Paris plus +++++

Tues 8th Sept
And so we are in Paris. Wonderful city. This is my 8th time. Brett's first. Suffice to say I am back in heaven. Who doesn't love Paris? A zillion times. It took me quite some time to entice Brett to get here and of course he has had his expectations exceeded. 

To go back a step ... Our final meal last night at Wangz hotel in Singapore was excellent. A five course Asian style degustation delight created especially for us. It was like private fine dining in a casual setting. Perfecto. 
Flight to Paris was all good. Our upgrade to Premium Economy was great.  Small cabin, big space and only a handful in it. Cattle class was seething. So nice to stretch out in peace. A night flight so I mostly dozed but incorporated a couple of films and a decent dose of trivia games.
Immigration was the worst nightmare I have experienced for many years. Queues galore. You could say "queues for Africa" and it would be quite literal - everyone seemed to be actually from Africa. I think planes had arrived from every African nation at the same time as ours. Got through the horrendous queuing experience and linked up with lovely couple from Melbourne who had sat in front of us on the plane and were behind us in the queue. We ended up sharing a taxi and many stories. They are staying near us so this worked great. Except rush hour traffic was ... almost as bad as Auckland!  Took a while but we made it to our apartment. Small but spacious. The garden is bigger than the apartment. It's in a quiet pristine street tucked away in the Latin Quarter. A clean and tidy neighbourhood. Light and bright. Nice. With lime green loo paper. I know non-bleached is environmentally better, but I want some! 

Dumped luggage and off we went to explore.

This is such a great place for happy purposeful meandering without any particular purpose. We started at the Pantheon and Sorbonne. Both impressive. We went into many shoe shops along the Bvd St Michel. Not, I might add, for my indulgence! Brett is on a shoe mission and the prices here are cheap. Which surprised him because he's always thought NZ is cheap. Oh Brett, I've told you before about reality ...

But he is only browsing at this point. Don't want to overload the luggage too early on, do we ...?

On to Notre Dame, as majestic as ever. Along the Seine to the huge expanse of the Louvre, originally a fortress. And then a short rest in Tuileries Gardens. More wandering and then got Metro back to Latin Quarter where we wandered past homes where James Joyce, Ernest Hemmingway and others lived and wrote. Found a bar on a square and plonked ourselves down rather worn out from much walking. Whiling away an hour or more watching the world go by over a couple of wines in a charming local square in Paris ... Perfect!

Fresh cheese and baguette in our garden with a nice red at the end of an excellent Parisian day under the lazy late afternoon rays of an autumnal sun ... An extra element of perfection.

Observation of the Day: when you are in a small side street off the beaten track eating crepes for lunch washed down with wine and two guys arrive and start playing 'La vie en rose' on piano accordion and drums and the street comes to life even more ... You know you are in Paris!