Whistling “I love Paris in the Springtime“, Robin and I made our way to Paris last weekend. The main goal of the weekend was to meet up with Robin’s brother Jim and his wife Mary who were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary in Paris. Besides, living in Europe means you can go to Paris for the weekend.
I took the day off work on Friday and we took the Thalys high speed train from Amsterdam Centraal to Paris Gard du Nord. Actually, it was medium speed in the Netherlands, down right slow in Belgium and high speed as advertised in France.
After arriving at Gare du Nord, we took a taxi to our hotel, the Hotel Montalembert, in the 7th Arrondissement. We chose the hotel for its proximity to Jim and Mary’s hotel and because of a good review in our Timeout guide.
After checking in and dumping our luggage off, we went for a walk along the Seine towards the Eiffel Tower. We stopped in at Jim and Mary’s hotel to drop off the address of the restaurant we’d be taking them to on Saturday evening (“Les Ombres“). We ended up at the Tower with the throngs of others. We couldn’t bear to stand in the lineups for going up the tower, so we just took some photographs.
We wandered back towards the Musee du Quay Branly where Les Ombres was located to make sure we knew where it was. We stopped for a drink on the patio. Back to the hotel for a little break and then we were on to the Boucherie Rouliere for dinner. Very nice.
On Saturday, we decided to focus on the Musee D’Orsay, Paris’ home to Impressionist and Post Impressionist paintings. It is a fabulous museum that we spent most of the day at. We both particularly enjoyed the Art Nouveau furniture exhibits and the museum building itself, a former train station, was spectacular.
Saturday evening, we met up with Jim and Mary at Les Ombres. We enjoyed a very nice meal over 3 hours and caught up on many things. The biggest highlight of the restaurant was its full-on view of the Eiffel Tower, especially after sunset when once an hour the Tower is lit by thousands of small blinking lights.
In Sunday, we just took a walk through the St. Germain des Pres area, window shopping at the various galleries and shops in the area. By 12:30 pm, we were back on the train and by 5:00 pm, we were at Amsterdam Centraal station.
