The lil’ dude and his family…

We left for Paris on Christmas Eve. Many flights were cancelled due to the snow and the bad weather but thankfully easyjet did not cancel our flight. The Ciampino airport was just madness but we are lucky to be travelling with Irfan because they gave way for families with toddlers everywhere. We didn’t have to queue for more than an hour to check-in and didn’t have to wait for long to board the plane either. :)

The ride was smooth and when we arrived at Orly, we took the train to Gare Du Nord as I chose an apartment near the station since we’d be taking the Eurostar to London. Weather was cold and it took us quite a while to get to Gare Du Nord because we screwed the tickets up somehow and while waiting at the Anthony Metro station, paranoia kicked in. Irwan had to repurchase the tickets to Du Nord so he had to leave me and the luggages and for a moment there it was just me and some queer looking chaps at the station. I was just wary of everyone and when one guy kept staring at me and getting closer and closer to me, I just wanted to cry. Pathetic I know but I was pretty much alone and that incident in Rome kept coming back to me so yeah, when Irwan finally arrived with Irfan, it was a big huge relief for me. And the guy? He went to the other side of the platform after that. Go figure. Heh.

When we arrived at the apartment (about 200sf in size) we immediately fell in love with the place. Oklah, the place is a bit small but the owners have done it up nicely and we were happy to be at a homey place. Metro station is just about 2 mins walk and there is this grocery store that sells halal meat. There were a few Asian stores for me to find my “ingredients” as well so we were very happy with our choice. :)

A lot of places were closed because it was the Christmas Eve but we walked around the area for a bit until we couldn’t tahan the coldness no more.

The next day we took the Metro and headed over towards La Fayette as the bus stop for the hop on hop off bus was near the famous shopping mall. We had our lunch at one of the restaurants along Champs-Élysées and that place was just packed with people! Irfan had fun being able to run around just about everywhere so I just let him be lah although I was kesejukan like mad!! I think the temperature that day was about 0° or 1°. All I wanted to do was stay in a room with the heater on full blast! :P

When we got to Eiffel Tower, the queue to go up was just too crazy! I’ve been all the way up already so it was more of Irwan’s call if he wanted to queue. Since the weather was too cold and he didn’t want to freeze his a** off, we didn’t bother queueinglah. There were a lot of pigeons there and when about 20 of them came near us, Irfan started crying his lungs out! He said he was scared of them. Instead of pacifying him, I took the chance to snap some shots of him wailing. Yes, tak baik I know, but couldn’t help itlah. :P

Irwan did the tour of Le Louvre the next day while Irfan and I hopped from La Fayette to Printemps to H&M. I didn’t see the point in dragging the poor boy to stare at artsy-fartsy stuff so I volunteered to babysit him (and get some shopping done) while Irwan spent some few hours at the museum. We met up with him back towards the later part of the evening and spent some time strolling the area. The next time I’m coming back to Paris will be during bearable weather months because the city is just lovely and when it gets too cold, you miss out on a lot of stuff because you cannot bear being outside and getting frostbites! Heh.

I checked the Eurostar’s website that night to see if our train is still on schedule to depart for London the next day and thankfully, they’ve resumed their services again. But the same cannot be said for the London-Paris service as the weather in London was/is still too cold and I heard that they were cancelling on a lot of them. I pity those people who have had to miss their Christmas gatherings and what not due to the erratic bad weather. :(

Our train ride was good but the train was going slower than it should but I guess they just want to be on the safe side. The couple seated next to us had two kids with them and Irfan was having fun playing with Alex - the 2.5 year old boy and Amelie - the 18 months old chubby girl. Alex had this sticker magazine with him and Irfan made us promise that we’ll get him one when we arrive in London. I can’t find those sticker magazines in KL - has any one of you seen them?

We arrived at King’s Cross Station 40 minutes behind schedule and there were just throngs of people there! Anyway, here are some photos of us in Paris and I shall continue the last bit in the next post because work is calling already! :P