Day 13 (last day) - Sainte Chapelle

Today is our last day in Paris...damn...just when I'm starting to feel Parisien...

We wanted to go to Jardins Luxembourge but since we had made plans to meet Iceman and Weichin at Point Zero (at Notre Dame) to go Starwars toys hunting, we figured we'd try going to Sainte Chapelle again. After all, to choose visiting either garden or church, the choice was clear lor.

So we started the day at a lazy 11 plus and had a very good French lunch at this place called Chez Clement. Shawn had their roast duck slice and I had their roast meats combo. Very yummy indeed. Dessert was home-made Creme Brulee for me and crepe for Darth Binky. My creme brulee was SO DAMN BLOODY good that I wanted to order 10 take-aways immediately lor!! I almost past out with the first mouthful. Darth Binky's crepe had so much liquor in it that he was a happy bunny. Now we know why some French look so happy after their meal. :P

Sainte Chapelle was a nice small church. It has 2 levels - top for the royal family and the lower level for the servers. The top level also had simple decoration but the stained-glass was amazing. There were 17 full length panels of stained-glass, each panel for a major book in the Bible. Very detailed designs, very effort indeed...

The big Starwars toy hunt turned out to be rather profitable for Darth Binky as he found two 12" figures that he wanted and with the tax rebate of 12%, he made quite a saving on those two toys.

Iceman wanted to bring us to this Chinese place for dinner. But before you think Iceman was crazy to bring 2 Singaporeans to eat Chinese food in France, the Chinese food is from Wenzhou, China and he had yet to find such cuisine in Singapore himself. So dinner's speciality was this claypot dish with sliced beef, cabbage and tofu cooked in chilli oil. It was really good, especially with the cold outside, the claypot was just the dish to put a little 'hot' back into our bodies. :)

With the end of dinner, it also marked the end of our wonderful trip in Paris. It had been an amazing 14 days here, but it was too long to be away from Jaina - miss her loads. So going back home is bittersweet, going home to Jaina is wonderful but I have work from the moment I touch down in Singapore so that sucks big time.

Oh well, I can't win them all. Au voir Paris. Till we meet again. And yes to Petals, we have to return to Paris sometime again. Let's take a trip here together, shall we?

Day 12 - Sacre Coeur & Moulin Rouge

I plotted and waited till Darth Binky was feeling much better to brave a trip UP the hills...to see Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart) Church.

We were warned by our host that there would be locals who would position themselves at the foot of Sacre Coeur and attempt to sell you their friendship bands. They would always start by saying that there is no obligation to buy, just have a look as they weave it around your wrist. Once they try a dead knot, you would have to buy it - at whatever price they quote you. At that kind of situation, you can't refuse for 2 reasons, one as it's already on your wrist, and two as there are many more of them than there are 'you'.

With that knowledge in mind, as we approached the foot of the hill, true enough, there were many local men just standing there, approaching tourists to "try" their ware. I walked quickly and dodged one of them by walking behind this other couple. :P So in a way, we "escaped" them.

Sacre Coeur was really quite a sight, beautiful white church on top of the hill. When we entered the church, the nuns were in the middle of their noon time Office Devotion prayers. One of the nuns leading the prayer had this incredible voice - like an angel lor! The acoustics of the church was also really quite amazing... Hair can stand when the nuns start singing man...

We paid 5 euros to climb to the top of the dome and our guidebook says that at the top of the dome, that will be the 2nd tallest viewing point other than Eiffel Tower. So we climbed and climbed...man, some parts of the stairwell was SO narrow, if you were claustrophobic, you would die as it was narrow, quite dark and bloody cold.

FINALLY, we reached the top and the view was indeed great. Pity it was a rather cloudy day so we couldn't really see very far. We stayed up there for quite a while, after 10 mins or so, then we realised we were the only ones up there. We wondered why there was no one with us as there were always many tourists at good viewing points and we started our nonsense reasonings. After we joked for about 5 mins, there was STILL no one, we started to raise eyebrows at each other and decided we SHOULD go down. Chickens right? Hee...

We left Sacre Coeur and had lunch. Darth Binky had Confit de Canard (Preserved Duck) and me, Beef Stew. The France really make their duck well and my beef stew was good, let's just say that they must have used one whole bottle of red wine for each plate of beef stew they served. Lovebell's liquor content in her beef stew is NO FIGHT compared to these French ones.

We walked past the Artist Square where the artists would draw your profile for about 80 euros. We didn't get one, 2 reasons - no wall space to hang and no money! Ha!

