Paris
The whole reason for this trip to Paris was to see a musician that I have seen a few times before. His name is Apashe and I wrote about going to one of his show’s in a previous blog post. When I was in London a few months ago, Apashe announced that he would be playing a show in Paris but this time it would be at the Bataclan theatre and with a full brass ensemble. I had to go!
Friday
On Friday, Leah and I hoped on a train from London to Paris 🚆.
London St. Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord
This train went underneath the English Channel and was only about 2 hours long. We arrived in Paris and took the metro to our Airbnb. On our way up to our Airbnb we had to wait for an elevator that was about the width of my shoulders which was quite comical. While waiting, we noticed a mirror and Leah decided that we needed to take a dancing video every time we were waiting for the elevator to arrive 💃.
G+L dancing while waiting for the elevator
After getting all checked in to our Airbnb, we headed up the street to the Bataclan and got into quite the line for Apashe. I guess if you are an electronic artist but you blend it with classical music, the French show up in droves.
Apashe with a full brass ensemble was majestic 🎺.
Apashe
Apashe with the brass ensemble (two trumpets, two french horns, and four trombones)
One of the countless mosh pits being opened up
Video from the show
The audience for Apashe was… wild. It was a constant mosh pit of dancing, jumping, and partying. It was a totally different scene from when I saw him the last two times in the US. I was honestly amazing that the crowd managed to have such high energy and then maintain it for the entire show. After being up front for only 45 minutes we had to get water and sit down (we felt old haha).
Once Apashe was over, we started to head back to our Airbnb but it was still pretty early so we popped into a restaurant on a street corner for some dessert. We had a glass of wine and some really tasty creme brûlée 🍷.
Saturday
The first time we went to Paris (on our Europe trip) in 2017, we tried are best to “max out” every single day. We did a lot of sight seeing on that trip and were on a super strict budget. This time around, we wanted to bit a more relaxed and just enjoy the city of Paris.
We started out our day by walking over to a small cafe for some coffee to awaken our brains after the concert the night before. I got some sort of savory pancake and it was amazing 🤯
Savory French pancake of goodness
After breakfast, we took the metro over the Musée d’Orsay which is a museum that houses a lot of impressionist art. We figured we needed to see some art while we were in Paris 🎨.
My favorite piece of art was La Bouée rouge by Paul Signac
I also really liked this cross section of a theatre
Museums tend to make Leah and I extremely tired so afterwards, we went to obtain more caffeine at another cafe (and cookies). At the cafe, we met two other US students who were studying abroad in Florence and visiting Paris for the weekend. We chatted with them for over an hour about traveling and they asked for all sorts of advice on places we had been.
After our coffee break, we headed back to our Airbnb on the funky Paris metro.
Before we set out for our day, my coworker Eléonore (who lives in France), mentioned that there were a lot of protests today in Paris. These protests were in response to France raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. The protest was supposed to take place directly on the street we were staying at…
As we got closer to our street, we saw a lot of sirens and an odd burning smell. When we got onto our street, it was pretty empty and cleared out. There were a lot of small fires in the middle of the road and most of the trash bins had been set on fire. Right in front of our door, there was a car that was flipped over and set on fire. It was pretty wild and the French sure do know how to throw a good protest 🧨.
Smashed glass on bus stop windows
Trash fires in the middle of the street
Car flipped over and set on fire
Trash can fires
Smashed out advertising panels
The electric scooters were shown no mercy
Modern Art
We talked with several people about the protests and they all seemed rather surprised it got as crazy as it did. Apparently there have frequently been other larger protests in Paris but they did not expect this one to get so out of hand. The general sentiment that we got from folks was that they were disappointed in the vandalism but they agreed with the cause of the protests.
After touring the brief chaos of our street, we changed and headed out to grab some food at a super tasty Egyptian restaurant called Le Karnak. The food was amazing and it was run by what appeared to be a boyfriend and girlfriend from Egypt; and we were the only people in the restaurant.
Once we finished eating, we hopped on the metro to head toward central Paris to go to a cocktail bar called Little Red Door. The line was super long when we got there so we googled it and found out it had received a lot of awards and was recently voted top 50 bars in the world. Now I haven’t really tried all that many cocktails and this was the first “cocktail bar” I had ever really been too but I was pretty impressed. The drinks were probably the best I had ever had in my life. All the drinks are made with ingredients that are grown in local gardens from sustainable farmers in France. We had the rhubarb, raspberry, and olive drinks. It was expensive but absolutely worth it 🍸.
The “Little Red Door” entrance
Our first round of drinks
Sunday
On Sunday we wanted to revisit an area called Montmartre that we checked out on our first trip to Paris in 2017. There is a nice cathedral, and plenty of artsy side streets. The whole neighborhood is on a set of hills that are pretty sizeable for Paris. Even though the area is known for being pretty “touristy”, we didn’t mind as it was a nice place to walk around and explore.
First stop: cookies and coffee
Second stop: cordon bleu
After walking around Montmartre for a while, Leah had the idea to check out some thrift stores near the center of Paris. We had zero success finding any items to purchase but tried on some swanky styles nonetheless.
Once we were done with the thrift stores, I found a cafe that was dedicated to chocolate and we got some of the richest hot chocolate. They poured chocolate from a tap into a cup and then gave you a beaker of hot milk 🍫. The area we found this cafe in had a bunch of restaurants that had flowers all the way the facade of the building.
Since we were in the area, we wanted to check out the Notre Dame Cathedral. We had been there before, but we wanted to check it out in person since we had not seen it after the big fire that caused a lot of damage. It was surrounded by fences, the windows were mostly knocked out, and the top spires were still completed chared. It was honestly pretty grim still and we were glad we saw it while it looked really nice in 2017.
After the Notre Dame, we headed back to the metro and stop by our Airbnb to change before going out to meet up with my coworker Eléonore for dinner!
Leah and Grant snapping a quick photo while there was sun
After changing, we headed back to the metro to make our way to the meetup place with Eléonore.
We met in a nice neighborhood of Paris that had lots of eateries and bars. It was myself, Leah, Eléonore, and her partner. We started off the evening with some drinks at a nice bar/restaurant. After a drink we headed over to a restaurant for some tasty food and then back out for a few more drinks.
Meeting Eléonore and her partner was honestly one of the highlights of the trip for Leah and I. We all got along so well, had great conversations, and plenty of laughs. Eléonore and Quentin were both extremely kind and genuine people. It felt like we had known each other for years and I was kind of sad to say goodbye when we left. I really hope we can meet up with them again and we just might because they may have convinced us to move to Switzerland 🇨🇭.
P.S. Eléonore, if you are reading this, you and Quentin better come visit us in the UK while we are here!
Left to right: Quentin, Eléonore, Grant, and Leah
Monday
We got up fairly early Monday morning to head to the train station on our way back to London.
The sun coming through our windows
On our way to the train station, we stopped by an excellent pastry shop that Leah’s friend Moira had suggested 🥐.
We loaded up on pastries and it was a great way to end our weekend trip to Paris!