Bubbles in Epernay

As they say "Life is flat without bubbles" and those who know us know that we are partial to that alcoholic drink that fizzes.
So it comes as no surprise that we decided to escape the hustle and bustle of Paris to visit the "Mecca" of fizz enthusiasts, Épernay, the capital of the region Champagne-Ardenne.
It takes about 1.5 hours by train (TER leaving from Gare de l'Est). So far we've figured out that the train system around here comprises Metro (underground system for getting around the centre of Paris), RER services the outer suburbs of Paris and contains 5 lines, TER which is a regional train system and TGV which is the famous high speed (maximum normal operating speed 320 km/h), inter-city trains.

We used TripAdvisor to find a recommended hotel (Le Magellan). It was okay but it shows that TripAdvisor recommendation is not perfect. I think often people are happy with okay things where the price is very good. We were not particularly concerned about the price of the hotel as we only intended to stay over night. This hotel was 65 Euro a night and it was clean and modern inside. It was interesting to stay in the heart of Épernay where a lot of locals used the hotel's bar/restaurant. It was a very laid back hotel but the service was professional.
There is a famous street called Avenue de Champagne.

where you will find the head office of Moet et Chandon. You can do a tour of the Moet caves where the champagne is stored.

A. Bergere

In Ave de Champagne, we found a Champagne house called A.Bergere where we had a tasting of their vintage champagnes and found out that they have a small hotel attached.
They took us on a tour of the hotel and I could see that it was MUCH BETTER than where we were staying and had a cost of about 100 euro per night.
If you are planning to go to Eperney I'd suggest staying here. Their website is http://www.champagne-andrebergere.com. It's in French so if you click on the "Gites" link you can see more about the hotel. Here is a couple of photos of this place (by the way the champagne was so good we bought a bottle).

 Here's the hotel.

The picture on the wall shows the evolution of the grape from a bud on the vine to the full bunch.












Moët et Chandon

You have to visit this place. Take the Vintage option and at the end of the tour you get a couple of glasses of vintage Moët well worth the cost of the visit. Claude Moët started the company in 1743.
The Chandon part of the name comes from a son-in-law who became a co-owner in mid-1800.

Here's a photo of the Moët caves:

It's an interesting experience to walk where hundreds of years ago people like Napoleon 1st walked (he was a big fan of Moët). Here's an example: in the Moët caves there is a barrel of port from Portugal that was sent as a present to Napoleon in 1810. After Napoleon and his mates (I suspect Moet was one of them) drank it dry, they kept the barrel in the cave as a "momento":

Next we asked the guy who ran / owned the hotel we stayed at to organise a taxi to take us on a bit of a tour. We asked that the driver speak English. The driver turned out to know a couple of English words such as "train" (which happens to be the same in French) so for two hours I sat in the front (so I could hear better) and translated what was being said to Jenni in the back.

We wanted to drive amongst the vines and do different things so the driver kindly took us into some Moet vineyards and cut off a couple of bunches of chardonnay and pinot noir grapes (the harvest starts next week so it was "just in time") for us to taste. They've had a wet summer so the vines have grown a lot of leaves and not so many grapes so this year the yield will be low (not sure of the quality either):

The grapes were surprisingly edible but as you can see quite small compared to normal table grapes.















Dom Perignon (1638 - 1715) was the monk (at the Abbey in village Hautvillers) who invented the second fermentation process which gives rise to the bubbles in champagne. Moet and Chandon purchased the abbey in which the monk was buried to preserve it. The village is quite beautiful and worth visiting.
You can go into the abbey, Dom Perignon is buried in the abbey as a sign of respect by the church at the time (they must have loved bubbles too).

There are quite a few wine shops that provide a champagne tasting with some thing to eat (fromage, charcuterie etc). The champagnes we tasted (from right to left) were 100% chardonnay, 100% pinot noir, 100% pinot meunier, a blend of these, then two roses one pinot noir and the last one pinot meunier. Our favourites were the first and last glasses with the blend being the third favourite.

The European Financial Crisis is Over, Thanks to Us

We went to the Fashion Houses Outlet Stores today and single-handedly fixed the European Financial Crisis. After consolidating many purchases the photo below illustrates our half time effort:

The look on my face exemplifies the effort and the exhilaration of the shopping gold medal performance we put in.

These outlet stores are one train (RER A line) stop short of Euro Disneyland and it's appropriate because it is the happiest shopping kingdom of them all.

