maman de joyeux anniversaire

the past few days have been full on !!
ewi and i took mom to paris for her birthday the day after nell and i arrived in london.

after the mess we made of ourselves in the sherlock holmes pub (see nells last post), we had some dinner and then went straight to bed. we got up quite early the next morning so had tons of time to pack our bags before heading down to Waterloo Station to catch the Eurostar.

we had a hotel right across the road from the Gard du Nord which was fabulous and once we found the stop for L'Open Bus Tour we were off and rocking. i love the bus tours for orientating yourself in a new city. it was a lovely day in paris so a bus trip was a good start.

later in the day, it clouded over and we'd almost had enough of tripping around the major tourist sights of paris so we left the bus around Eglise de la Madeline and found a cafe. as it was moms birthday something to eat and drink was in order. ESCARGOT - yummy !!!

we taxied back to the hotel and got changed and a little more cleaned up and then went downstairs for a little more of a birthday celebration for mom. i had been hanging out for some steak all day - so i got that, a cocktail or three, several bottles of wine, some profiteroles and then nearly fell asleep at the table.


woke up the next morning to find it was almost 11am !! ewi and i decided that we would have a real big walking day but as it was raining, we grabbed baguettes for breakfast and a day pass for the metro and proceeded to drag mom all over paris for the day.

we went straight to notre dame. ewi said the cathedral had been cleaned a lot since he was there - then there was a huge downpour of rain - was that why paris seemed so clean ?? we hid in a shop til it slowed then walked up to the hotel de ville and caught the metro out to the monument for the Bastille.


we did another cafe stop and then jumped back on the metro and headed up towards the Arc de Triomphe.



ABSOLUTE MADNESS !!! going around that roundabout on the bus didnt really give me the perspective that standing under the Arc did. 12 avenues all merging into one circle with no lines ??

well i could write so much more - but i loved paris and had a great time with my mom and my brother. as soon as i can, i will upload some photos onto my webshots site. now we are off to York with sam and martin.