Oh Paris….it could have been so much better!

I was so excited to be going to Paris!  The world capital for romance, beauty, shopping, style….the list goes on! So what happened?

We had been doing most of our travelling on the cheap, the hostel in Berlin, the 2 and 3 star accommodations in other places and I decided I was ready for a bit of spoiling so we checked out our options and booked 2 nights in a 4 star hotel called Villa Royale Montsouris.

When we got to the hotel I thought the lobby looked a bit shabby but sort of shrugged it off.  I was however very surprised when we asked about the restaurant to be told there wasn’t one and we would need to go down the road if we wanted to eat.  Since when does a 4 star hotel not have a restaurant?

We went to the lift to go up to our room and here was hint #1…the lift was so small that we could barely fit the two of us in there.

After creaking our way up to the third floor, we found our room and hint #2 was strong enough that I actually almost cried.  The room was so small that we only had walking room around the bed!  The TV was on top of the mini bar, there wasn't even a kettle or a teabag (no restaurant remember) and the bathroom was the strangest thing I had ever seen, toilet and basin in the foreground, shower over the bath behind them….with the shower hose stretched across the opening and attached to the opposite wall meaning you either had to climb over it to get into the shower or unhook the shower head, get in and reattach it behind you!

The aircon had not been turned on and the room was so stuffy that I had to open the window.  Nathan turned on the aircon and it sounded like we had a jet in the room but we would swelter without it as the traffic noise was very loud with the window open :(

The worst thing though was the bed.

Now we have become used to the European way of having 2 single beds pushed together to form one double and have had no issues with this at all.  But these two beds were different heights. 

And had a huge gap between them. 

And slid across the room when you rolled over.

Add to that the nasty old stained linen and lumpy pillows and how the fuck did they ever get 4 star rated!!  Michelin has a lot to answer for!

Oh it did have a safe though.  It was in the wardrobe…but you could put it wherever you wanted since it wasn’t bolted in.  Actually maybe it wasn’t a safe but a nice handy box for a thief to carry all your valuables away easily.

Anyway, I decided to suck it up and see what the next day would bring…after all I was in Paris in the Springtime!  The most romantic wonderful city in the world!

We wandered outside to look for a restaurant and I have to say, there is no shortage of choice!  We wandered past heaps of cafes, restaurants and bars before deciding on a place and when our food arrived I knew we had made the right choice.  I had ordered a salad but when it came out loaded with prawns, scallops, prosciutto and parmesan it was more feast than salad!  I couldn’t get through it all, even with Nathan’s help!

The next morning after what was possibly the worst sleep I have ever had we wandered down to find the Hotel De Ville.  The owner of the hotel in Florenville had grown up in Paris and she told us if we started there it was basically a straight line to see all the famous sights in Paris and we would be able to do it all in one day!

Stopping into a small café near Notre Dame, we had yet another European breakfast to give us the energy for the long walk ahead :)

Notre Dame took my breath away!  I can’t describe how it felt to be walking around in there.  In amongst thousands of other people but still feeling an incredible peace.  The art works, the candles, the atmosphere.  Not just a tourist attraction but a real place with real spiritual feeling.

I could have stayed there much longer but there were so many other places on our list.  I did buy a small charm before I left, not that I will actually need a reminder of this place.

Next down to The Louvre.  We didn’t go inside as we aren’t arty types but the architecture of the building, the glass pyramids in the courtyard, the gate…all of these were amazing!

We continued our walk through the Jardin des Tuileries, again this was stunning.  Sculptures at every turn, manicured gardens filled with tulips, small cafes, street artists and souvenir sellers.  One artist pulled Nathan up to try and draw a picture but we declined ;)

We stopped for a coffee at a little place called La Terrasse….felt sort of ironic…

In so many places along the way we could see the Eiffel Tower in the distance, this was going to be our final stop!

Exiting the Jardin onto the Champs Elysee we kept walking until we found a nice restaurant for lunch.  We stopped here for a good 2 hours to rest and recover, the food was lovely and the dessert even better :)

Our first stop after lunch was the Arc de Triomphe!  Nathan wanted to go to the top but I was a bit freaked out, even looking up at it from the road was enough to give me vertigo….it is huge! 

At this point I noticed that every time I blinked peoples noses disappeared!  I could see their eyes and their mouths but there was a blank in the middle…took me a while to realise that I was seeing an aura that signalled a migraine was on its way :(

The timing could not have been worse.  We were still about an hour away from the Eiffel Tower and I was determined to see it even though I would never climb up it so we powered on.

Sadly by the time we got there my migraine was in full force and all we could do was grab some water, sit in the shade and wait until I wasn’t so dizzy that we could walk to the train station to get the next train back to our hotel.

We had been tossing up doing a Paris lights tour followed by the Moulin Rouge but this was now scrapped.  No dinner that night, nothing but bed.  To top it off at about 11pm someone checked into the room next door, the paper thin walls did nothing to block the sound of their child screaming for the next hour or the scrape of the furniture as they rearranged the whole room.  The sound of them putting all the furniture back the next morning was the alarm that told us it was time to leave Paris.

We had again risked booking a 4 star hotel in Salzburg for 3 nights but this time went with a well know brand, The Mercure.

My executive decision is that if Salzburg is as bad as this I am going home!!


Update:  The saga of the skis.
Checking out of the hotel after barely sleeping for 2 hours and with a migraine hangover, I told Nathan that I wanted to get a cab to the International Train Station rather than lugging our stuff on the local line, which I would normally be happy to do.
The guy at the counter called the cab company then came and told us there was not a single cab in Paris that could fit the skis, even though we had seen vans and station wagons while we had been there.  The rest of this story is between me and Nathan.


PS.  While we were waiting for the non existent cab we heard the clink of cutlery on plates...apparently a restaurant had appeared downstairs overnight!  A miracle!