Europe

We got off to a pretty slow start today. We got down to breakfast around 10:30 am. We decided to sit in the courtyard for breakfast this morning, which was very nice.

We headed back to the room after breakfast to get ready to go out. It wasn’t till about 1:45 pm that we managed to leave the hotel. We decided to head to Montmartre in the 18th arrondissement, a walk of around an hour. The walk was good but the rain started to pick up just as we got to Montmartre so we decided to head inside la Basilique du Sacré Cœur de Montmartre, the magnificent church right on the top of the hill. We walked around inside the church before deciding to sit for a while. We were sufficiently in need of a rest by this stage that not only were we happy to listen to the sermon in progress, we didn’t even mind that it was in French!

After resting on the church pews for a while we headed outside and around to the side of the church to climb the 292 stairs to the top to take in the incredible views. The stairs were surprisingly hard going because they were narrow and uneven and they twisted up to the top in a very tight spiral. It doesn’t sound like it should be too hard but we were definitely puffing by the time we got to the top! It was worth it though because the 360-degree view of Paris is amazing.

We left the basilica and wandered around Montmartre for a while, watching the many artists at work in the square.

We decided that we should have a crêpe before the walk back to the hotel. We found a little crêperie and ordered our crêpes: banana and Nutella (for Andrea) and Grand Marnier (for Keith). We felt energised after eating (which was probably a function of the sugar we had just consumed!) and headed off down the hill for the walk back to the hotel.

We decided on the walk back that we would have dinner at L’Avenue, a very nice-looking restaurant just a minute’s walk from the hotel on Avenue Montaigne. We enquired about a table but were told that there were none available but we could make a reservation for another day if we liked. So we walked back into the Hôtel Plaza Athénée and asked the concierge to call the restaurant and let them know we’d like to have dinner there. Within ten minutes we were in the restaurant, seated, and enjoying a glass of champagne! We had a very nice meal, simple but very tasty.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel to listen to Charles’ first speech as King to the people. In tough circumstances, we agreed that he did a very good job.

We think that tomorrow we might head to the market at Porte de Clignancourt but we’ll see what the weather looks like before committing.