Bonjour Le France :)

So our family trip. Where do I start?

If I were to write how we decided to have a family trip in UK/Paris. it will take ages. to cut the story short. for me, it started when Mom said "you want to go to London with the kids? I'll pay for the return tickets.." and the rest was history, 3 month of planning. and there we were.

Paris.

What can I say.

City of Love?

City of Lights.

Well, whatever it is called. I fell in love with it the moment we arrived. 

The beautiful people. 

The beautiful clothes.

The beautiful handbags. I must say, being in Paris for only 3 days somehow made me fall in love with handbags. Like I must have all those lovely handbags I see. No joke. I really want them. 

but lets not talk about handbags. It will take forever. and you will see no ending to it.

Lets talk about the crazy adventure we had getting on the train to go to Paris. So we arrived at Heatrow at 7am like that, and we took the subway to atif's (my lil bro who is studying there) place to deposit the stuff we didnt want to bring to Paris - it was only 3 days in Paris so we figured backpacking made more sense then carrying all our huge luggage. anyways, the plan was to deposit our stuff and straight to Kings Cross where we would take the train to Paris. but well, us being us, plus having 2 kids in the bunch, we kinda lepak first and changed and whatnot. mom wanted to take the cab to the train station but atif insisted on taking the subway and we barely made it on the train! we didnt know we had to take everything off at security checking and at the end of it I was coat-less running with Alya in my arms getting to the train which by the way started moving as soon as we were on it! drama #1 there.

arrived in Gare Du Nord. everything was in French! it took us a while to get to the taxi stand. got on the cab straight to the place we stayed. Hotels in Paris? CRAZY EXPENSIVE. so we turned to airbnb and rented an apartment instead. Corresponded with the owner via email, he gave us his number but bijak, no one had international roaming.. so drama #2 obviously, how to get in touch with the owner? Nadia (my SIL) was the bravest of us all asked the taxi driver if we could borrow his cell, so problem solved, or so we thought. we managed to call the person, saying we were going to arrive in like 10 minutes time, and he asked us to wait downstairs and he will be there when we arrived. so we waited..and waited.. and nope..no one to greet us, it was dark. and cold. and we didnt know how to reach him, and suddenly, a lady was opening the door and Nadia went running into the building before the door closed and asked the lady to call the owner for us... I swear Nadia is just... brave..and I love her for that!! haha.. or it might be her survival mode kicked in coz we were freezing and tired and she was 5 month pregnant at the time.. so anyway we got in - The apartment was super huge, the deco was modern and i wished it was mine! it was in the 2nd arr. which was considered in the town area. anyways it was walking distance to Notre Dame, so basically, everything was near, bus stand, taxi stand, supermarket, metro.. atif, mom and nadia went to get dinner after we settled in, Alya and I immediately dozzed off once we hit the bed. 

omg - just realized mcm karangan sudah. ok..i'll try to make it short.

next day - woke up early (jet lagged - i was jetlagged the whole week!) - had my dinner/supper at 2am, skyped with ayah, ate again, watched TV, slept, woke up again and it was finally morning!

we walked towards Gare Du Nord coz the nearest checkpoint for the Big Bus Tour was there it just made sense to find breakfast in the area and the place didnt dissapoint us, there were so many cafes to choose from till we had to let our nose decide for us :)

by walking I mean with stopping taking pictures along the way.. :)

had parisian breakfast which was yummy..but because we were so hungry tak sempat nak amek gambar :)

then we got on the bus and started our big bus tour in Paris

I wish I could post all the pictures we took in Paris, but that will be just crazy..

The Big Bus Tour, there were 11 stops all together (eh yeker? tak ingat) but we didnt get off all coz there was not much time, I think we only got off Eiffel Tower jer kot..oh and that street where we saw the Laduree shop..

tamak much? lol! anyways, the weather on the 2nd day there was actually pretty nice. It didnt rain. well atleast not until we were done with the tour but it was still cold freezing for us so it was hot chocolate and coffee at every stop.

of course started with a skema shot first

then the awkward I-dont-know-how-to-pose shots 

and the I-Love-My-Kids-To-death shots

the cheeky boy!!

love you to bits boy!

then ending with the all in family shots

one of my many fav shots there.

 we then headed to Laduree for the oh-so-famous macaroons..

oh! oh! before that, we were looking for toilets and I swear I think these french people dont go to the loo when they're shopping coz it was so hard to find one! and when we did, there was only one of them! and not to mention no baby room so I ended changing alya's diapers at the back of some shop.. drama #3!

there were a lot of places we didnt get to go coz of the time restrain, I wish we had time to go to these places

Galeries LaFayette, the largest LV store in the world, also the christmas market - was really looking forward to the handmade soaps :) but nvm, insyaAllah klu ade rezeki pergi lagi :)

the last day there, it started pouring since morning so it was so hard for us to walk anywhere.. we spent the whole morning in a souvenir shop where we got halau-ed from the first shop for asking discounts (hey! we did want to buy a lot!) - drama #4! the next shop we went to the owner was from Penang so he kinda layan-ed us very nicely and gave a lot of discount :) but already he untung a lot coz we really shopped! hehe..

then we went to The Louvre, but nobody was really in the mood to take pictures because it was raining and crazy cold..

see muka aqil how? whyyyy are you torturinggg me mama!?!?!!!

but we had to right? bila lagi nak g kannn... :)

then we headed to Gare Du Nord to catch the train back to London, which by the way we barely made the train! again!

but this time we did reach the station early, so here comes drama #5 - we wanted to have coffee before we got on the train and went into this cafe, we wanted to order but nobody served us so we taught maybe it was self service and we bought coffee at the stall right outside the cafe coz it looked like its a part of the cafe, when the servers realized it was not their coffee...they asked us to leave very rudely! we tried to explain that no one served us, they didnt even gave us the freaking menu! and we kinda got into an argument and things got really heated up - but one thing mmg i noticed the whole time we were in france, French people are rude!! the only people who were nice were the cafe we had breakfast the 2nd day, and the bus driver (who was not even french!) lain ~~ hampeh!!! mom said never again would she go to Paris ~~ T__T

so another coat-less run with alya on my arms to catch the train - full of drama I tell you! but atleast it wasnt a boring trip no? 

these were what I got for myself from Paris coz we didnt really had time to shop there.. but alhamdulillah... I always wanted to taste the macaroons and get the keychain :) isnt it pretty :) the price is 29euro if you're wondering - please dont convert it into MYR..i know its kinda ridiculous for a keychain! (I saw it was selling for rm209 in ebay ke? CRAZY!) but well, at least I got something nice from Paris right :) no regrets there.

so thats it.. our adventurous trip to Paris :)

will blog about the other places we went slowly, editing pictures and writing posts are really time consuming .. it took me 3 hours for this post alone! 

hope you enjoyed the pictures. if you're in my friend list in FB you could check the rest of the pictures HERE

I didnt make the pictures open to public, i'm sorry!

Love,

Aisyah Samsudin