Location: Paris

Author: My Husband

My wife and I got little sleep on the flight from Vancouver to Frankfurt. I spent several hours catching up on some recent movies, which included “Julie and Julia”. I enjoyed Meryl Streep’s turn as Julia Child (Meryl Streep isn’t that tall in real life, is she?), but I just didn’t care much about the Julie part at all. Too self-obsessed and too high maintenance, in my opinion.

After 10 hours, our plane landed at Frankfurt and we promptly checked into the Lufthansa lounge for a shower. The quick shower really helped to make us feel human again, and I highly recommend it if you have a connection after a long-haul flight. In most air hubs, you can pay several dollars for a shower, and if you plan ahead enough, you might even have a fresh change of clothes with you. (we didn’t.)

Before long, we hopped on another Lufthansa plan for the quick flight to Paris. Frankfurt is a pretty large airport, and if you have a quick connection, I highly recommend hoofing it to your departure gate asap. The airport doesn’t have many travelators, and there are mighty huge distances to cover.

This was the 733 that flew us to Paris.

We landed on a dreary day in Paris, with the weather feeling none-too-different than Vancouver. The bitingly cold drafts attacked the passengers as soon as we stepped off the plan onto the jetway, reminding us that we were travelling during winter.

Whoever designed Charles de Gaulle airport must have really had a thing for long narrow tunnels and tubes. These covered travelators connected the different arrival halls on various levels and they were designed as a series of bizarre tubes criss-crossing each other in an open atrium in the middle of the terminal.

We had pre-booked an airport transfer service to take us to the hotel, and ParisShuttle worked out pretty well for us on this trip. Taxis from Charle de Gaulle airport to Paris are pretty expensive if you are party of only one or two travellers, so airport shuttles are a more economical – and almost as convenient – way to go. We stayed at the Hilton Arc de Triomphe this trip and found it to be a good hotel. It was about a 5-min walk to the nearest Metro stop (Courcelles), and about 10 minutes to the Champs Elysees by foot. While the Hilton is a US chain, this property still showed off a good amount of Gallic design flair.

Because we hadn’t gotten any real sleep over the last two days, our plan was to have a simple dinner and then get back to the hotel right away. There wasn’t anything open in the immediate vicinity of the hotel, so we hoofed it to the Champs Elysees to see what we could find. Once there, the beautifully lit up sights made us forget about sleep, and hand-in-hand, we walked down the enchanting avenue taking in all the sights and sounds. We saw many of the restaurants that we had eaten at before, and we gave them all a pass. After walking around for some time, we happened upon the “George V” brasserie and we decided we didn’t want to walk anymore; that’s where we had dinner that evening.

Now, if you are after good food and good value in Paris, you will not want to eat on the Champs. The restaurants located along the avenue pay huge rents, and they depend on selling expensive meals to tourists to drive their profits. However, if you are already on the Champs and plan on staying for a while, then eating at one of these places will be a lot more convenient than Metro’ing elsewhere for a meal and then Metro’ing back again. In our case, we didn’t want to eat anywhere that was not within walking distance of the hotel that evening.

Here’s how the interior of the George V looked like.

Design touches abound – even in this oldish brasserie.

Because of the chill, Christina asked for some hot water and the waiter said “I’ll bring you an order of tea and you can do whatever you want with the hot water. It’s a computer thing you know… ” – riiiight. This hot water ended up costing 6 Euros, 50 cents more than what my glass of wine cost.

Christina wasn’t particularly hungry, so she only had foie gras. It was a very nice torchon of foie gras d’oie, but the portion size was pretty measly. Two thin slices of foie gras, served with a disproportionate amount of toasted bread. Even for a Champs Elysees eatery, they should have been more generous.

I was feeling a little more ravenous, so I had onion soup and Boeuf Bourguignon (thanks to the Julie and Julia movie).

The onion soup was rich and hearty. Here, they were overly generous with the gruyere – there was so much cheese that I had to leave a good amount of it in the bowl. But aside from that, this was good onion soup.

The beef bourguignon offered up chunks of tender beef that were bathed in a thick, full-bodied sauce. The seasoning of the sauce was good, and the beefy flavours were all there. However, there was a good amount of alcohol still in it – it was almost as if the cook did not leave enough time for the alcohol to cook off before serving the dish.

We both felt very full after the meal, and decided to walk some of it off before heading back to the hotel. So we popped in the Mercedes Benz showroom for a quick look. They had yet another Mercedes-McLaren SLR convertible on display. I believe this is one of the last few $300,000 roadsters that came off the production line.

And then walking up towards Etoile, the Arc de Triomphe came into view. No matter how many times you see the Arc, it still impresses you everytime.

From under the arch, here’s a snapshot of the Champs with the flame of the unknown soldier in the foreground.

From the arch, a partial view of the lit of the Eiffel Tower

Lack of sleep started to catch up with us, so we called it a night and headed back to the hotel.

More to follow – stay tuned.

I had a really enjoyable time walking along the Champs at night. Known as the City of Lights, I have always found Paris beautiful at night. But I didn’t remember it was THIS beautiful and breathtaking. Our hotel is located close to the Arc De Triomphe and I found it looking even more magnificent at night. The Eiffel Tower, too, looked even more beautiful and romantic at night.

- Christina