Where else in the world will you buy genuine (not genuine copies) Salvatore Ferragamo shoes for 100 bucks or Armani Jeans for 80 bucks. We even managed to find Versace trousers that did not shout "VERSACE LOOK AT ME" at 100 dB. Jenni ran amok in the Anne Fontaine store but I managed to persuade her that it would be selfish of us to buy everything so we left some branded hangers in the store for the other happy shoppers to pounce on.

Paris Museums - the rest

As readers from my earlier blog post would note that I'm not a big fan of museums and old buildings. So this blog post is not a definitive statement on Paris museums at all. It's just that we actually took the time to visit a few that took our fancy and they were worthwhile (to a point).

Musee L'Orangerie

This museum (close to the Louvre) houses an enormous set of paintings by Monet that are a sort of "surround" experience. The paintings curve around you and depict the Lilly pond where Monet lived. As you know from my Musee D'Orsay post, I am a very big fan of Impressionist art so the visit to the L'Orangerie was a big surprise and very worthwhile. If you don't like art or Impressionist art then give it a big miss.
As an added bonus this museum also had exhibitions of the early paintings of Picasso, Monet, Renoir etc i.e. before the Impressionist style became well formed and for Picasso it was before his cubist style (which means for me I could actually understand his paintings)

Musee D'Orsay (update)

I forgot to mention the view from the top floor out to Montmartre  and the Sacre Coeur. It's worth taking the time to enjoy it.











Musee Arts Decoratifs

This museum is also close to the Louvre and L'Orangerie. I thought it would be interesting to see how people decorated their homes over the centuries. So in the middle ages furniture and wall hangings were mostly religious in theme and used wood (instead of canvas) and woven fabric (tapestry) to express aspirations and views.
The Renaissance really began in Italy and showed a huge change in subjects and materials. While few folk could create the huge chateau or stately home many could create "stately" furniture and so large, ornate furniture (we'd probably describe it as grotesque, "over-the-top", ridiculous by our current standards). Italy created marquetry, the Germans improved it and the French made it fashionable in the 18th century.

I quite like Art Nouveau and the Toulouse-Lautrec (Belle Époque style) and so I could see in this museum how this style grew out of a reaction to the stuffy, overly-ornate style before it - a bit like children doing anything feasible to annoy their parents.

This museum has some exhibitions on the history of fashion and fabrics. Seeing the various layers of garments that 18th, 19th century women put on was amusing - it must have taken them hours to get ready:

There was a special exhibition of Louis Vuitton products as designed by the LV founder and contrasted with the current artistic director (Mark Jacob). It comes as no surprise that Louis Vuitton was a smart business man and he created the trademark "LV" design that covers all their bags and suitcases so he could patent it and prevent others from copying it - ripping off LV's designs was a big issue in the early days, so long before the Chinese fakes came to market, Louis Vuitton has been protecting its intellectual property vigourously.

Musee Arts and Metiers

Final museum post:
This museum covers the inventiveness of man i.e. the things/machines man has created that make our current world what it is. The museum is housed in what was a abbey/church, so it's quite beautiful inside. If seeing the original thing that Voltaire (essentially a battery - which is also where we get the word Volt from) or Watt (the thing that governed the speed of a steam driven engine - hence its power delivery and where we get the idea of a watt) created, sounds as interesting a watching paint dry, then give this museum a miss.

I was surprised to see how smart the engineers and inventors were during the time of Louis XVI (they did not just invent the guillotine). It is humbling to realise that there were very smart people around hundreds of years ago. If you're a bloke I'd suggest sending your partner shopping while you duck into this place (Jenni came here with me because she's a cool chick and she got a kick out of seeing her mum's sewing machine in the museum).

The first planes and real cars are also here:

 If you look carefully at the picture of the plane you'll see a pendulum over a circular table (and few folks looking it) this pendulum was used by Henri Foucault in 1851 to prove that the earth rotated (how smart is that?)












Pompidou Centre

There is a great bar on the top of the Pompidou Centre where you can sit in the late afternoon, drinking champagne and watching the sun go down over the Eiffel Tower.
Why is this comment here (alongside museums) well the Pompidou Centre (apart from looking like it was designed by a guy who normally designs oil refineries) is really a museum dedicated to modern art - boring as bat shit, but the bar is terrific ... here are some of the views from the bar:

Paris Museums - Musee D'Orsay

I generally avoid museums when on holiday, preferring to enjoy the cuisine (wine, food) and culture (wine, food) of the current, living area we are in. So museums and duomos (churches) tend to get short shrift.

