paris day 3

slept in on sunday too, what a luxury, then ventured out to near montmarte for brunch. marlette is a cute little cafe and just beat the queue because it was out the door and almost round the block by the time we left! do wish the fish soup was a breakfast option though! gimme something hot and savoury any day, and much as i'd love a bowl of bak chor mee, fish soup is a close second.

walked aimlessly and stopped for post breakfast pastries along the way. being in paris inevitably brings out my inner carbohydrate queen. went back-ish to the sacre couer cos it was such a glorious day but sort of overestimated my fitness or lack thereof and realised i couldn't bring myself to go all the way uphill. did find the pushy friendship bracelet tie-rs incredibly unpleasant. don't want to me rude but it escalated from non, merci to arrete!!! pretty quickly. didn't like having my wrist grabbed and felt it was such an unnecessary infringement of personal space.

stopped for espresso, bordeaux and onion soup (as you do!) at a corner cafe near the hotel before getting an uber to the airport. mega impressed by uber in paris, all incredibly luxurious black cars (more often than not a benz!), suited drivers offering candy and mineral water.

paris day 2

after the 10pm seating at verjus, tasting menu no less so can't even remember what time i finally got to zz, i passed out till late morning then felt compelled to revisit best tofu for bean curd. stuck out like a sore thumb despite being chinese and chalked it down to a cultural experience. it's cramped, you're cheek to jowl with the next diner after using sharp elbows to get a seat. fast turnaround and snooze you lose! typically azn :P found a little farmers' market near best tofu and enjoyed looking at all the produce after breakfast.

had lunch reso at somewhere snooty but they'd the cheek to ring and cancel the night before because we'd failed to get in touch to confirm the reso 48h before. what nonsense. they should be the one reaching out to confirm, not the customer. but whatevs, don't need that sort of snobbery and clamato was a more than decent plan B. oysters, wine and carpaccio of all kinds. pregnant contraband but maintain that maternal diet is maternal choice and there are enough sanctimonious pregnant people out there without me adding to their numbers ;)

walked off lunch exploring bastille and couldn't resist crepe suzette with gran marnier before picking up some basics at uniqlo.

had another fashionably late dinner post defensive nap at frenchie bar au vin. no reservations so walked in about 2230, seated 2330 (stood with wine glasses in hand for over an hour!) and then ate till about 0100h. but all worth it for the incredible stilton from pasteurised milk. still dreaming of that blue. the yuzu mont blanc was also divine.

paris day 1

had annual leave to clear and decided to hop across the channel once again. was put off the eurostar after my parents' bad experience last month. as our dear family friend C put, with azn families it's once bitten, twice shy by proxy. too true! in retrospect, train still > plane because heathrow is such a mess and coming back, despite landing at 1615h, it took almost an hour to get to the gate because another plane was blocking us, then it was a busy thoroughfare and in the take off queue and basically one lame excuse after another. then the alien queue was about 45min to an hour long, and it took another hour to get home by tube. the immigration hassle is also not worth it because foundation doctors are on a tier 4 student visa, despite not being students, despite working >20h/week (duh) and no border control officer is familiar with this exception so i get questioned like a criminal every single time. it's really not worth it.  

anyway paris is always a dream and when i'm there i forget about work and its multitude of woes. not to go into too much detail but it's been a rough few weeks with ward burning down (no exaggeration) and another patient we'd discharged a few months ago murdering his wife. arrived late afternoon and made a beeline for sanukiya. udon is such a comfort, then purveyed some beans at overpriced cafe with unpleasant waiters.

had a defensive nap before emerging fashionably late for drinks at the newly reopened ritz (hemingway bar is so sexy!) and a 10pm thanksgiving dinner reso at verjus, at friends in the know's recommendation.

