Saturday, 25 July 2009

Summer Holiday 09 - Bastille Day!

Day 5 - Paris (Tue. 14 July)

Went by Eurostar train from St. Pancras, London Station to Gare Du Nord, Paris Station. Booked online 2 months earlier with option to choose seats. Each coach has 2 sets of 4 seats facing each other with a table in the middle so its ideal for kids as they can put their playthings, food etc on the table.
We collected the tickets by the tickets kiosk and went to check ourselves in which can take awhile as we had to go through customs. It was an early journey. My eldest son suffered motion sickness on the train and had threw up. My youngest complained of tummy ache and only my middle son did not suffer anything but boredom on the train. It was very tiring for us to care for the 2 sick boys. We arrive at Gare Du Nord in about 2 and a half hours very tired and at the end of our tethers.
France was celebrating Bastille Day and had just finish the annual military parade on Champ Elysees. Our apartment which I rented for a week was on Avenue de Friedland which is just behind the famous street just by Arch de triomphe and a major Metro station in Paris. It was a nice location yet quiet and away from the busy streets. The parade was just winding down and so to my kids was ecstatic when they saw the soldiers, tanks and other military vehicles came down our streets just as we were about to enter the apartment. So with our luggage's and my eldest still clutching a bag of his puke we took pictures of the parade.





The kids were delighted with the 2 story apartment. It was quite a climb as the very small lift only goes up to the 3rd floor. So we did have to drag our luggage's up the last 2 floors. It was very cozy, 3 bedroom on 2nd floor with sky roofs.
The landlord Mr. Phillipe Gordon was a super organise man who has a manual for everything in the home and even a list of useful shops in the neighbourhood such as Supermarkets and Bakeries. After a quick rest we went to explore the neighbourhood and to buy groceries, but it was quite a task as on top of everything else the home had a good selection of kids DVDs in its collection. It was a task for us to get our couch potatoes sons to go out everyday.
In the evening there was quite a spectacular fireworks display at the Eiffel Tower that lasted for half an hour. We watched it from the sun roof windows in the bedrooms.




We had dinner at a Moroccan restaurant called "Le Comptoir Marrakech" I had Moroccan food the last time we were here and as before it did not disappoints. We let the kids played at the nearby playground and headed back home. It was 9pm and it was still bright so it took awhile to adjust to.

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