Montmartre (Mount of Martyr) area is famous for another landmark other than Sacre Coeur, and it's the now very famous Moulin Rouge. The walk along their red light district was most interesting. Hugh photos of very naked women advertise their business and the French are really not shy about showing their wares. No stars, no stickers, no smiley faces to cover the important bits - it's "show and tell" in the adult world. We did think of dining at the Moulin Rouge but the cost of dinner & show was a little heavy - 100 euros per pax. That's S$400 blinking dollars!! So poor us (literally) had to pass on that. :(

Last part of the day, I wanted to catch the view of Eiffel Tower at sundown as the tower will light up and at every hour, on the hour, the whole structure will go up in sparkles!! More accurately, 20 000 bulbs will light up the whole Eiffel Tower!! The sight was AMAZING!! It was worth standing in the blinking cold (minus 1 degrees C) and wind and just stare at the tower for that 10 mins... The highlight (no pun intended) of my day...

Day 11 - La Madeleine, Opera National de Paris Garnier & Arc de Triomphe

Since Darth Binky was feeling much better, I arranged a jam-packed day of activities!! We hit the Metro after breakfast but still got to La Madeleine quite late in the morning. Hee...it's not that it's far, we left the house late (again). 

La Madeleine is a church dedicated to Mary Magdelene. Tho it started construction in 1764, it was not consecrated till nearly a hundred years later. It's a lovely BIG church and when we got there, lunch time mass just started so we didn't want to tour the church too much while a mass was going on. :P

We walked down Blvd de la Madeleine and got to the Opera National de Paris Garnier. Pretty pretty opera house but much of it was under construction so there was much hoarding and canvas covering a few main sides of the building. This is the opera house that inspired Paul Leroux's Phantom of the Opera!! Like in the musical, you can see that the Grand Staircase is really quite a close copy of the actually one in the opera house. The opera house comes with a real lake that is underneath the building too, just like in the musical. But of course I only read about it in my trusty guidebook, they didn't allow entry to many places.

Then it was shopping time!! Window shopping that is, at Galleries Lafayette. It's nothing like the small building at the edge of Orchard Road like most of us remember. Here in Paris, it's really quite the main shopping area and they carry many high-end labels. The main building has 7 floors and there's a separate building for Men's and another building for Home stuff... Crazy right? Hee...

After window shopping, then came REAL shopping!! At LV no less, my sis asked me to help get her a bag and so I walked in confidently as I KNOW I am not just window shopping (again). Hahaaa... Darth Binky is real sweet, he said he'll get me something (not too big lah) from LV. So I browsed around and eyed their classic checker-patterned wallet. It's 192 blinking, freaking, turtle-monkey euros lor!!!! That's easily S400 for a small wallet you know!!! I don't even carry a quarter that amount at any one time. On good days, I only have S$50 in my wallet and loads of faith in my heart when I go out!! :) But I digress... so I thought and thought and thought and thought and thought and thought and thought and then asked the lady attending to me to get my sister's bag so as to buy more time for me to think and think and think and think and think and think and think and think somemore about buying the wallet. I'm psycho...how?

So in the end, I only got my sister's bag at 420 euros!!!!!! And me nothing as I couldn't buy something SO expensive and then not treat it like gold lor! If I bought both, then I'll need to buy an additional SQ seat just for the LV wallet and bag on my way home. :P 

We next headed for the Arc de Triomphe and climbed to the top to catch a pretty view of the city that we are leaving behind. :( There were again super many steps and once up there, as they say, the view's worth it lah. :) It was really quite cool to see all the roads converging at the roundabout circling the Arc de Triomphe as the area is called Charles de Gaulle - Etoile. Etoile means "star" and the 12 roads with the Arc as centre really looks like a 12-spook star, seen from above. :)

As I walked home carrying only my sister's purchase, I can't help feeling like a loser... All the way to Paris and nothing big and swanky for myself. Loser... :(

Day 10 - La Defense

As poor Darth Binky was still under the Paris weather, I thought we would take it easier lah. Do you know that the Metro and bus and RER folks were supposed to be out on strike on Wed and Thurs??!!!?!? Anyway, the strike was called off on Tues!! Iceman was telling us that this is the first time a strike had been called off!! I think it was the many 2 euros coins that I had dropped in the many churches. God decided not to punish these 2 poor sods (as it is, we are not going to finish covering Paris!!) 