48h in paris

now i've to be a little careful about how i phrase this for fear of drawing disapprobation. let's just say i fortuitously got a friday afternoon off owing to some administrative oversight. and i found out while on the tube to work. so what's a girl to do but to plan an escape strategy? contemplated going north as i'm wont to do but figured i'd OD on friends the week before and didn't quite want to subject myself to the train journey. plus it was faster and cheaper to hop on the eurostar heh. was lucky to find eurostar tickets last minute, and get a good deal on a sweet hotel in a decent part of town. admittedly indulgent and hedonistic, plus the terrorist threat in paris isn't one to be taken lightly. but hey, why live in fear, you know?

so i sort of broke free from hospital as discreetly as possible at a respectable time, nipped home to pack an overnighter and was at st pancras before i knew it. had some time to kill so had yo! sushi tea before the 2h20min ride. 

my plans for paris were few. basically wanted japanese food and to be on my own. there's something restorative about one's own company and i often get introvert hangovers where i need to shut down and recharge before subjecting people to me again. told a friend about this recently and he said he was the opposite and being on his own for 48h was his idea of hell! 

but i mean how amazing is the thought of doing exactly what i wanted, when i wanted? not like i don't already in london heh but if i want to zz at 7pm, i will! if i want to have the same udon twice in two days, i will (and did!) and i walked in the tuileries, had berthillon ice cream, watched the boats along the seine the whole afternoon just lost in my thoughts. it was great :) came back really refreshed.

dins for one at sweet bistro that pierre hermes of macaron fame had his wedding party at. if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me!

and a friend suggested i attended mass at montmarte which i'm glad i did although in retrospect if i were so inclined to blow things up, this would've been a prime target.

best udon ever. better than in tokyo. better than koya in london.

had the biggest tauhuay craving and after a disappointing mr bean in singers this last trip (never again!) i was gobsmacked to have such authentic silken tauhuay and tounai in the chinatown part of paris. the only downside was that it's smack in the middle of mainland chinese hooker*land and crawling with dirty old frenchmen :/ so unpleasant. and because i'm in need of a hep B booster, i did get a little freaked out by potentially dirty crockery and cutlery :(

paris

had meant to escape to paris earlier this year but work commitments meant a change in eurostar tickets. the only free weekend was the one right after returning to london so no brainer, nevermind it was going to be my last weekend before starting final year and i really should've stayed put to sort things out. felt a bit silly to keep saying it was my final fling before final year because had a little wobble in paris and booked to go to copenhagen during first weekend of final year. old habits die hard, and my flight reflex is a little stronger than the fight.

paris doesn't even need to try and i'm in love. C suggested the new LVMH museum and hm i have to agree with the tourist who sniffed, 'so much space, so little art'. maybe my leanings are more conventional and while i agree it's an amazing space with incredibly architecture (ok, a little same-y but it's gehry after all) it was a bit thin in terms of art work. nothing particularly eye-catching and nothing that made me go 'wow'. i wasn't wow-ed! and that upset me because i'd expected to be.

rooftop bar to end all roof top bars. my love affair with the eiffel tower was renewed. have many happy memories of going to sleep looking at the tower when i stayed with the Bs. they took me in when i was on exchange in stockholm, and a couple of times during my grad trip when they let me use paris as a base. i've watched their boys grow up . met P when he was two and M very kindly drove us from paris to chamonix and he's now all grown up about to go to university. F is elegant as ever, what's up with french women who look so put together all the time, even first thing in the morning. it was lovely to see them again, to see them doing well.

radisson boat cruise

about half-way through the DIY walking tour, we branched off and made for the water. it was fascinating to stroll along the main tourist beat (old arbat street) and see the stark signs of 'the west', and more subtly, those of capitalism. there was maccas, dunkin donuts, wendy's and the shake shack, all within metres of each other, not unlike any major american city! yet despite the 12 lane roads (6 going in each direction) and sparkling new shops, there were people selling animals (puppies, tortoises) on the pedestrianised stretch, not unlike any major less developed city. 

quite embarrassingly, my biggest achievement that day was ordering a strawberry milkshakes from maccas from a russian girl who spoke not english, from a menu that was purely in cyrillic with no pictures. it took some pretty convincing sign language, if i might add, and some substandard mime. but there i was, victoriously slurping my hard-earned milkshake as we continued our walk to the pier.

