A MOVER'S RUSH AND PICS FROM PARIS

Hi everyone! Sorry for the silence here on the blog. There's a few bits to organise when preparing to move countries so my hands have been rather tied up with it all. And when you throw a couple of young children in the mix it's guaranteed there are not many opportunities to sit down! Plus as I don't have much time in London left I'm trying to see my friends as much as I can. 

Anyway, I wanted to come and tell you that the blog hasn't been forgotten about and I'll be back again soon. To accompany this post here are a few more pictures from my trip to Paris the other week. Needless to say the weather was incredible!  

Have a lovely week and see you soon!

Minna x

AN EVENING IN PARIS

A few days ago I hopped on the Eurostar for a very quick trip to Paris. I'm in love with the city! I regret not going there more in the past few years as it's so incredibly easy and quick from London. You travel comfortably on a train from the centre of London for 2.5 hours after which you arrive in the centre of Paris. Super convenient in comparison to flying.

I got there on the evening of a beautiful day.

"Look through the little hole and turn the camera like this."

"Remember to focus before pressing! On me, not the background! And please don't cut my feet off."

Oh well... At least Arc de Triomphe is in focus and feet are in! 

I love my camera (Canon 5D Mark II in case anyone is interested) but it's not always easy to explain to others how to use it. You also get really fussy with your pictures and feel like a right nag when asking your friends to kneel down to get the whole view, not to cut off body parts etc. etc. 

A little evening walk down the very busy Champs-Elysees.

One of the things I will miss about London is the easy access to rest of the Europe. What a special, beautiful, culture rich part of the world it is! Have a fun Friday everyone!

Minna x

OUTLET SHOPPING OUTSIDE PARIS

I'm currently spending time in Paris and I thought I'd post about this place where I went yesterday, La Vallée Village. Few friends of mine managed to convince me to go there with them. I have to say, I love the idea of outlets but I've never really found anything from them. I don't have the patience to queue up, I don't like to try things on several times and I never seem to find anything in my size.  

However, this little village can be a cute place to visit if you are planning a trip to Paris and you are into shopping (and you have more patience than I do). It reminds me of Bicester Village, another outlet where I once went outside London.

You'll find young and cool French high street brands there: Maje, Sandro, Zadig & Voltaire, Vanessa Bruno etc. amongst others such as Céline, Valentino, Givenchy, Loro Piana, Marni, Jimmy Choo, Ralph Lauren, Monclair and so on.

I bought few T-shirts, so not worth the trip going there for me, but I think it's a matter of luck what you'll find in outlets. You never know!


Heidi x

PARIS BY NIGHT

Here comes my favourite part of the Paris trip. The night life. We consulted a fair few different sources and I think we got it spot on when it comes to choosing the right restaurants and clubs for us (or a club as it turns out). We wanted the restaurants fun and lively with good, proper food (NOT fine dining in a stuffy atmosphere please.)

So let's start with our Friday night. There are sadly no pictures of the restaurant but we dined at Paris's La Petite Maison. The original one is on the French Riviera in Nice. There is also one in London, Cannes and Dubai (there could be new ones too that I'm not aware of). The food is always good in any of the LPM's. Tasty, hearty, good, honest food that never disappoints. I also love the fact that you can share both the starters and the mains should you wish to. Paris's LPM is located in the Fouquets Barriere Hotel. In the very Parisian style you dine in a conservatory like area at the front of the hotel. The restaurant is dimly lit with wall lights and candles. The decor is simple with white table cloths and draped curtains with some contemporary art on the walls to follow the style of the original one in Nice.

After dinner we were certainly not ready to call it a night yet so we headed to a club called Raspoutine. What a seriously cool venue. True to its name it's decorated in a Russian style in dark red velvet. It's nice and small and fills up late, from 1am onwards. I say late but I mean late for me, which is probably not late by Paris standards. The crowd was beautiful to say the least and the nice thing about the people was that it was all ages. Sure the majority were in their twenties but we didn't stick out like a sore thumb as there were plenty of other groups of party goers in their thirties and forties and I dare to say even fifties. We had so much fun and the music was so good (house just the way I like it, not too heavy but fun) that we returned the next night!  

