Paris

A few weekends ago we went on a trip to Paris. Luckily for us the sun was shining for pretty much the entire time, and even the Parisians seemed friendly. Annabel did an amazing job of showing us the sights and helping us hopeless foreigners find out hotel and order food … thanks Annabel! Actually it was a culinary delight right from the start.
We began by going to the “best pattiserie in Paris” .. which had all these amazing artistic creations that also happened to be delicious.

It was so nice outside that we tried to eat this yummy stuff on a bit of lawn in Luxembourg park but were soon told to move on by a man in a uniform .. oops.
Then with full bellies it was time to visit some sights so we went for a nice stroll .. eventually ending up taking a look at this massive monument to Napoleon.

Soon enough though it was getting late and time for a bit more food before going to a wine tasting class. That was a great bit of entertainment .. partly for the wine .. and partly for the other participants … who all seemed to have written books on wine, or “studied it for two years in italy” etc etc … suffice to say they were all Americans … I dunno how they do it, but the world over Americans can always be found who live up to every stereotype you can imagine, and these were no exception. Actually the guy taking the course was really good, and we learned how to do all kinds of strange swirling, sniffing, peering and loudly sucking at our wine before drinking it :).
Saturday also happened to be the combined 60th birthday of our friends Ingrid and Ben .. so we then went over to their place for an all to brief time at their birthday party. Sadly our hotel was miles away so we had to leave early to get the last bus.
Next morning we all met up with Jan’s mate Steve who took us to a nice little cafe for brunch. I decided that I would try the famous steak tartare which is basically just raw mince with egg. Doesn’t sound that appetising but it was actually really delicious, and not too strong in flavour either .. actually quite a refreshingly light thing to have for lunch.

The rest of the day we wandered around enjoying parks and musicians and museums and churches and other such sights. It was all pretty nice indeed with the sun shining.