But the Musee D'Orsay is something else (editor's note: this blogger has an unnatural attraction to this museum) and it's a few minutes walk from our apartment...

The Musee D'Orsay is a beautiful building (inside) and it has a wonderful collection of Impressionist Art (think: Monet, Manet, Renoir, Gaugin, Sisley, Degas and Van Gogh).

Let's have some photos do the talking:

Firstly the beautiful building (originally a train station, made redundant by electric trains which were too long for its platforms):

Secondly let some of the paintings do their talking (I didn't take too many as I felt I was being frowned upon):
Here is a Degas pastel - so delicate

 

Here is a Monet which is called "La Pie" meaning "The Magpie" - the bird is not exactly the focus of the painting - I felt a bit sorry for anyone who did not understand the French title describing the painting - perhaps Monet had a sense of humour !
However the exposition of the light on the snow is majestic:

Here's a famous Manet painting "Olympia" - shows great energy and attitude whilst wearing just an orchid

Finally, I reckon this painting is the one on every bottle of Santa Vittori mineral water in Oz !

Check out the image below - what do you think?

Paris Quirks

There is much to offend Australian sensibilities in Paris. For example, there are few road signs (such as parking restrictions (it is common in North Sydney or Mosman to see up to 6 different parking restrictions on a single pole). Parisian drivers park almost anywhere they can. In our neighbourhood there is a small intersection (Rue de Buci and Rue de Seine) yet a Smart car driver saw no problem in parking the car right in the middle of the intersection and other drivers negotiated around it without fuss.
I don't think I have seen a sign indicating the maximum permissible speed which probably explains why some cars seem to travel at walking pace whilst others go for warp speed. However it probably means there is a single speed limit for all streets which makes a lot more sense that the 4 trillion different speed signs in Sydney.
With parking being at a premium it is amusing to see cars "nudge" other cars in order to make enough room (see photo). At a Renault car show room in the Latin Quarter I thought to suggest that they should supply new cars with the bumpers already scratched so the new owner does not have to experience the first one personally.
Below is a typical example of the front and back space for a near-new parked car.

As you can see from these four cars double parked (and the single one above) it seems if you set off your indicators as a "warning" then it's ok to park anywhere:










There is a website www.paris.fr that has some useful information. For example, the city of Paris provides free wifi in 250 locations (the wifi station has the name "Orange"). As readers of my blog know I have not been able to get a data plan connected to my SFR pre-paid SIM so like anyone else in this situation free wifi hot spots become addictive.

ColdPlay Concert

Marina and the Diamonds did a good job of warming up the crowd (it turns out that the Diamonds are not Marina's band but her fans - presumably her band is just something behind her). I'd recommend checking out her music.

ColdPlay, in front of 80,000 fans, at the huge StadeFrance stadium were excellent. Chris Martin their lead is the "main man" and is very much the heart of the band (although the drummer, Will Champion, made his presence known is some manic drum solos). This tour is built around their latest album (Mylo Xyloto - whatever that means, probably computer generated).

A big surprise was that Rhianna came on and sang (YES, to everyone's surprise, she actually did sing in the same key as the music) Princess of China and in the encore she was supported by Chris Martin as she sang Umbrella - she was appreciated by the Parisian crowd and proved all those Rhianna doubters wrong for once.
A novel feature of the concert was that everyone in the audience was given two wrist bands and, as you can see in the photo above, these light up at various times and pulsated in time to the music (or some other rhythm) which involved the audience much more in the performance.

I believe that this concert was filmed and will be released as a DVD. If so, I'll buy it.

One small useful note is that the StadeFrance stadium is in Zone 2 of the RER train system so your Metro ticket, or Navigo card (which is normally for Zones 1 and 2) will allow you free journey to the stadium.

A Paris Find - Rue Montorgueil

Rue Montorgueil

This street has a wonderfully, Parisian atmosphere. It has, more or less, no traffic and a great selection of cafes, fromageries, boulangeries, patisseries, boucheries, poissoneries. If you want to feel as if you are truly in Paris walk down this street, perhaps, stop at a cafe. If you live nearby you could buy your daily food supplies here and enjoy the spirit of Paris.

