11 November - there is always time for food in Paris

After a long wet day in Luxembourg we had an interesting night's sleep as one of the neighbours threw bottles into the below courtyard and expressed their frustration with life, in a loud manner (or so we assumed as much since our French is dodgy). We also woke up to find that the apartment above us is leaking water through our ceiling and all our clothes in the linen closet are wet. Not great given we already had a day of washing to catch up on and we are away all of this week so may come back to find the apartment is missing it's ceiling.

Our morning was filled with washing, cleaning and more washing. Sadly domestic chores don't end when you are on holidays and we had a heap of wet clothes from yesterday and a whole heap of packing that needed doing. Astrid happily watched TV while we washed and cleaned and then had a lovely 3.5 hour day sleep allowing us time to pack and plan itineraries for the next couple of days.

To get out of the apartment we went for an afternoon walk. We planned on walking down to one of the department stores we frequent, but being Sunday and a public holiday they weren't open. So we ended up wandering around the Marais area for a bit as things are always open there on a Sunday.  Astrid wouldn't keep her hat on and the thousands of people walking slowly and getting in our way were annoying us so we headed back to the apartment and planned on an early dinner.

Despite being a very quiet day we still managed to get some food in. Anto made crepes for breakfast with fresh raspberries and caramel marscapone. Although there are perfectly good crepes available at the supermarket he made them from scratch and they were delicious.  Lunch was fresh bread and the lovely French butter we have been enjoying. Astrid had hers toasted with cheese.

As we are are away most of the week we have run our fridge supplies down so figured we should go out for dinner. We headed to our favourite cafe across the road, and had an early dinner of a chicken tartine for Anto and a vegetable hot pot with quinoa for me. Astrid tried a bit of everything but ate half of Anto's chicken.  Since we were feeling indulgent we also managed some dessert. I tried their Belgian waffles (just so I can compare it to the actual Belgian waffles in Belgium, we are about to try) and Anto had a caramel tart.  All the food was delicious but the caramel tart was the stand out.   Best caramel tart ever!  Astrid was particularly fond of dessert, as you can tell by the photo of her devouring  the waffle.

We are off to Brussels tomorrow and then the Netherlands for a couple of days. We will hopefully update the blog (wifi dependant) as we go. We are already planning all the food we might find to eat in the next few days..........

21 October - Another Sunday in Paris

Anto is on the mend from his cold but I still feel like death warmed up. We decided to have another fairly easy day. Since the weather was predicted to be around 20 and sunny we thought we should make the most of it and head out. Not feeling like much walking we caught the Metro and RER to Jardin Du Luxembourg so we could have another look around, with a hope that more of the activities would be on being a Sunday. 

When we got there it was still quite foggy and damp so not ideal playing weather. Unfortunately, the best weather tends to be after lunch here in Paris, not compatible with the 15 month old's sleep schedule! We did have a chat to the ducks and a walk around. Astrid ran straight into a huge puddle, which almost came up to her knees. She thought it was hilarious but I didn't find it that funny given I didn't take a change of clothes out with us. In the next hour she proceeded to sit in a hole full of wet leaves and finger paint with duck poo. A delightful morning if you are toddler, not so much when you are the parent.

 There were some wooden sail boats out on the pond today and Astrid enjoyed watching them. I'm sure there would have been more out later in the day. We also found where the pony rides were located but figured she was a bit too young to get much out of it. We were planning on taking her to a puppet show but the one that was about to start was 45 mins long and she was getting grumpy for morning tea, so we thought it best to leave that for another day. We now know where they are located and the times, so it makes planning a bit easier. We found a fenced off garden area with sandpits, which she loved but the sand was basically mud at that time of the day. I think I'll take a change of clothes when we go back next time.

 We had forgotten about everything being closed on a Sunday and went for a walk out of the park to find a cafe, and struggled to find much. We should have had our coffee and morning tea in the park. In the end we found a nice but very expensive cafe. They had run out of all forms of croissant so Astrid was not happy! 

