Above:  View from Belle Ville Park shows the Paris skyline including the Eiffel Tower. I thought revisit Sacre Coeur today but Marie took me for another “real Paris” outing.  We took the bus to Belle Ville park in the northeast and walked back down.  The walk back down was a mix of African, Asian and […]

This morning Marie took me to the northern part of Paris around Gare du Nord (the northern railway station).  The area is a hotchpotch of people from Africa, Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent living in more rundown conditions than the Paris we know and love. The markets were incredible and far cheaper than in […]

Above:  Lacy undies?  No, the Eiffel Tower. As Paris isn’t entirely new to me, there was any pressure to do the touristy things.  Instead it is quite nice to do the day-to-day activities … very soon the familiar become strange! In this case it is swimming … Paris seems to be well-equipped with council swimming […]

One thing I haven’t done in my previous visits to Paris is the Pere Lachaise cemetery which is home to the remains of many famous people. From a quick googling, I found that it was best to approach from the rear entrance if one is interested in finding Oscar Wilde’s grave … not totally unexpected […]

We travelled back to Paris today.  It was an early morning wakeup,  It was dark at 7am as Loix is in the west of the country.  1.5 hours on the bus followed by 3.5 hours on the train followed by another bus ride within Paris meant that the day disappeared  🙁 It would have been […]

After a miserable wet morning, the sun finally shone and we cycled to Ars … yes, in full it is Ars-en-Re.  It is only about 7km each way this time.  Ars has a church with a black-and-white spire, so I call it the church of St Michael Jackson.  It was probably a white spire which […]

Ile de Re has many cycle tracks … they seem to have been converted from the old narrow roads once the new roads came in, but I could be wrong.  They link the different villages, taking cyclists through bays, salt pans, vineyards etc. Today we cycled to St Martin, which was about 9km from our […]

Today we zoomed down somewhat towards the South West to La Rochelle in the French bullet train, TGV.  It was the first time I’ve ever travelled in a high-speed train.  The higher speed wasn’t too obvious apart from the more blurry scenery. From La Rochelle, we travelled to the village of Loix on Ile de […]