I love Paris in the Springtime - but sadly it was winter!

So begins an incredibly long day at 5am to start my day in Paris. This is my second day trip to Paris using the Eurostar and sadly the last time we can go straight from Waterloo to Paris - next year I believe it's from St Pancras all thanks to Englands now well renowned scrimpishness with money and shoddy workmanship - basically the line from Waterloo is too slow due to the age and wear and tear of the railway lines - and to think we invented the railway!! What an embarassment!

Anyway, onto France, the railway is smooth and very fast and although it's all the same colour as Ashford (green) you can so tell you are in another country! Dutch barns, water towers, farms that look quite different from ours - welcome to France and I have to say that on my short visits to the mountains and to Paris I have well and truly fallen in love with the country - still not sure about the natives but there again I have met quite a few nice, friendly, polite frogs in the last few visits.

We got into Paris Nord at about 09.00am (or was that 9.00am French time!!) and headed towards the market areas. I wanted to go to a proper market - their produce is so much more organic and not uniform shape and you can find fruit and veg that you wouldnt even see in supermarkets over here (eg lychees on stalks). We bought some superb parma ham but wernt too sure about bringing veg back to this country but still had a good look around.

We then headed towards the Louvre and in doing so walked up the Rue de Rivoli weirdly enough this was the last place that Diana and Dodi ate together - I didnt know that at the time but saw it on TV a few days later. I wanted to go to the Louvre after reading the da Vinci Code and watching Simon Schama's art programme every week and thinking myself now an art buff :) - we saw an amazing collection of art and even had lunch in the Louvre cafe but what I wanted to see were paintings by Louis David after the most intriguing episode of the Arts programme. He was a propagandist, he was an antagonist - he has so intrigued me! I sadly only saw a few of his paintings (we couldnt walk any further - each wing is 1/4 of a mile!) but enough to know what the magic is all about - he was an amazing painter.

We also saw the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo - both iconic and famous - brillliant!





We then walked up the Champ d'lysees and looked in all the shops and took in the Christmas atmosphere in this romatic City. A big surprise was this poster of the new Citroen DS - I didnt even know there was to be one. If you read my first blog you will see that they are my favourite car and have been of great interest thanks to my fathers fascination in them and the fact that we had a few as children. I will wait to see what the new DS has to offer by ways of querkiness and downright weird design - I hope Citroen have stuck to that well known eccentricity that we all loved in the 60's and 70's.

We then returned to the station to have a sandwich and a few drinks before catching the Eurostar and then train back home to Guildford.

I returned home to two very relaxed, chilled out dogs (and cat) thanks to my neighbour, Muff who looked after my little darlings all day and who without I wouldnt have been able to relax and enjoy my trip to Paris.