...detante a Paris!

Last weekend, I spent some time in Paris with Miss Mandy Dunn! It was an amazing weekend with a really lovely girl. We get on so well and have a lot in common (granted, we both have similar situations as Au Pairs in France!) so we spent a lot of the weekend relaxing and chatting. The weather was also amazing - so warm!

I arrived at Gare de L'Est at 5pm (I still can't believe it only takes 1h30 to travel the 400km from Nancy to Paris on the TGV!) Mandy was there to meet me, and we went straight back to her house in the very affluent area of Neuilly sur Seine. Her family have gone away for the school holidays (Paris holidays 2 weeks before we do in Nancy) so we had the whole of this amazing apartment to ourselves! The family have only recently moved there, and apparently it cost 5 Million Euros. INSANITY.

Mandy!

Some Wisteria...

Entrance to the apartment!

Neuilly

Anyway, we chilled in their lovely back garden in the sun for a while, before getting the metro and heading over to the Latin Quarter for a cheap dinner! It was packed with tourists, and it was strange for me to hear so many English voices. Coming to Paris felt the closest to England I had been for nearly 3 months! We sat down outside a restaurant to be greeted with the English menu, again, not something I have become used to! Anyway, we had a great three course meal for 10euros each and caught up with our news!
Later, we headed into Bastille, Paris' party area, I'm told! We frequented a cocktail bar before moving on to an Irish pub. It was really good fun and we met lots of awesome people from all over the world! However, we were chased out of the place by some crazy guys who were convinced we hadn't payed our tab - they didn't even work there and we didn't even have a tab! - but we managed to get away and onto the metro back home!

Quartier Latin

Bastille!

In the morning, Mandy made a great breakfast which we ate outside in the sunshine before catching the metro to church. On the way, the train suddenly popped out of the tunnel and there was the Eiffel Tower - pretty awesome! Almost as awesome as Hillsong Paris. What a church! It's an international church with a huge congregation. There is an amazing worship band led with some songs in French and others in English. Everything is also translated from French to English or vice versa by an incredible translator woman. An real experience and great to see people from all over the world worshiping the one and only God!

Afterwards...after a long long while of trying to get out of the place, some of us went for a picnic in the Jardin de Luxembourg. However, it was so packed because of the amazing weather that everyone just sat where they could. I met lots of cool people, and some other au pairs from all over the world!

Later, Mandy and I headed to the banks of the Seine and ate ice cream opposite the Eiffel Tower. We both caught the sun! Then we had to head back to get my stuff and metro-ed it back to Gare de L'Est where we had a bite to eat before I caught the train back to Nancy.

It was a really great weekend... Thank you Mandy!