On Saturday we started the evening off by having a couple of drinks at the bar of Le Royal Monceau Hotel. It has a lovely set up and their Christmas decorations were just stunning.

We then headed off to dinner at a restaurant called Monsieur Bleu. Another great recommendation by someone. Modernly decorated with a lively, fun atmosphere. Table is hard to come by so a booking well in advance is a must.

Once in France one must have frog legs. And they were very, very good too!

It pains me to admit that this is my only picture of Eiffel Tower from the trip. How bad is that? Btw I want to apologise for the picture quality of this post as a whole. It's just impossible to carry a big camera around in the evenings so a compact one and iPhone had to do.

Talking about picture quality... I wanted a picture of us girls outside Monsieur Bleu as it was located in such unique surroundings. But the men were in such a rush that this is the best we got! 

This time I won't be waiting five years before returning to Paris! What a great birthday weekend!

Minna x

SATURDAY IN PARIS

My Paris posts are somewhat delayed (sorry, I wanted to post them as soon as I got back) but I couldn't let anything, even blogging, get in a way of my Christmas shopping and wrapping as I had to get it all done by yesterday. Reason being that right now I'm writing from the middle of a desert. Well pretty much at least. More about that in a day or two but let me tell you about last Saturday in Paris first. 

We got up rather late and by the time we were up and about it was not far from midday! After a couple of shops we were headed to l'Avenue for a fabulous lunch. What a fun place (not one to be taken that seriously though...). Great food (I had a tuna carpaccio followed by salmon, both seriously tasty), great atmosphere and the most amazing people watching. Very bad light for pictures though hence I only have these couple of random shots. And I don't even like oysters!

After lunch boys and girls went their separate ways. You guessed it: girls shopping, boys not.

Not before we had taken a couple of snap shots though! Wide smile is obviously due to my birthday present! Oh and due to being in Paris in an amazing company!

We also had to get a picture of the girls looking rather silly as we all wore the same trousers. What are the chances?

But then off we went along Avenue Montaigne.

We browsed a couple of shops (one of them being Montaigne Market, OMG) but I must say my shopping stamina is not great. Not before long I was very ready to head back to the hotel to sit down and lift my feet up instead.

And so were the girls.

I don't know why on earth I hadn't been to Paris for so long? I totally fell in love with it this time and am not going to wait another five years to visit it again.

Back to the hotel we went. 

Tomorrow I still want to give a couple of Paris dinner recommendations but after that we'll move onto a very different kind of place; Oman! Right now I'm going to collapse in bed after pretty much missing a night's sleep. There wasn't much space for me to sleep on the flight after my girls had made themselves comfortable! ;-)

Minna x

PARIS, HOTEL LE ROYAL MONCEAU

Let me introduce the hotel we stayed at in Paris; Le Royal Monceau. Upon checking in (after popping into the Alaia store on our way from the train station, of course) we were escorted in our rooms as you do. They took us to a private lift, which they said was only available to those who stayed in the private area of the hotel. I thought to myself that's strange as we had just booked the standard room type. When they then opened the door to our room my jaw dropped! Talk about an upgrade! We were given the Presidential Suite ie. a modest 280 m2 of pure luxury designed by Philippe Starck. All thanks to our friend who works for the Raffles group and a very kind General Manager of Le Royal Monceau.

Now the pictures I took of the room do no justice to it. Reason being that it was too messy to be photographed in the mornings (men!!) and by the time we got back to the room after it had been made up again it was dark... But you should get an idea. The rest of the hotel, its bar, the spa and all the communal areas were stunning too. Oh and one must mention the hotel boutique called l'Eclaireur. They have picked some beautiful items in there by Celine, Givenchy, Saint Laurent and many more. They had some colours in some of the Celine bags that even the Celine store itself didn't so if you're in a shopping mission it's worth a visit. The service was the friendliest and most efficient too out of all the Paris stores we visited.

Now that was a weekend I'd quite happily repeat many many times again! ;-) I still have some Paris pictures and tips to share so stay tuned.

Minna x