I considered going to the Altitude Festival this year – for obvious reasons, it’s a good thing I never quite made up my mind to do it. There’s nothing seasonal about this but since we can’t travel at the moment, let’s relive old travel stories. This is Altitude 2010, my first ever visit to the … More My first snowsports holiday
The weekend I was in Paris was the weekend gilets-jaunes protestors celebrated their first anniversary by causing havoc all over again. I stood in Place de la Concorde, looking at police cars and riot vans lining the square, armed police pacing around, sirens and blue lights rushing up and down both sides of the Seine … More Paris: Love & Violence
You know I love a boat ride and on this weekend, the Batobus did just the job. In Paris, the big name in tourist boats is Bateaux Mouches but they depart from Pont de l’Alma and that RER station was closed that particular weekend, to keep the gilets-jaunes from rioting in tourist areas. I rode … More Paris: taking the Batobus to the Eiffel Tower
How have I never been to Sainte-Chapelle? For various reasons (language student, living on the south coast etc), I’ve been to Paris quite a few times. In fact, to be brutally honest, I’ve been too many times. Many an August day I’ve spent there, breaking up a three day drive home from wherever we’d been … More Sainte-Chapelle has a rock-hard floor
In blog-time, it’s been months since I went to Paris. That’s because there’s been so much other stuff I needed to post first. In real life, I haven’t actually left London yet. I’m sitting on the Eurostar at St Pancras and there’s still seven minutes until we depart. I’ve never been a mad lover of … More The romance of the Eurostar
I went on my first school trip abroad in 1998. We live on the south coast of England – and when I say “on the south coast”, I literally mean that half of us lived closer to the ferry than to the school and when we got to France, it was the same thing with … More My first school trip abroad
Last month I went to Paris! I’ve already covered the Eiffel Tower and today I’m going up the Arc de Triomphe. I first went up there when I was fourteen. I have photos and in case there’s any doubt, the photos are in an album with captions like “roofs from Arc”. But I don’t remember … More On top of the Arc de Triomphe
Earlier today I was writing a blog about why I didn’t enjoy my last trip to Iceland and lamenting all the exciting things I could have been doing and blogging about… and realised I haven’t actually blogged about my recent trip to Paris. It was a long weekend – first thing Friday to Sunday evening … More I went up the Eiffel Tower… in the dark!
I didn’t mean to go to Paris the other day but work colleagues were trying to plan travel to a supplier presentation in north-central France the week before. Paris being the only international hub within three hours, calls of “there’s a flight for this much but it’s at that time” and “the train goes at … More How I learned to love Paris
While I was in France last month, we went into Paris and to Disneyland but we spent most of the time either in the pool or reading in the caravan. That particularly part of north east France is… well, there’s nothing there. It’s flat and empty and the sort of place you drive through to … More Pierrefonds is a great castle
I Am A Polar Bear 