we passed one of stalin's seven sisters en route and it was surreal! doesn't this just scream 'dystopia'? it's been reborn as the ministry of foreign affairs. again, looks so much like the empire state building and much can be said about the stalinist (russian baroque + gothic) architectural style.

eventually we hit the water, but not before first masquerading as guests at the raddison ;) the boat cruise was surprisingly good value and we later learnt it was probably a loss leader to ensnare a captive audience who'll order food while on the two hour river cruise. it was nice that the park hyatt concierge didn't oversell the cruise, and advised us not to waste money on the first class tickets as it was essentially the same thing but on the covered upper deck. undeterred by the bitter russian spring, we braved the biting wind and sat on the uncovered upper deck in true el cheapo fashion, angering the grumpy crew who was assigned to bring our drinks up to us. she wasn't a happy sailor!

the cruise took us up and down the river, past all the sights and it provided an interesting perspective. much like the seine cruise at night. cheesy but contemplative!

euro*disney

now i'm a big fan of tokyo*disney but after the tsunami*tragedy, japan is a country i'm sadly staying far away from. call it paranoia, but when chemicals have half-lives longer than collective memory, and germ cells are particularly susceptive to genetic damage, i'm going to do what little i can to not endanger future babies teo. yes yes i'm aware of recent reports that radiated areas around chernobyll have recovered much faster than anticpated, and that the animals have adapted and aren't mutant or anything, and the implications this has on the recovery of fukushima but my i still rather err on the side of caution, much to the mister's chargrin. i've a feeling once we've completed our national service, it'll be one japanese foray after another. also, it's quite embarrassing to still be going to disney*land with no legitimate children in tow (my siblings are both in their, gasps, 20s!) but do you ever need an excuse to visit the magic kingdom? i think not :) spent a while trying to resist, to rather spend my time in paris like a grown up but my sister is persuasive and off we went.

it was a walk down memory lane and i'd never been to disneyland with the mister so that's a first for us. without realising, we also scored our first first anniversary present in the form of the most unglam photo ever! it was a shooting game and hell-bent on winning (sigh, that's us) we hadn't realised our photo would be snapped at some point. so i look like quasimodo, all hunched and squinty (hey, no one told me i didn't have to align the bits on the gun to shoot straight! and the mister is a picture of grit and determination. think liam*neeson on the poster for taken2...

being tourists in paris

it so happens that some of our dearest friends live in paris, and i've had the privilege of spending many happy days as a guest* in their home. in fact, they were even so kind as to come all the way to singers for our wedding celebration a year ago. hadn't seen them since and am always happy to catch them, be it in paris, chamonix or london. so it turned out to be paris this time and despite their big move and les garcons' major exams, the family turned out in full force for dinner at the lourve. now i was initially apprehensive because cafe*marly had TOURIST written all over it. but it turned out to be quite the palate pleaser, and dinner while it's still bright out with a view of the pyramids? count me in.

*reading this again got me all nostalgic and gosh i used to be way more healthy-living than i am now :( oh medsch, what have you done to me!

paris

the weekend rolled round quickly enough and we were on the eurostar before we knew it. stayed in this beautiful apartment as a treat and accidentally found ourselves along japanese row with an authentic izakaya (oh how i miss them! yakitori and beer on a cold winter night? sign me up!) and more japanese eateries. didn't really have a plan for paris except for long walks up and down the seine, chilling at the trocadero, drinking lots of vin and hanging with my cousins. we also caught up with some dear family friends over dinner at the lourve (!!!) that was more gourmet and less touristy than it initially appeared to be. it was also a special time because exactly six years before, i'd met the mister one rainy saturday morning and boy am i still pinching myself, can't believe he's real and for real. so we celebrated that with long walks to the eiffel tower and watching the world go by from our little park bench. couldn't ask for more :)