Je reviens à Paris! - My First year Anniversary Post

I can hardly believe it has been a year since I started blogging. And what a pretty good year it had been! After retiring from the corporate world I had more time to do what I really and truly love, to travel! And to write about it. Or TRY to write about it.....

And what's a more fitting post to celebrate my first year anniversary in the blogosphere than an entry where it all began, the inspiration of my blog's title, my favorite city, Paris.

What was supposedly a quick Parisian shopping trip for the Big K and I turned into a last minute (well, not really I'm just being melodramatic about it) three-week girl-bonding getaway for my sisters and I in Paris and New York. Yup, sisters in the plural. You've already met the Gorgeous H in my earlier entries. Now meet my other sister, Stylish P. 

It was my nth time in the City of Light and my sisters' very first. Naturally I had the honor of being their personal tour guide. Or should I say baby sitter as my two pretty and diminutive sisters go out and play in the streets of Paris.  

Strolling along the river Seine. Monsieur Soleil was definitely smiling down at us during our French escapade as we had great cool, sunny weather late in fall.

Apartment at Lamarck-Caulaincourt


Having discovered Montmartre in my earlier visits to Paris and having fallen for its charms, I decided to rent us an apartment in that area again. We were quite lucky to find a place that was clean, pretty cheap and most importantly was on the ground floor. No steep stairs for us this time! "Thank God for small miracles!" I could just imagine the Gorgeous H thinking while lugging her everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-suitcases followed by Stylish P. with her everything-in-the-kitchen-suitcase (because hers was filled with all kinds of foodstuff from protein bars, trail mixes, cookies to instant coffee, cream and even sugar!)  

Our apartment's location this time was just at the foot of Montmartre's famous basilica, Sacré-Cœur.  Even though Sacre-Coeur is tourist central, our street didn't get a lot of tourist traffic which was a great place to come home to after a day of hectic, crowded tourist attractions. 

It was a place where one can pretend to be a local. It was filled with restaurants and cafés where one can sit all day if you don't mind inhaling second-hand smoke, a couple of boulangeries always with freshly baked baguettes, a deli that sells great tasting organic food, several mom and pop grocery stores, a laundromat, a pharmacy, even an Asian store (where we had dinner on our last day in Paris but that's getting ahead of the story). Anything and everything one might need on a two-week stay is right in the neighborhood. Oh, and the metro station is just a few steps away. A mere 15 to 20 minute metro ride and you're back at tourist central.  

Lots of stairs in hilly Montmartre! This is stairmaster heaven.

Pretty impressive door of our apartment's building.

Happy Hour! Oh boy, I couldn't believe the amount of alcohol we finished on this trip. I should have taken a picture of all the empty wine bottles.  

Lamarck-Caulaincourt station, one of the stops on line 12 of the Paris metro.   

So what happened to the Big K you ask? Long story short, he couldn't make the trip as he had to go training for a new airplane. 

 
**Next post: The Three Musketeers' Adventure Continues.....