Paris (AKA the Hen Do)

At the end of September I went to Paris for my hen weekend. Well, when I say ”Hen weekend”, it was a far cry from the usual sight in a city centre on a friday or saturday night, with all the hens wearing matching t-shirts, pink sashes and cowboy hats (and they’re tame in comparison to what some of the other parties look like). When I got engaged and people began talking about my hen party, I started getting worried, as it seemed like it was going to turn into this massive party with all of my female friends and family, and more than likely involving strippers and sashes and pink glittery cowboy hats, which was exactly what I didn’t want. Luckily my mum understood this, and when I broached the subject she suggested that we go off for a weekend to Paris with just my grandmother, aunt and sister.

It was a brilliant idea, and with only a few hiccups (i.e. the channel tunnel fire) we arrived in Paris pretty much on schedule. We’d managed to help the time in queues and on the train pass fairly quickly by polishing off a few bottles of champagne between us too! We had no real plans for our few days there, other than knowing that we wanted to spend a lot of time in cafes and not focus on sightseeing, as most of us had been before.

When we were booking the break, we used the Eurostar website to book a package deal for all of us, which came up trumps when we last went to Paris. This time the site found us an even better deal, and we found a beautiful five star hotel in the very central Montparnasse area (just 2 minutes walk from the Montparnasse tower). Of course, it’s always very difficult to know 100% if a hotel is going to be as good as the reviews on the website say, but we weren’t dissapointed. Fantastically large rooms with huge bathrooms, and most importantly, comfy beds. Once we’d checked in we decided that we had to make up for lost time, and we headed for a bar to sample some good wine.

The area around the base of the Montparnasse tower seemed to be a little like the Leicester Square, with big illuminated signs and elevated prices, but the bar we sat in was pleasant enough, and after a few rusty goes at trying to remember pre-GCSE French, we managed to get our order accross to the waiters. After that we just decided to eat locally, and we found a sweet Italian place where more wine was drunk and food was eaten, and after a long day we decided to turn in relatively early.

The next day we were all up bright and early and we went off in search of some breakfast en route to the Eiffel tower. We had a fantastic breakfast of fresh coffee, fresh bread and fresh croissants with freshly squeezed orange juice- Yummy!

The rest of the day was passed by queuing at the Eiffel tower, queuing in the Eiffel tower, queuing for the Batobus, having a look inside the Notre Dame and hopping between bars and cafes. One of the most surprising things for me was how many people smoke. It must be much more prominent for me now that smoking has been banned inside bars and pubs, and maybe it was becuase we had lovely weather the weekend we visited, but outside every bar and cafe there were people smoking heavily, and loads of people going from place to place while smoking, and I think I was most surprised to see that it still seemed cool to smoke, whereas I think that is slowly starting to change in the minds of young people in the UK.

That evening we decided to go to the Gare de Lyon for our dinner. Some might think that it’s a strange choice to go to a train station for dinner, and possibly assume that one of us was an avid train spotter, but upstairs in the Gare de Lyon is an incredibly richly decorated restaurant called the Le Train Bleu, which was the best possible choice for our big night out in Paris. We all got dressed up and looked brilliant and spent the evening soaking up the fantastic atmosphere and eating incredible cuisine.

The next morning we had a quick trip up the Montparnasse tower to get a different perspective on Paris and have a cup of coffee a few hundreds of metres above the city, but all too soon our trip was over and it was time to go home. The journey home was much easier than the journey out there and we got straight on a train and were home in a few hours. Thank you to everyone on the trip, I had a great time, and an especially big thank you to my Granddad who made it all possible!