Paris, je t'adore

Excuse my French, it's been a long time since A-Levels...

DPB and I have been planning our summer holiday and we're going to drum rolls please...


PARIS!!!!
Well, Dorset, then Paris.
So I get to spend some time in Tess of the D'Urbervilles country (yes, the Blackmoor Vale) don't worry, I will avoid strangers proffering strawberries and odd earnest-looking men named Angel and then we get to spend a few days in the City of Light.

Champs Elysees at Christmas

Big sigh. 


I know I'm not the only person to feel this way, but I LOVE Paris. 
I mean really, really, really to the depth of my being sort of LOVE. 


I've been lucky enough to have visited the city many times not sure how, but my youngest brother was the one that ended up with a Parisian godfather... he should have been MINE... although my godfather's awesome, too... but I digress. 
I went countless times with my family when I was a child (I still have a fondness for watered-down wine) and as a teenaged student I stayed with a host family in an apartment just off the Champs Elysees. 
Oh yeah. 
While strolling the Left Bank I was approached by an 'artist' who asked to 'sketch' me I said 'non' and I haunted the flea market (Les Puces) at Porte de Clignancourt. 
I was pretty cool.
Those were the days. 

Bouquinistes on the Left Bank

I can't WAIT to re-visit favourite places including (of course):

Shakespeare and Company. Otherwise known as 'heaven'.
I am actually SQUEAKING with excitement.

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But also track down places DPB and I discovered when I took him to Paris as a surprise for his 21st birthday (his first visit... I know).

Saint Julien le Pauvre
Opposite here (as far as I can remember) is a traditional English tea shop.
It looks like something out of an Agatha Christie novel.
I hope it's still open.

The last time I visited was when my father completed the Peking er, Beijing to Paris car race. Yeah, he's kind of like that.
We greeted the convoy of cars in the Place Vendome and had a jolly old knees up staying in the Pavillon Henri IV in St-Germain-en-Laye. 
My eldest brother decided to take his then-fiancee on a tour of the city sewers. 
Yes, in a place famed for love, romance, and spectacular views, my brother took his future wife almost literally into the bowels of the city. 
Yet she still married him WTF, Nellie?

Pavillon Henri IV.
Where Sauce Bearnaise was invented (first concocted?).

It's a big joke that I always drag visitors to the Conciergerie where Marie Antoinette was held prisoner before, er, her demise. 
I love visiting because I have a dark and morbid side? but no-one else seems to find it half as fascinating as I do. 
Have you been?

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Most of all, I can't wait to spend time with DPB don't worry, this won't get too soppy.

Even the traffic lights are romantic in Paris. Hmm.

We don't often get the opportunity to be just the two of us gosh, that was badly expressed. Not cool.
But where better just to be us two than the most romantic city in the world?
Aaaaaaaaah.

The Eiffel Tower and a puddle.

This is what my dreams will look like tonight: