Paris among the crowds

We booked a taxi to take us from Hotel Yndo to the train station to get the TGV from Bordeaux to Paris. What a great way to travel, zooming along at 295km/h with no need to worry about which side of the road you are on. As soon as we got to Paris Montparnasse station, we were struck by the crowds. It was far busier than anywhere else we had been, arguably, even London.

We found another taxi and headed for our accommodation in Le Marais, this time a studio apartment which is on the second floor but has a lift! We had a few hours to kill before we could get in to our apartment and so we stowed our bags in the locker room (they've thought of everything for the contactless check-in), and went to explore the area and find some lunch. We walked in circles for a while, again noting how busy it was, and eventually found a place for lunch. Le Marais is a trendy area, with little shops and cafes, many of which had people queuing to get into, which didn't bode well for dinner without a reservation on a Saturday night. After we got into the apartment, we headed around the corner to get some provisions for our 5 night stay. On the way, we booked dinner in a little Italian place around the corner, which turned out to be a great find, not only because we managed to get in but we had a delicious veal parpadelle ragu, great service and a lovely evening.

The highlight of the afternoon was accidentally coming across the Defender of Time clock, an automaton clock where the Defender fights a creature (or three) - dragon, crab or bird - on the hour. We arrived just before 2pm and waited the 8 minutes until the hour to see which creature it would be. It turns out the Defender of Time looks like a drunk robot, in this case fighting an imaginary dragon, after a big night out. As they say on the Tik Tok, "I am dying!" (see video).

After a good sleep in (sunrise is at 7.40 and the French love their block out drapes), we cooked breakfast and planned our big walking day. Long story short, we did a circuit of all the main sights (see pictures) without really stopping because it was just so crowded with long queues at every place. There was even a fun run on which went pretty much followed our planned route. We took a quieter route back from the Eiffel Tour, stopping for lunch on the way back. All up, we walked for four hours and covered 15kms. The highlights of the walk were our first stop, the Place des Voges (the oldest planned square in Paris, famous for its brick buildings) and a "hidden garden" next to it, both lovely and peaceful on a sunny but cool Paris morning. Then, as we made our way through the back streets back from the mayhem of the Eiffel Tower, we came across Chapelle expiratory, also in a quiet square, a Roman Catholic chapel located in the 8th arrondissement. It was constructed by Louis XVIII on the grounds where King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette had been buried for 21 years after they were guillotined, and it is dedicated to them as an expiation for that act. It wasn't open, but it was a nice discovery.

The big walk did us in, it must be said. We rested for the afternoon before having a friends-in-the-same-time-zone WhatsApp catch up with Rob and Gayle to hear about their (much more energetic) bicycle tour of Croatia and share our own (less energetic) travel stories. Afterwards, we got up the energy to head out for dinner and went to a local restaurant with an oyster counter out the front. We had freshly shucked Normandy oysters, followed by grilled chicken with fennel and a lovely Sancerre wine. Delicious! Our off-the-tourist-track discoveries and dining in a local restaurant reminded us why we wanted to have a longer stay in Paris - it's really all about the small, local experiences, not the big sights.Read more