The travels of Tim and Megan: November 2010

Saturday

On the weekend of 13 and 14 November, we took the Eurostar down to Paris to celebrate Kristen's 27th birthday (actually 30th - shhhh!). We arrived in Paris around 10.30am on Saturday and checked into the hotel in the St Germain district. The rest of the crew were out finding some breakfast, so the two of us headed out in search of the Orangery Museum!

The Orangery (or Musee de l'Orangerie des Tuileries) is an art gallery of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings located on the Place de la Concorde. It contains works by Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and others, but it is most famous for its amazing Claude Monet water-lily paintings, known as the Nympheas. The Nympheas are displayed on four curved walls in each of two oval-shaped rooms (photos below). They really are amazing. Up close, the brush strokes looks messy and almost careless, but when you step back and look at each painting as a whole, the detail is amazing.

After visiting the Orangery, we wandered through the lovely gardens, up past the Louvre and back across the river to the St Germain district. We grabbed some lunch from a great sandwich shop called Lina's. We were still having trouble locating the others, so we went for a walk through the Luxembourg Gardens. The weather was fairly poor - it was reasonably warm for the time of year, but there was almost constant drizzle for the whole weekend, which was a little annoying.

Having finally heard that some of the other kids were at The Highlander pub in preparation for the All Blacks' match against Scotland, we made our way there to join them. We were reminded how expensive Paris is, when we ordered a pint of beer and a lime and soda at The Highlander and it came to 4,500 euros or thereabouts. It is seriously more than double the price for a pint of beer in Paris as it is in London... It was great to catch up with so many people we had not seen in a long time.

After watching the first half of the All Blacks' demolition job at Murrayfield, we headed to the restaurant that Kristen had booked for her birthday celebration dinner. The restaurant was really fun - it had a great Parisien atmostphere (which a group of 20-odd drunk Kiwis certainly added to) and the food was really yum too. After dinner, we were treated to a couple of delightful speeches and some nimble balancing on a chair by Andrew.

After dinner we went to a pub to continue Kristen's birthday celebrations. We had a false start, as we had to hastily depart the first pub we went in to thanks to Cam. The second pub, however, was great and we settled in there for a few hours. Their pints were also close to a million euros each, but we didn't let that put us off.

We were treated to live coverage of the heavyweight title fight between David Haye and Audley Harrison. The first two rounds had a total of zero punches thrown and then in the third round, Haye destroyed Harrison, knocking him out with a barrage of huge hits. Harrison was a disgrace. However, we managed to amuse ourselves pretty well for the rest of the night (photos below).

Sunday

Things moved pretty slowly on Sunday morning. Most of us didn't emerge until close to 11am...some much later than that! Alex and Neena had arranged a birthday cake and some balloons for Kristen, which was an awesome start to the day! Then we headed to a brilliant patisserie for some delicious treats before settling down to brunch at an amazing "steak frites" restaurant next to our hotel. You pay a set price and they serve you a huge plate of steak and fries, with their special sauce. Just when you're done, they come aound with a second serving - brilliant.

After brunch, by which time Andrew had risen from the dead, we took several hours to decide what to do next, before eventually settling on a visit to La Saint-Chapelle (the Holy Chapel). The Saint-Capelle is a Gothic cathedral on the Ile de la Cite in the heart of Paris. The chapel was constructed in the mid-1200s and is famous for its spectacular stained-glass windows. Part of the chapel was under repair, but it was still stunning and definitely worth the queue to get in.

Later in the afternoon we wandered through the Le Marais district of Paris, renowned for its little streets, shops and cafes. The weather had packed in a bit, so we sought some shelter in a big cafe and we managed to catch the last few minutes of the final Formula One race of the season, where amazingly, Sebastian Vettel won the race and the two guys ahead of him in the championship standings finished well back, handing the title to Vettel. It was a really relaxing afternoon, as we had a few drinks and some cheese and snacks and talked some jibber jabber.

A little more wandering of shops rounded out the day for us. We found a knife shop, where Andrew tested out one of the carving knives by shaving his face with it. It was pretty sharp. We were heading back to London on Sunday evening, while a few of the crew were staying on until Monday morning, so we had one last drink in a bar and took some stunning portrait photos (below) and then made our way to the Gare du Nord to catch the Eurostar back to sunny London.