Pre-paid SIMs and other lessons in Paris

Lesson #1:
In one of my earlier posts I described the early (not so fun) experience of owning an SFR Pre-paid SIM. You may recall that I arrived in Paris pathologically disinclined to buy from SFR (having relegated SFR to the same league as Telstra i.e. a former telco monopoly) but finding that on arrival at the airport, SFR was the only available option.
My French is very basic so navigating the sfr.fr website is daunting. I did manage to create an account but without them getting some form of acceptable identification e.g. photocopy of my passport photo page the "my account" section basically does not work (you get various error messages which don't mean much). I did not understand this until after I got through their id process and then voila the web site started working correctly.
How to get through the SFR La Carte identification process:
I also managed to navigate to a PDF product description of the La Carte (pre-paid SIM) - it's also all in French but I did understand a couple of things: I could call free to a 1025 that provided "English" responses, I also figured out that I could email my identification stuff to indentificationacarte@sfr.fr. So I took a photo of my passport and using free wifi hotspot emailed it from my iphone. A couple of days later I rang the 1025, spoke to a lady who sort of understood English but hardly spoke it and when I finally got her to understand (in the nicest way I could muster) that I wanted to know if my id had been received she simply said "Oui" and instantly hung up. At least I think she said "Oui".
When I bought the La Carte I also bought a 35 euro recharge and then had the fun of figuring out how to enter the recharge number to add it to my pre-paid SIM. I believe I can buy further recharge codes from any Tabac store.
How to recharge your pre-paid SFR SIM - La Carte:
Basically you make a free call on the number 952. A prerecorded voice will speak to you in fairly rapid French. May hear her say the word "un" meaning "one" if you miss it just wait while she prattles on and just enter 1#. She will then shut up momentarily and then start prattling on some more just type over the top of her by entering the recharge code and # - that's it. If you want reassurance you can free call 950 and another French voice will read out to you your balance. Or you can log on to the sfr.fr "my account" section - it's the hyperlink called Accéder à votre espace client
 on the right hand side of the main web site. After logging on on the left there is a link called Ma conso
(my consumption I presume) it will tell you what's left on your pre-paid SIM.
How to add a data plan to your La Carte:
After going to a SFR store (by the Saint Paul Metro station in the Marais) the answer is "NON"
I suspect this is not true but I am exhausted after getting this far with SFR and I have a phone that does calls and texts so I give up on data. Our apartment has free wifi included in the rent so I will survive on that - in fact I would say without the free wifi in our apartment we would have been up the creek without a paddle.

Lesson #2:
Never rent an apartment in Paris without ensuring it has free wifi included.

Lesson #3:
If you think it's a great idea to go shopping on a Sunday in many cases you will be very disappointed. The shopping areas look like they're expecting some riots and have brought the shutters down in advance, so you can't even window-shop.
I'd suggest: sleep in late, go see some tourist sites, sit in some cafes for a fair few hours then go to some wine bars and get hammered.

Lesson #4:
August is annual holiday month for France so, for perhaps 10% to 15% of the shops, every day in August is a Sunday. We arrived on 21st August (leaving on 20th Sept) and sort of expected some shops to be closed until end of August but if we had arrived on the 1st August and not understood what what going to happen we might have been somewhat disappointed to say the least.

Walking about St Germain and the Latin Quarter

The idea that Australians are laid back and take a leisurely, balanced approach to life needs to be reviewed. Parisians appear to have a far more leisurely, relaxed approach to working than we see in Sydney. They don't seem to get out and about until at least 9 to 9.30 in the morning. Then the strain of working gets to them and between 1 and 3 they retire for some rest and lunch.
Getting up at 7 am (we are normally at the gym by 6.15 at home so 7 am constitutes a lie in) and going to a local boulangerie at around 8.30 is a relatively solitary experience. It's not very interesting walking past shops before 10.30 in the morning as they are mostly likely to be closed. As you know August is the annual holiday season for French citizens and the new autumn/winter fashions kick off around 1st September. So one thought we had in coming here around 20th August was that the last of the summer fashions would be on sale and a lot of regular consumers would be on holiday. This theory is partly valid in practice but it means that between now and mid next week we need to buy any summer bargains as they will most likely be gone after that time.

We've been lunching around 2pm and having a light supper at around 10 pm. Interestingly it seems that dinner is often started at around 10 pm in Paris (hence why it's so quiet in the early part of the day).

We've had two lunches so far and they have really constituted our main meal of the day. One was recommended in a walking guide book. Both have been really ordinary, truly not worth it. Our new strategy is to lunch at minimum one star Michelin restaurants (our thinking is that in the new austere economic state of Europe the one star restaurants will offer fixed price lunch menus that are excellent quality and, whilst not inexpensive, at least should not be a waste of time - I'll let you know in a future blog if this idea actually works).