So the Metro was running fine, the weather was actually not too bad but hubby not too good so we rested at home in the morning, cooked lunch, then we went to La Defense which is a business district and a hugh shopping mall. I was actually quite pleased that Darth Binky wanted to go out (even in his cannot-make it state) then I realised why - La Defense shopping mall has a Toys R Us.

Anyways, I was happy to be going out. 

Once there, there was a outdoor area with stalls selling all sorts of things. Goods from all over the world were sold there - things from PRC, Thailand, Russia, Africa, Germany, USA, Australia. The whole area of this "Christmas Market" was quite large, by the time we finished walking around, we used about 2 hours.

Then we went inside the shopping mall and I bought this lovely winter coat from Zara. It was on sale and still I ended up S$200 poorer... :P

Darth Binky got excited as it was Toys R Us time and we bee-lined for the Starwars section. He looked and looked but decided that there was nothing much to buy. The toys sold were either bought already or not worth buying it. Darth Binky left Toys R Us a broken man, he thought he was going to find many many goodies like we did when we were in Australia.

Last stop was to Auchan supermarket to grab some food for cooking and it's really like Giant or Carrefore in Singapore, one level of food stuff and another level of everything-else stuff. :) When Darth Binky saw the level of everything else, his whole spirit lit up again, Auchan will have a toy section too!! So we zoomed in to find the toy section but still, the selection was poorer than Toys R Us. Once again, Darth Binky was not a happy boy...

It was either the cold weather, the fact that Darth Binky was originally sick or the lack of good selection of Starwars toys, Darth Binky looked terrible and we headed home after Auchan...

My poor baby...

Day 9 - Palace & Gardens of Versailles

This is the famous palace just outside the city of Paris where King Louis XIV (known as the Sun King) built as he wanted something lavish and LAVISH it is!!! Sad to say, when it came to time of his grandson, King Louis XVI, the revolution rioted and King Louis XVI and his wife Marie-Antoinette were captured and later dragged out to this area called Concorde to be guillotined.

When you see the palace and the gardens , you can understand why the people of France then were so angry with them. There was a story about Marie-Antoinette being told the plight of the

people of the kingdom hungry with

out bread, she retorted,"Then let them eat cake."

In the big Big BIG gardens of Versailles, there is this smaller (compared to the Chateau but it's still at least 10 times my 5-room flat lor) palace called the Grand Trianon. It was built because King Louise XIV wanted somewhere to escape the rigour of court life and to enjoy the company of his mistress, Madame de Maintenon.

Somewhere down the gardens, there's a Petit Trianon Palace. It's called Petit (small) but it's not the idea of small like you and I know it. My house, oui, it's small but the Petit Trianon is still about 4 times my flat lor. :P It was given to Marie-Antoinette by King Louis XVI in these terms: "Since you love flowers, I am offering you a bouquet, it is the Petit Trianon". Win lor...like this chase girls, how to lose?

We walked the gardens first when there was still sun and still it was blinkingly cold. The weather forecasted a high of 5 degree C and low of 1 degree C. We had our hot sandwiches sitting on a bench by the Grand Canal with our 2 hot drinks and that cost us about S$30 just like that. I am eating myself broke in Paris!!!!!!! At that moment, I craved for Henderson Mee Pok dry with big bowl of soup... sigh... my Singapore stomach is revolting...

We walked back (a very Very VERY long walk by the way, in the cold no less) to the Chateau to view the rooms. The grandeur and lavishness is really breath-taking. EVERY corner of all the rooms decorated with something - it could be a painting, carvings, gold plated something, fabric, something lah... very decadent indeed...

Darth Binky by the end of trip wanted to sit down (bad sign, which meant he was sick again) and so we "mounted our high horses and trotted down" the main entrance of Versailles and waved goodbye. Farewell to too-much-decoration and lavishness...

Day 8 - Notre Dame

My poor Darth Binky was sick... he was coughing and had a bad cold. We were indeed taking turns to try the pharmacies in this country boy. :P Anyway, my poor brave sick Darth Binky decided to sleep in for a while and hoped that he'll be able to sleep the sickness off.

At about noon, he was feeling better and off to Ile de la Cite we go!!! On this small island, it boasts 2 beautiful churches, the Sainte Chapelle and the Notre-Dame. We decided to go see the Sainte Chapelle first but upon reaching the entrance, there was this queue. This was queer as there is usually no queues for churches one, museues maybe but not churches, there aren't that many devoted Catholics around lah. So I made Darth Binky read the sign to find out what's the big idea man. It turned out that there was some sort of filming inside and the church would be opened again after 2.15pm. 

