Ok, let's start the writing! There is a lot to write about this 2 week trip, and I hope you will forgive if I have to go back and forth a bit as I tend to miss details and only remember them hours later.
My mother and I arrived in London the 23rd april. The weather was still a bit chilly, which I found very pleasant, as (forgive me heat lovers) I was growing tired of Maringá's endless summer. We stayed the first couple of days at the
Earl's Court Youth Hostel, which I love (I very much enjoy having an available kitchen, for you can leave sooner and arrive later, with no risk of missing the meal hours and having to go out once more or going to bed with nothing but crackers on your stomach).
The Earl's Court area is lovely, filled with adorable buildings with brick and white exteriors, about 1 mile from Kensington Gardens.
There is a cute church near the hostel, and the very kind sir who was locking it up when we passed by opened it again just so we could see the insides.
During the next two days I dropped Maria Maria off (hope Mika gets her soon), we went to Tate Modern to see the Damien Hirst exhibition, saw St Paul's Cathedral, the Kensington Gardens, and I took my mother to see where the Natural History and the Science museums were. Oh, and Maks&Spencer. The food Marks&Spencer. The perfection of the tomatoes is just unbelievable.
On the 25th we took the train to Paris, where we met my father and grandmother. I didn't even see the trip happening, I slept and when I woke up we were already in France.
We did so much in Paris there's probably a very small chance I'll be able to place everything on it's right date and time! (but that doesn't really matter, does it?)
My grandmother and I stayed at
Hotel Concorde Montparnasse. Very nice hotel, the staff was very kind and helpful, and the continental breakfast just perfect for us, with both coffee and fruit.
We ate some awesome food, and I kicked my vegetarian ways aside for these two weeks, because....well because I decided so and that's the end of it.
We went to the most commonly known sites, the Louvre, Versailles, Champs Élysées, Notre Dame, L'Arc de Triomphe, and everything else you all heard about, so I'll write about the other stuff you most likely didn't hear about.
Like the little place we ate at near Notre Dame. It's in the street right on the north side of the church, and silly me didn't write the name down....but it is a small créperie that has the crêpe cart on the outside, and a yellow glass work on the ceiling on the inside, and Tiffany like chandeliers. The onion soup is very, very good, and so are the crêpes.
The restaurant
Jour is also really nice, it serves salads in the Subway style (you pic a base, and add toppings and sauce).
Dupont Café at Avenue de France, where my parent's hotel was, has great tartines (see the last two pics in
this page), and two other addresses.
Then there is
Fauchon, near the Pinacothèque. I'll just leave you with the pics.
Au Grain de Folie is a tinie tynie vegetarian restaurant in Montmartre. The food there is amazing, so well seasoned. It looked and smelled so good we forgot to take a picture (that happened a lot...), but
here there's a pic of a dish and a dessert (see the text below the pic to know which ones).
Créperie St Malo at 53 rue du Montparnasse was a very pleasant find as well, and both the omelets and crepes were amazing, and Cédric, who waited on us, was very kind and patient with my yet quite flawed french (and I hope I'm not misspelling his name).
Of course we forgot to take pics of the omelets, but here are the honey almond crepe and the cider, which was also very nice. The looks of it fooled me, as I could swear it had a honey-like consistency (it doesn't).
Ok, I guess that closes the Food in Paris section. And this post, as I don't want this to get way too long. There's still Brugge, and London, and not only the food, but all the other nice things we found. See you in the next post.
xx Andy
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