Temperature: Min 16°C (in Ashford); Max 32°C (in Paris, although it felt like 45).
Weather: Sunny and hot.
The hostess at our B&B was kind enough to give us a lovely breakfast early, so we ate there then made our way to the train station at Ashford. The instructions from our car rental company seemed fairly good, however once we arrived at the car park there weren’t any further signs. We brought our paperwork and keys into the terminal – and nothing. So Scott had to run back over the air bridge to leave the keys with the car. We hoped all was well!
Check-in was fairly simple, although our bags had to be opened to have a look at suspicious things like glass vases. The waiting area was nice and even had toys for children to play with. Many people were headed to Euro Disney, so it made sense!
Getting on in Ashford we didn’t have the problems of London, however the train was always fairly full. It was hard to find a place to put our bags. It is a good thing that seats are prebooked! We had booked in carriage 1, which was the one indicated as being recommended for families. It actually sucked. We had further to walk than anyone, and at the Paris end we had quite a distance to carry Eskil and ALL the bags. Eskil was on Scott’s lap for the train journey, and he enjoyed it. There was a long tummel (while we were under The Channel), lots of tractors as well as other trains that we passed. Eskil of course flirted with the woman and girl sitting opposite us.
Scott found our arrival in Paris rather confronting. There were people everywhere, there were illegal taxi drivers trying to convince us to go with them, it was HOT, etc. We approached the official taxi rank where the queue was huge. Luckily, the gent at the front organising things was African, and as Scott had Eskil in a carrier on his back we were immediately found a taxi. Even the taxi was insane. Well, more specifically our driver was insane, but we humoured him in the hopes of arriving at our destination alive.
We were dropped off in front of our flat with plenty of time to spare before meeting the owner of the flat, so we stacked our bags up and had a beautiful lunch of confit du canard one of the restaurants in front of it. Eskil loved the confit!
Once we had the keys to our flat we settled in. It was the hottest part of the day, so we relaxed a bit and did 2 loads of wash. I was keen to get out though. Scott had had a rough introduction to Paris, and I was keen for him to start enjoying and appreciating it. I did my undergraduate degree in Paris, so already knew and loved the city. Our flat was near the centre close to the Centre Pompidou, so I led us on a ‘small’ walk through to sites I hoped would make Scott feel he was actually in Paris. We headed past the hôtel de ville, across to Notre Dame, to Shakespeare & Co, past St Michel and along the quai to the Pont des Arts. We crossed into the Cour Carrée and then to the Pyramide du Louvre.
It was a HOT day, so Eskil enjoyed a splash in the fountains!
We then passed through the Passage Richelieu then along to Rivoli and back to the Fontaine Stravinsky in our neighbourhood. Whew! Scott did most of this with Eskil on his back!
I headed off to acquire bottles of wine, milk, and some good old street food: crêpes for dinner. Eskil loved crêpes! There were people nearby enjoying tall glasses of cool beer, so we decided to become one of them. Aaaahhhh.
We made our way back to our flat and spied a hidden park to explore another day.
More photos can be viewed at https://www.flickr.com/photos/cragg-ohlsson/archives/date-taken/2014/07/23/.