So we figured that we might as well turn the 20 min wait into a nice stop at the cafe for their famous French onion soup. Those who know Darth Binky should now be raising your eyebrow at the idea of Darth Binky and onion right? No lah, he's already sick, would I do this to him? Hee... So I had the onion soup and he had fish soup. Trust me, the french soup is indeed their speciality... :)

After the meal, the queue looked drastically shorter and so we paid 22 euros for our 2 soups and 2 hot drinks and left for Sainte Chapelle again. :) There, we realised that the queue only LOOKED shorter because the queue has gone around THE OTHER END!!!!!!!!!!!!! So we decided that we will just go to Notre-Dame instead.

I only just realised that the name Notre-Dame means Our Lady in English!! Cool...didn't know that...heh. Notre-Dame church was nice but it lacked that holy-serene-feel to it as there were SO MANY people walking around. The other churches I felt were nicer in this aspect. We took the stairs to the top of the bell tower and there were 525 steps! We didn't know there were so many steps but it's kinda a trip of no return as the stair-well was so narrow, you can only go one direction!! I panted like a horse when I got up there but couldn't draw deep breathes as the air was blinkingly cold lor! The view was very worth it tho... :)

North of Paris - Honfleur

So everyone i know who has been to France will tell me to check out the south of France, and so when my host in France, Weichin, wanted our passport particulars, I naturally assumed that we are going out of France, to the South more likely.

By the title, you'll know this to be untrue. We found out upon arrival to France that we are indeed travelling but it's to the North. Weichin explained that her hubby, Iceman, would rather travel to a new part of France and so NORTH we went!!!!

We took a train out of Paris and two hours later, we arrived in Deauville (not Honfleur yet) and then boarded a bus. Half hour later, we took our first steps in HONFLEUR!! I must say it's a beautiful place, quaint fishing village with probably about 7 streets of shops to walk around. I guess walking will be more pleasuable if the rain would stop coming!

Any-O, we arrived cold and hungry and we surveyed all the menus that were displayed outside the many restaurants and we picked one with a nice set meal offer. 29.90 euros for a starter, a main meal, a dessert and coffee. The only drawback was that this restaurant was empty - hope the food's gonna be nice.

So we entered this small restaurant of many tables and plonked ourselves at a nice corner. Hungry Iceman ordered a bowl of mussels and a plate of escargots to share(even before our individual starters)!! Yummy!!!!!!!!!! The food turned out to be great!!! I have very seldom eaten till the point that I can't eat anymore, but that was that day. My starter of home-made soupe de poisson (fish) and main course of saute scallops knocked me out boy. I couldn't stuff all my dessert in - it was chilled sliced pear on double scoop of vanilla ice cream, topped with hot chocolate. I was dying by the end of the meal but a happy dying woman... ;)

After all that food, we walked out of the restaurant and realised that the whole of France was fund-raising for the wheel-chaired bound folks, the event called Telethon. It was quite amazing as the whole of France was participating. Honfleur had their own celebration and one of them was this flying-fox station where you zip over the harbour to the other side. I couldn't resist the opportunity, nevermind I'm stuffed with food, nevermind it's in winter and if I fall into the water, I'm likely to die, nevermind I have never done flying-fox before in my life... and so I gave my donation of 10 euros and in exchange, they gave a 4 mini sausages, 2 empty ballons and a good pat on the back.

It was damn damn cold up there on the platform and when I was released, my pulleys were kinda stuck. Damn I thought again, it had to be me lor, all the hundreds of people zipping down no problem but it had to be me. So the nice official pulled me in and pushed, one big push as I zipped over the harbour so fast that I thought now I really die, I'm going to knock over the other official who catches all those who zipped over. Heng that official very experienced and caught me legs so I don't bashed into the at-least-500-years-old rock walk. The Telethon that day raised over 50 million euros (we watched the charity show mah). After that highlight of my life, I figured I'll take things slow and just do normal walking around the town.

We walked into this super old church called St Catherine and the top of the church looked like they overturned 2 big long boats and used that for roofs. :) They had these nice candles to light for your own devotions at the different parts of the church but we wanted to buy them for our church-mates back home in Singapore. So I counted that Darth Binkyand I have to buy about 12 candles at 2 euros each. As we put in our monies and counted out the candles, we realised then that we got no plastic bags, this is not a shopping mall lor. So we overturned our hats and carted the many candles back to our hotel room before people think we are candle thieves, no receipt for our purchase, remember? :)

The next day was Sunday, and we had our Sunday mass in St Catherine. I dozed off during the homily as it was in French and to say the least, I wasn't really following... hee... After mass, we checked out of our hotel and also got ready to leave Honfleur. But we couldn't leave Honfleur without wacking another big meal of mussels again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our Weekend in Normandy

For the weekend we went to Honfleur on the coast of Normandy. Very beautiful place. I tell you the French have so much to be action about it's ridiculous. :) It seems that everywhere you turn there's a medieval church or building or something. And the churches are so beautiful! Also when the churches have relics they aren't small little 1cm by 1cm pieces of cloth. They have entire femurs! Wah Lau! 