A fairly famous department store near here is called "Bon Marché". It's ironic that "Bon Marché" in French means "cheap" but this store is more like David Jones i.e. not cheap. It has a great food department (a bit like the one at David Jones but much better). The "Market of St Germain" is mostly rubbish. It is called the only "closed market" in Paris which is an odd way to describe a shopping mall.

Last comment for today - we wanted to buy some wine for our apartment and found this wine shop 100 metres away call "La Dernier Groutt" (means "the last drop"). We went in and, in French, I asked about the various wines, explaining that being from Sydney, we knew nothing about French wines. At this point the wine merchant said in French that he could speak English as he was from New Zealand. I then said "Je ne dois pas parler en Francais avec un Néo-Zélandais" i.e. I'm not speaking French to a Kiwi! It turns out he comes from Tokoroa (mid North Island timber town), has been studying philosophy at the Sorbonne (University of Paris) and knows Quade Cooper who is playing for the Wallabies this weekend.

It's a funny world.

Paris Day 2

We've settled into our apartment and been out walking for a fair bit of today (Wednesday) so I thought I'd share some initial observations / learnings from when we landed at Charles De Gaulle airport.

1) I'm never going fool the locals into thinking my French language skills are great:

While waiting for our bags I went up to the information desk and asked "Où est les toilettes?" She kindly explained in French where they were. As I walked away I thought "Duh" I meant to say "Où sont les toilettes ("where are the toilets" instead of saying "where is the toilets")

2) Not everyone you meet is actually French:



As I walked out of the men's an oriental lady walked past me so I said "les toilettes des femmes sont là-bas" (the female toilets are over there). She looked blankly at me (perhaps she was a little dis-oriental after a long flight (editor's note: "ignore all dad jokes"). She then realised that I was a he and she was a she and did an about-face.

3) Do not expect to be accosted by many pre-paid SIM sellers hoping to do business with you:

After making some further inquiries you will find that you go to a Relay shop (rather like a Newslink shop in Sydney airport) and behind the counter if you are lucky they will be able to sell you a SFR (French equivalent to Telstra only with higher prices and lower service -  yes that is possible) pre-paid SIM. You will have no other choice. Maybe my French was not good enough but I got a 30-day voice plan with no data allowance (sigh) for 35 euro. The SIM was a full size one (they did not have the micro SIM that iPhone 4s need - so in the middle of the airport I borrowed the scissors from Jenni's sewing kit and cut the SIM down to size et voilà it worked). I managed to understand enough of the little user guide that came with the SIM that if I did not register with SFR inside 15 days sending them a photocopy of my passport id page that they would stop the SIM working. The SFR website is entirely in French and the free calling numbers provide entirely French auto responses spoken at light speed - lots of fun. In the end I managed to register online and have emailed a photo of my passport from my (now working) iPhone. How, you ask, did I email from my phone when I did not have a data plan? Excellent question, to our eternal gratitude, our apartment has high speed wifi ... As of writing I have not mustered enough courage to call the free help line, navigate the french auto response system and try to talk to an actual human who may deign to speak English and help me get the magical SFR customer id which I need to log onto "My Account" and upgrade myself to include a data plan. Conclusion: get a TravelSIM from any Aust Post Office (or go to www.travelsim.net.au) BEFORE leaving Australia.

4) If you think it's a great idea to buy a 30 day train pass and take the train from the airport into Paris - you are insane.

We landed at Terminal 1, the trains leave from Terminal 2 so you need to get onto the CDGVAL terminal shuttle - not a biggie so far so good. I tried quite hard back in Sydney to research these multi-day passes and concluded that the monthly pass was not well documented but that it is part of the Navigo Découverte ticket system. I also knew that I would need a photo to stick on it - from what I had researched machines existed at the train stations to take such photos (but not at the airport train station I discovered). I had also read that the staff at the train stations were generally (to extremely) unhelpful, but I thought that since I was doing ok at speaking french that they would be more helpful than not (this turned out to be rather naive of me). Managing to contain my frustration with the girl at the ticket counter, I did figure out that the monthly ticket pass starts always on the first day of the month (I naively thought that a monthly pass would go for one month from purchase but not so for this monopoly) and that the weekly pass starts on a Monday. Since I was talking to the girl on a Tuesday that was 10 days from the end of the month I bought two weekly passes. We got our 50 KGs of luggage on to the train. As the train got closer to our destination it became more full than your average sardine tin. Between our second to last stop and our get-off station we managed to persuade our fellow travellers that there was a ton of spare space around so we could move ourselves and our large travel bags to an exit door. Our technique to get to the doors drew its inspiration from the Aussie diggers in world war 1 when they charged over the top of the trenches.

