When it came to planning a weekend away with the girls I couldn’t wait and I think they were just as excited at the thought of me planning everything as I was to do it, and they were happy to just let me get on with it. What a dream!
We had already confirmed that there would be just the 4 of us, which was perfect for sleeping arrangements, dinner reservations, seats on the train, taxi’s etc.
Between us we have 7 children to navigate time away from but managed to come up with a date relatively easily. Excellent, so that’s 4 adults, no kids – this was the most exciting part – and 4 tickets on the Eurostar departing from London St Pancras Int’l into Paris Gare du Nord.
Next we needed accommodation – I initially had the Grande Pigalle booked as this is where Sophie Habboo had stayed on her hen weekend but I ended up changing it for a beautiful apartment that I booked via Livin Paris on Rue des Petites Écuries. Our apartment had 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a wonderfully small parisian lift, which we loved squeezing in to when climbing the stairs in heels became a mission we were no longer willing to accept, plus a view of the Sacré-Cœur in the distance.
We were only a 25 minute walk to the Musée du Lourve and a 15 minute taxi ride to the Moulin Rouge. Although this would mean no hotel bar or the option of breakfast in bed, it did give us a more home from home feel with a lounge area to come together. We spent most of our time in the combined living space, getting ready and doing our hair and make up together, eating snacks, drinking lots of wine, taking silly selfies, practicing our finest French insults at each other and altogether just some well deserved, child free girl time. Plus our plans didn’t leave much time for dining in so this definitely worked out better for us.
I did try to have all areas covered apart from my absolute fail on the train out. We had some bottles of fizz in order to celebrate our well executed escape and I also put some plastic, reusable champagne flutes in my bag (x8). Big mistake! I mean this would’ve been a great idea had they not all cracked and broken under the pressure of filling my bag with M&S snacks. However we didn’t realise this until we starting filling them up and they were leaking faster than we could drink them, well apart from Jess and Nat that is. Thinking fast Kelly had some plasters in her bag so we attempted a puncture repair with some skin coloured elastoplast, this didn’t go as planned as you can probably imagine, so we tried to double up but those also had cracks in them too. Christ. Jess ran off to get some coffee cups from the snack cart and Nat repurposed her empty bottle of lucozade. Anything to save the fizz!
On arrival at Gare du Nord we jumped in a taxi to our apartment, due to some wonderful traffic and bladders full of bubbles we thought we would head straight there to settle in and then head back out to grab some snacks after. I did have a couple of places bookmarked though:
Option 1: HolyBelly
Option 2: Du Pain et des Idées
The que for the taxi wasn’t very long and we made the assumption that he would also accept card, so in we jumped. As we pulled up at our destination it quickly became apparent that we needed cash so Kelly and Nat went on their own trip around Paris looking for an ATM while Jess and I stayed with the cases. Once we were paid up and free to leave we headed up and dropped off our bags and after a quick refresh headed out on to the streets of Paris looking for a baguette and pint of Aperol.
After an hour sitting in the sun we decided to stop and get some wine and go back to our apartment to relax for a couple of hours, have a catch up and unwind before we got ready to go out for dinner.
Friday’s dinner reservation was at Kong. We spent an hour or so in the bar before heading up to our table in the glassroom. Bookings only open 3 weeks in advance so I was keeping a close eye on the calendar and made a booking as soon as it became available. Kong was featured in season 6 of Sex and the City, I love SJP and Asian fusion food so couldn’t wait to pay a visit and it didn’t disappoint.
After a day of food, wine and travelling we went back to our apartment for some late night bants and to get ready for Saturdays sight seeing extravaganza.
“La vie est meilleure avec des amis”
On Saturday morning, we woke up had a cup of tea and headed out. We walked from our apartment down to the Louvre, we didn’t go in but did make the most of navigating the crowds and taking lots of photos with the pyramids. After this we walked over to the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel and then through the Tuileries garden where we stopped for a coffee and croissant. We were doing well with the weather and seemed to be dodging the rain fall in between our stops. Our luck carried on with the weather while we walked round to the Place de la Concorde and down the Champs-Élysées all the way to the L’Arc de Triomphe de l’Etoile. After a few photos and a bit of people watching we walked through a downpour and towards the Trocadéro gardens, where we stopped and stood under a tree until the worst of the rain had passed. I also took note of the new Louis Vuitton hotel being built just incase we decide to come back!
Once the rain eased off we made our way to Port Debilly – I had this place recommended by someone at work as a brilliant spot for taking uninterrupted views in front of the Eiffel tower – apart from the odd boat. Thanks Anna!
We did have a late lunch reservation for Bambini however as we kept ducking into a few places to get out of the rain I ended up cancelling the booking as it was a bit late and we needed to get back to have a shower and make our way to the Moulin Rouge! Woo hoo!
Our show was starting at 9pm but the aim was to get there a 7:45pm so we could have a drink at our table and enjoy some of the pre-show acts.
After the show, and what a glorious show it was, we intended on going to a bar however after 20,000 steps, 2 bottles of champagne and lack of dinner I think we were more set up to go back to our apartment with a pizza than consume more alcohol. It did make for an interesting cab ride home though as after a lot of fizz, some drunken confidence and seemingly an ability to speak, what at the time I thought was perfectly fluent French, it finished our night full of giggles and made for an entertaining 15 minutes drive with my favourite putains! Poor taxi driver.
These were the bar options I had book marked incase we did fancy going out, maybe next time:
Bar 1: Lavomatic
Bar 2: Little Red Door
Sunday morning was a lazy one, we packed up all of our cases and filled the recycling with our empty bottles. Check out was 11am so we handed back the keys and took a walk around Montmartre. We were going to stop at Pain Pain however ended up at a little café called Maison Milie where we stopped for brunch and a coffee. Luckily we had all topped up because next stop was meant to be the funiculaire up to the Sacré-Cœur (which seemed like a good idea with all our cases) however Jess ended up taking over and after a few hundred flights of stairs later we had missed the stop altogether and ended up at the top. Red faced, a little panty but right outside the Sacré-Cœur. 1 star to tour guide Jess for navigation. 5 stars for the final destination.
At the top we purchased a padlock and and black marker and wrote our initials on it “G, N, K J” and we located a spot to attach it to before we threw away the key. Voilà!
From the church it was about a 15 minute taxi ride to the station however the weather was rather lovely so we took a walk down the cobbled streets, purchased a magnet or two and stopped for our final drink of the weekend before heading into Gare du Nord to catch our 15:12 back to London.
Apart from Olympia Le-Tan being closed for a refurb everything else went to plan and we had a wonderful weekend. 3 days and 2 nights living our best life before heading back to reality.
Where to next girls?
xoxo
