better and carried on my walk, this time going a much more rambly route to the hotel. On getting to the hotel, I joyfully dumped my rucksack on the floor, hung everything up to dry and flicked through all the TV channels (finding the music channel, obviously) and having a rest before going back out again.
This time I headed out towards the Rue Charles Nodier, which I had marked on my map (yay for custom google maps) as supposedly a good yarn shop. However when I got there it was shut, because French shops have a flexible attitude to opening times. It turned out I was in the middle of the fabric district, so I had a wander round there and then was getting very rained on so I gave up. Oh, I also went to Gare de L’est (yes, a train station) to go to Jeff de Bruges, aka my favourite chocolate shop.
For dinner I did another wander-for-15-minutes (normally I’m quite good at judging when I will need to eat - not this time!) while trying to choose, eventually settling on an Italian restaurant called La Marina on Rue de Château-Landon. Anyway, the waiter was lovely, I got to be inside (not kidding about the rain) and I had some bruschetta followed by the best Spaghetti Vongele (clams) I’ve ever had. And that is not something I say lightly. It was beautiful. I could have eaten it twice. Probably should have done.
When planning this trip I had hoped to get out at night to take some night photos, but given the rain and the near-death of my umbrella (it eventually died properly on my way to work on Thursday) I decided to just accept it wasn’t going to happen and went back to the hotel to collapse. I had bought some flan nature earlier on but this was disappointing - the one I got from flipping Carrefour a few weeks ago was better.
On Wednesday morning I decided to have the hotel breakfast because I was pretty sure I could eat €9.90’s worth of food. I was correct, and it was a very good selection (fruit, cereal, three types of bread and stuff to go on them, croissants, pain au chocolat, yogurt, drinks etc) so I ate everything in sight. It was great. Some girl on the next table put ham on bread and then spread plain yogurt on it, which I still don’t quite understand.
I went back out to the garment district as it was quite close and I wanted to go to that yarn shop (I got a hairpin lace crochet thing, so looking forward to trying that out). It was also at the bottom of the Sacre-Couer but I didn’t walk up as I’ve been there before.
I checked out of the hotel at 12 but my train wasn’t until 18.40 so I had a long time free. I wanted to go to Centre Georges Pompidou and then Rue Rivoli for the big shops and another yarn shop close by and was planning to just wander. There was a bit of rain (gaaaaah) but it did bugger off, thankfully.
It turned out that Centre Georges Pompidou was a long sodding way from the hotel, not a flipping half hour, thank you Google. I know what a half hour walk feels like, and that wasn’t it. I didn’t go into the Centre but I did have a good wander round and a look at the (sadly not running) Stravinksy Fountain.
(should have more photos than this so may add later)
Then I went to Leon de Bruxelles for lunch because mussels. Also they do free refills of fries, woo!
The yarn shop I went to was La Drogerie, and it was lovely. Go visit it, craft people!
http://www.ladroguerie.com/
I did not buy anything this time but I might well go back just to go to that shop. I could happily do a day trip just for that.
I was a bit disappointed with Rue Rivoli this time round, possibly because I went to Cite Europe a few weeks ago, and it was just nicer to be able to wander round a massive shopping centre with everything there. Still, it isn’t as much of a disaster area as Oxford Street is right now.
Having got through all the shops I wanted to go to in almost no time I still had ages left so I decided to walk over to the Palais de Justice (no Engrenages filming going on, sadly) and Notre Dame. The sun had come out (!) so it all looked very pretty.
I also found out that Etam still have at least one normal clothes shop (though was disappointed by the selection). Coming back over the ile Saint-Louis I found the paperterie district completely by accident, which was very exciting as I had spent two days trying to find notebooks and failing.
I got this quite excellent notebook and pen:
On my way back towards the hotel I also discovered some wholesale bead shops but thankfully common sense was prevailing by that point and I didn’t buy anything.
I picked up my rucksack from the hotel and walked round to the station, pausing on the way to get some absolutely terrible sushi. I didn’t want to have more bread but frankly it would have been nicer. I checked in the normal way (each minute that passed felt like fifteen, and people were trying to push in front FOR NO REASON AT ALL) and collapsed into my train seat, while every bit of me hurt and informed me it hated me.
I got back to St Pancras at 8 and got home about 9.45 thanks to connections (tube > train > bus). In retrospect booking an earlier train might have been easier on myself, though frankly the damage was already done when I decided that rather than going about on the metro I’d just visit places within walking distance this time.
Overall I had a great time, even if it did take my legs three whole days to recover. I am definitely going to do it again, though next time I will do it the other way round and visit places by metro instead of walking.
And finally, here are some pictures that didn’t really fit anywhere in particular:
(some more pictures to come as again they seem to have not uploaded properly :/)
This entry was originally posted at http://hestia8.dreamwidth.org/65513.html.