We will take a taxi back to the airport when we leave !

Today resembled an average day. We walked around St Germain, bought stuff and ate stuff, retired stuffed.

1 Sleep to Paris

One bag, one sleep, one trip to the airport and we're goneski.
How can we be away for one month and only take one bag? you ask. Good question, the answer is simple viz "shopping". The truth is we actually have a second bag and inside that is another bag and inside that bag are two pillows we plan to "donate" to the apartment on departure.
Last night on our way to Bianca's engagement party (Bianca is Brian Armstrong's daughter, should be a bit of fun calling Brian "Gramps" sometime in the next few years) as we crossed the Sydney Harbour Bridge I rang Bertrand and arranged to meet him at our apartment in Paris (he has the key) and spoke most of the time in French - it worked! It was such a thrill to be talking to a Parisian. To be honest at the end of the conversation I asked him "Parlez-vous Anglais?" and he said "Yes" so, in English, I double checked that we had truly understood each other (didn't want an ego-driven, epic fail).
It was through Jenni's sister (Lorraine) that we knew about this apartment. Lorraine and family had been to France last year as part of school trip (some field day !). So we learned about some of the local boulangeries, wine bars (bars à vin), the Bon Marché (whilst it is a famous place it actually means "cheap" in French). Lorraine's and Stuart's descriptions made it almost feel as if we were already there. Can't wait to buy a baguette and a bucket of foie gras (Jenni's misplaced 2 kilos in the last couple of months so a bucket of foie gras should help replace it). We also learned about the Metro, le Château de Versailles. So we're now planning to take the Metro from Charles de Gaulle Aéroport to St Germain. Which goes to show we humans are not entirely rational since we definitely are NOT taking the train from home to Sydney airport.
We've packed Telfast as we're going from Sydney winter to Europe summer and in the past we have found that we get terrible hay fever due to the big change in atmospheric pollen and Telfast is (or it was last time we were there) a prescription-only medicine in France.
We've turned on our Outlook "out of office" notifications and plan to stay way from work email completely. If you want to email us, use gavinpdixon@gmail.com as I will monitor this inbox. We'll get a local SIM (I'll post this number when I get it) and have Skype logged in (Skype id is gavin.dixon69 - stop smirking, it's just a number). You can also post comments on this blog as I will try to keep it up to date as a "travel" diary.

23 sleeps to go

It is starting to seem real that we will soon be leaving for Paris. We've managed to get all our flight sectors on Singapore Airlines A380 so our holiday will start the moment we get to Kingsford-Smith (Sydney) airport !

The great dream of living in Paris (albeit only for one month) is so close. We're staying at Rue Jacob in Saint-Germain-des-Prés (6th Arrondissement) about 700 metres from Notre Dame. St Germain is home to the the cafe Les Deux Magots

Gavin's madly practising his French so hopefully we will experience the friendlier side of your average Parisien. We want to do simple things like go to the markets (maybe each day) to buy what we want to eat and drink for that day.  We will have the pleasure of Kiki (our past neighbour who now lives in Boston with Larry, Macho and Waldo)

staying with us for a while. It's been a long time since we saw each other so it's going to be rather special.
We also hoping to catch up with some friends and work colleagues who happen to be in Europe (or resident in the UK) while we are there.

Sue and Renze have rented an apartment in Paris for a month (they inspired our plan) and have started giving us suggestions on restaurants etc.
The first suggestion is to go to a restaurant called Aux Charpentiers near ‘’Marché St Germain’’ +33 1 43 26 30 05
Friends of theirs have suggested:
Les Papilles
Nabulione
Dans Les Landes
and Apicius which is apparently very high end but exceptional.
Hopefully whoever reads our blog may add further suggestions / ideas.
We'd like to go to Buddha Bar since we've enjoyed some many CDs from there. We've got our travel card from Ozforex.com.au as their offer (cost to use ATMs and cost of loading euro on to it) seems the best at the moment. We're not sure what local mobile SIM card (Vodafone? O2?) to buy once we have landed.
Jenni's planning on taking only enough clothes for a week and intends to hit the shops after the first week ! The new autumn season fashion will be out on 1st September so perfect timing.