We stayed at a hotel called Le Dauphin (The Dolphin) which is situated in the centre of the town of Honfleur right next to a beautiful [and I know I'm being gay using beautiful so many times :)] church, Saint Catherine. Pictures didn't do it justice. 

The first day we splurged on a seafood lunch that took us 3 hours to finish. :) Very sinful. Very good. heh heh. 

The cold seafood starter looked like a meal unto itself. There some slight drama when I discovered a LIVE baby crab in one of my clams. The seafood was very fresh indeed.

Since there were 4 of us we managed to sample the different dishes on the set menu. No one wanted the tripe. [shiver] We had lamb, scallops and solefish between the 4 of us. Mmmm. :) Thats the Singaporean in me. Always the foodie.

On the second day we went for mass at St. Catherine's. Didn't understand 

a single word but the comforting thing about Catholic mass is that 

you can still follow the order of mass regardless of the language. :)

After that it was off to Deauville to catch the train back to Paris. :)

My O My The Louvre

The trip to Louvre was really quite an experience. I mean, there I was, walking around the Louvre, treading on really old floors while viewing really Really REALLY ancient exhibits. At times, I did not know what I should have been looking at, the room housing the exhibit or the exhibit itself.

It was just an amazing experience. I think the Singapore National Museum has a long way to go. :) I mean the grandeur, the delicate room designs, the rich colours, the vastness of the space, the spectacular ceilings... If you removed the modern people walking around from your sight, you could imagine just for that moment, what a princess (me!) would experience walking around the palace.

Day 5 in Paris - La Louvre

I have one main thing to say about the Louvre... It is very very very VERY big. PJ and I started our day at 1100hrs and left at 1700hrs. And only managed to cover about 1/5 of what is housed there. At the halfway point we had to decide what we wanted to get done so we now have the obligatory shots of us standing next to the Venus de Milo and The Mona Lisa or "La Jaconde" as the French call her.

PJ was feeling much better today [Praise the Lord!  :-) ] and the weather was a heck of alot better because we spend most of the day indoors haha. The artwork is amazing. Even neanderthals like yours truly could appreciate. The only sad thing was that there wasn't time to see it all. Maybe we'll take another trip down if we have the time.

For the interested I have broken down the highlights of todays journey and have some suggestions. For people who like to see lots of dead guys and their mummified cats and dogs, go for the Egyptian exhibit. For those interested in saying "Jesus Christ!" alot I'd recommend Italian paintings. Bless me father I didn't mean it... :P 

And finally if you're into seeing many pee pees in 3D then by all means check out the greek sculptures. They were a people very into capturing the pee pee in marble. ;-) Check out our pics on my facebook.

Day 4 in Paris - The Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower is 276m tall and was designed as a TEMPORARY structure by Gustav Eiffel for Universal Exhibition of 1889. This is to show to my darling that yes I do read the Paris guidebooks. Haha....

Its alot bigger than we thought. Weichin came along with us today so you'll see that I feature in more pictures than usual. :) btw I'm loading our pics onto my facebook for easier viewing. 

 

It was a very cold and windy day and PJ was already feeling a little off. By 1 pm she was in extreme cannotmakeitness and we decided to call it a day. :P We came back drugged her up and she slept for 17 hours. She's much better now. :P Today we're gonna take it easy and visit a nice indoor attraction. The Louvre. To the MeowMeow we'll be looking out for those prints. :)

Les Chaks vont a Paris!

After a ridiculously long hiatus from blogging, the Chaks have returned! Or more accurately, We have gone on holiday to the place where Star Wars is called 'La Guerre des Etoiles'.

Its cold. Very cold. Or as the french would say, "Il sont tres M#@#$rF$@@%$g froide!" However, the cold and windy weather aside, it turned out to be a lovely day in this very beautiful city. And the views from an open top bus were amazing enough to almost make us forget the cold. We say almost because I think I left my hoohoos frozen o the sea. Tomorrow we're hoping to get the same bus so I can go and recover them.