Due to me feeling particularly unwell still, we caught the metro back to our apartment. Just in time for the lunch rush on baguettes. There was quite the line up but you can't beat the baguette so fresh out of the oven you can hardly hold it. Lunch was our usual cheese, ham, tomato and fresh baguette.

 In the afternoon we decided to have a walk around Beauborg and the Marais area again as they are bustling on a Sunday. Last week was 7 degrees and raining, today was 20 and humid. A very different experience. We found quite a few interesting shops to go in and we bought a couple of books, a bird box for Astrid's room and some yummy chocolate. The chocolate shops are pretty impressive but this one caught our eye as it had some really cool things, and it smelt so good!

 Then we finally found a cafe that had at least one spare table and had some afternoon tea. Astrid tried her first tarte tatin. She didn't mind it but then discovered her dad had a chocolate milkshake, which was Astrid heaven. She had the waiters running around fetching her cups with straws and various other things. She was being quite cute. We forgot the camera so didn't get any shots of the milkshake initiation but I'm sure she will have another one soon.

14 October - a wet and cold Sunday in Paris

We managed to get the munchkin to sleep in to 8.30am (with only 2 hours up in the middle of the night). Yay for sleep! It still felt like the middle of the night though when we got up. The sun is coming up well after 8am and the apartment is quite dark until the sun is fully out.

Of course when we did get up we realised it was cold and wet. Undeterred, we got organised to out and planned to walk through Le Marais. Once we got outside we realised that it was very, very wet and very, very cold.  At this point we decided to head back to our street and snuggle up in a cafe. There are plenty to choose from, and we picked a lovely organic produce cafe directly across the road from our apartment.

It was full of people having brunch and lots of small children, toddling about. Astrid had a ball chatting to some of the other bubs and even got a hug from a cute little French baby about her size.  The menu was full of yummy treats but I decided on the Belgian waffles with fruit and Anto got a breakfast special with a basket of different breads, pain au chocolat, espresso and juice.  We had to try some of the yummy Belgian spreads on our food, including a really nice white chocolate one. Astrid was quite happy to eat both waffle and croissant and stole most of the froth off my cappuccino. She got quite a lot of giggles from other cafe patrons as she ran around with chocolate all over her face and hands.


Once we were full of yummy food and coffee, we wandered a couple of doors down and found that there was a Belgian chocolatier that needed investigating. He had an impressive range and was very chatty, so we decided to get a small selection of chocolate to try.  We let him choose for us, and so far we haven't been disappointed! We are going to get very fat on this trip :)  To go with our chocolate we purchased some of the lovely (and huge raspberries) from the nearby fruit shop.  Nightly coffee, chocolate and raspberries are going down well!

Back to the apartment in time for an epic meltdown from a small baby with 2 molars coming through. Luckily we got her off to sleep and she was in somewhat of a better mood upon waking several hours later.

We were itching to get out of the apartment and decided to rug her up and put her in the carrier and go for a walk. Back to our original plan of walking through Le Marais, this time with extra clothes, umbrellas and a waterproofed Astrid.  It was quite busy out. Le Marais is pretty much the only shopping district open on a Sunday. We enjoyed walking past the interesting boutiques, cafes, patisseries and chocolate shops. We didn't end up going into many shops. It was quite wet out and we were happy just to window shop.

After a bit of walking around we decided to head back as we were getting wet and cold. We were starting to find our way around without as much reliance on our GPS and were commenting to each other that we were getting so much better and wouldn't need it soon....... only to get hopelessly lost and walk around for about an hour in the wet and cold.  Luckily Astrid has fallen asleep in the carrier and was none the wiser.  It seems that all the criss-crossing and angled streets mean that if you miss a turn or go down the wrong side street you can easily end up several blocks from where you want to be, very quickly!

In the end we got back to our street and dashed back up to our apartment to get warm and dry and have some dinner.  We did manage a few photos of our street, so you can all see what a tough existence we are living!