Paris

Unusually for Crystal and I, we made it to St Pancras with plenty of time to spare and got onto the Eurostar without a hitch. Unfortunately, the trip itself was not quite so hitch-less and we had a four hour delay due to an accident on the TGV.

When we finally arrived at our hotel, we were blessed with some proper Parisien hospitality and told that we had booked to arrive the previous day - we hadn't. It didn't take too long to clear up though and we managed to check in to our not very salubrious room (though surely not the worst to come!) and headed out for a wander through Ile de la Cite and the Latin Quartier.

Wandering, a bit of sitting, a lot of eating pastries, drinking coffee and then moving on to mulled wine or wine (depending on the time of day and how cold we were) sums up our three and a half days in Paris nice and succinctly.

We intentionally avoided vísiting a single tourist site, although it is impossible not to at least walk past them in a city like Paris - hence the photos of Notre Dame, Hotel de Ville etc. - but I promise that we stuck to our plan and the only buildings which we stepped foot inside were cafes, restaurants and bars (and a couple of pet stores to select our future dog "Lionel" - Crystal also selected several potential candidates for a future cat - I know, very domestic of us!).

As such, our highlights were all rather gluttonous - crepes from Creperie Suzette near Place des Vosges, tea at Coquelicot and wine at Un Zebra a Montmartre, both near Montmartre and a bottle of Bollinger (thank you Brendon and Anna) to celebrate the start of the trip.