Paris 1 and drive from London

Left London with plenty of time, which was just as well as navigating my way through Croydon was a bit of nightmare.  What an awful place, I would hate to live there.  So far out, yet so terrible.  I eventually joined the A23, which eventually became the M23.  This was fairly quick, although the road signs had my worried as they said the A23 was closed- which thankfully it wasn’t.  In the end got to Brighton quickly, then it was not far to Newhaven.

Didn’t see much of the town, but is a standard grotty port town.  The ferry was pretty knackered out hulk with the Transmanche branding on it.  Cabin was a bit musky and knackered but in the end it was a short crossing.  After a bit of deck time watching departure I bedded down.

I slept, but not for long as the journey was short.  I almost questioned the point in having a cabin.  Having said that we arrived in good time.

It was a pretty smooth journey pre morning daylight across and through and I was able to get to Roissy to pick up Maria in good time.  Equally good was the journey to the hotel which was smooth as anything, helped by knowing where I was going.  This is the advantage of staying somewhere you have been before.  Less good was parking in the hotel car park box, whereby I put a bash on the front of the car.   It was a tight space.

After this we headed to Bastille and the Place de Vosges.  This was a tad touristy and we ended up eating a bit of a disappointing lunch at a Brasserie.  When I say disappointing I had a steak tartar which you can’t really go wrong with, but Maria’s duck was pretty average.

Later headed to Montmartre and the Sacre Coeur. However in the process, we got off the tube Barbes Rochechouart which views with Croydon in awfulness.  The area was full of police and dodge.  To be honest I didn’t really like going up the Sacre Coeur, it was full of bloody tourists.  As was the rest of Montmartre. 

After walking down Pigalle, past some pretty grim looking street workers we headed to Butes Chammont which was really good.  It is one of the few things in Paris I had never done so was good to go.  As was the sunset.

I decided I wanted to go this bar called La Fine Mousse, which I heard about on some blog.  Basically it services good French beers (hard to believe in a land of s*** beer).  Unfortunately it was difficult to find so after having drinks in 2 bars, then a crepe we got chatting to someone with internet pointing us towards the bar.  In the end we did find it and it was worthwhile.  Tucked away and local but great beer and a nice bar to match.  If you don’ drink beer they even served decent cider (Breton style).