Paris, Day 1-8th May 2011 (Part 3 After breakfast walkabout)

Below is the picture of the shop where we bought our breakfast. Reasonably priced for budget tourists like us

Notice how all the chairs are facing outwards at the cafes? No wonder the Parisians dresses up even to take the garbage out!

Doing the tourist stuffs, looking at souvenirs.

And then this…Amorino – Italian Gelato. Ok, so we are not in Italy but it was delicious!

Will someone open a franchise in Malaysia!? (http://www.amorino.com/en/) – available at the time of writing in most Western European countries, New York and New Caledonia.

The Georges Pompidou Centre (that’s the guy on the poster). More about this place later. It’s in the itinerary.

We circled the place and ended back at our apartment. That’s the café opposite.

Coming up next – the Marais walk!

Paris, Day 1–8th May 2011 (Part 2 Where we stayed)

Coming off the Metro, we walked on Rue Pierre Lescot, cut thru Rue de la Cossonnerie towards the main road of Boulevard de Sebastopol. It was a cool and refreshing morning, temperature probably below 20’C.
There weren’t that many people at that hour, the streets were quite empty when we crossed Sebastopol road and looked for the SFR shop on de la Reynie.

The picture above was taken from an angle towards Boulevard de Sebastopol. We had instructions on how to enter the building, codes and all, but the we had problems getting in. Can’t remember what was the reason but we couldn’t reach the owner, so I had to make an urgent call to my sister and asked her to contact him.
We booked at this beautiful bed and breakfast place called deLareynie Guest Houses (he has a few). They have a Studio in Notre dame, another studio in the Marais district, and finally rooms in the delareynie apartment. We chose the last one. It was fantastic location, and well kept. In hindsight, the studio would have been perfect too as we could have bought the many many fresh food and cooked our own meal (since we were on a budget). 
It was still too early and our room wasn’t ready, so we decided to walk about and find some breakfast.

As you can see from Google Earth, the Georges Pompidou Centre was just behind our rooms, so that’s where we walked towards.

At that time, most shops were just opening and we were famished. So we shared sandwiches, various cuts of meat/kebabs and an espresso each of course.


We weren’t alone at our table
After a slow breakfast, we headed back to our rooms.

That’s my room in the photo above. A place for me to rest and relax for the coming week. Initially there were to be 4 of us, but my friend dropped out at the last minute, hence I downgraded to a single room.

That’s the bigger room with the balcony. It’s really lovely, simple design but nice touches.

That’s taken from the balcony overlooking Boulevard de Sebastopol. Lovely.
I will highly recommend the Delareynie rooms for travellers who wants a nice accommodation in a strategic part of Paris. It saves us lots of travelling time and it’s in a safe neighborhood. However, if you are in a bigger group who intend to party the night away and noisy……it’s may not be so suitable in the rooms because it is primarily still a private residence. Please get the studios then.
The DeLareynie website is: http://www.delareynie.fr/home.html

Paris, Day 1–8th May 2011 (Part 1)

AirAsia X flies into Orly airport. We were in the Orly Sud (south) terminal early in the morning, about 9am and proceeded straight to the Tourisme Information (TI) counters.

After waiting for the lady to finish flirting with another guy, we were attended to quite well, in English. We bought all the necessary tickets, and Museum pass here too.

The OrlyVal train costs 10.25 Euros and goes straight to Antony, before we had to connect with the RER B line into Chatelet-Les Halle.

Lotus doing some last minute reading from our super guide book, Rick Steve’s (http://www.ricksteves.com/). It’s well written with lots of tips and good advices, for example, selection of entrances, which tickets to use, best time to visit, and most importantly, as a guide to each of the places we visited. It gives good historical write up and anecdotes. The book never left our side throughout the trip and was definitely the backbone in our everyday planning.

Justin was tired after getting little sleep on the flight, relaxing and just taking in the scenery.

Note: I’ve decided to break this blog into smaller parts, so that it’s easier for me to blog daily.

Paris 2011

This has been a long delayed post. The trip came about when Air Asia X first launched their KL-Paris service on the 14th February 2011. If I was not mistaken, tickets started selling in October 2010 and we (Justin and Lotus) kinda mulled about going. However, we didn't immediately buy it on the opening day. It was after a few days, over dinner that we agreed to go ahead and purchase the tickets.

We snagged the return tickets for about RM1,200 each inclusive of taxes. Not a bad deal considering it cost me about RM5k return when I last visited using MH. Our travel dates are in early May.

Of course, with such a long wait, we didn't do much early preparation. Only with my sister's advice did we planned and booked our accommodation at a B&B place by November because May will be the start of the peak season.

Lotus bought a guide book but we were too busy before the trip to read much. I only managed to flip thru and marked out the important places we planned to visit.

On that day itself, the flight was full and surprisingly, most of the passengers were Caucasians, and not holiday making Malaysians. Anyway, check-in went without a hitch. The purchased extra luggage load wasn't even necessary.


While the seats feel slightly narrower then normal MH economy flight, but generally they are as comfortable….for a 12 hours flight.



Note: Unfortunately, AirAsia X decided to discontinue their KL-Paris flights from March 2012 onwards due to high fuel cost

Photos courtesy of Justin Lim