Perfect Paris day

Today was cold but cloudless, just sparkling. A week ago I looked at the weather predictions for Paris and it looked like a week of rain…I don’t know why they bother to do the 10 day forecasts as they are always inaccurate, if not totally wrong! Anyway, we leisurely set off, had fresh OJ at the supermarket nearby where you can get your own juice from a machine that does it while you press the button. Then a cafe for coffee and croissants, and we were ready to face the world.

Amr wanted to visit the French resistance memorial at Mont-Valérien (with Hartley in mind) …so we had a bit of an adventure finding our way there as it’s outside the main centre…we got a train on the line towards Versailles. It was a nice suburban area, and we climbed a hill (that is the Mont part) and from the park at the top it was worth the trip just for the view! The Eiffel Tower, Sacré Coeur all in the distance, a huge panorama. There is an American memorial and cemetery there, mainly for WWI, and then went round to the French memorial which is in the fortress and is for the internees and resistance fighters who were executed there by the Nazis. Found you need to have a guided tour to actually go inside, and none available today, but we were content to walk round the outside.

Got a direct train back to Gare St Lazare and walked back via La Madeleine which is again surrounded with scaffolding (don’t know why - last time it was beautifully cleaned and gorgeous…anyway we did go inside, lit a candle for Ira and listened to a choir practising…and I knew it was familiar, something I had sung in ChorusOz - and we found that there was a concert of Brahms German Requiem today at 4 pm, entrée libre. So we went and had a patisserie - a quiche actually, and then went to our favourite cafe for a chocolate and Amr had a glass of wine, then went back, via a look into Galeries Lafayette, to the Madeleine for the concert. It turned out to be excerpts from the Requiem, not a performance of the whole work, and was with an organ rather than orchestra, which with acoustics made it harder to hear the singing clearly, but beautiful nevertheless.

Then we started back to the hotel as Omnia was arriving..landed about 5, and we aimed to be back by 7 as she had to get through passport control and get the train etc…so we walked through the Tuileries and along, past a Tour St Jacques on Rue de Rivoli down near Hôtel de Ville, all about the pilgrimages and may go back and have a tour of that as we feel rather bonded with st Jacques!

Then Omnia arrived, lovely to reunite after such a long enforced interval. We all walked to Bastille and had dinner at a brasserie there, just lovely. Now off to bed…Louvre tomorrow and dinner at Bofinger.Read more