Jalan Jalan Perancis 3

After our lunch, we continued walking towards Centre Pampidou which is the biggest modern art museum in Europe. It was a long and draggy walk because it was raining while we were walking and it was dead cold! Brrrrr~ 

 

This is Centre Pampidou..Looks artistic isn't it?

After snapping a few pictures, we continue walking towards Hotel de Ville to hunt for our tea shop which is Marriage Frere. Yeap. All done on foot and no metro was taken. But along the road, there are many shops where you can shop for cheap shoes for girls and fashionable sport shoes for guys. I even got myself a boots for only 15 Euro which is RM60. It is a bargain lo considering it is a stiletto boots! haha. Anyways, if i have more luggage space, i would have bought even more shoes back. =p

Some random colorful art piece along the way.

Hotel de Ville

They even have a skating ring right in front of Hotel de Ville and there are tonnes of Parians skating there. Only during I would have join the fun if only I knew how to skate..haha..Anyways, after stopping by a few shops here and there, we finally found our Marriage Frere tea shop

Marriage Frere

Once you enter the shop, the sight alone is breath taking because they have tonnes of tea varieties that you can choose from. If you look at their catalog, I guarantee you, you will stunned for a while because there are just too many teas to choose from! Being a tea lover, we ought to get some tea here, especially White tea which are really hard to find in Malaysia.

 

Yeap. If you ever encounter tea of this brand, do buy one and try, because it is really different. We bought Marco Polo white tea which is a random pick and gosh, the smell of the tea and the taste of the tea is exactly the same! It smells of floral with a hint of sweetness and I think they added a bit of Violette into it. It is just plain awesome and it is so sayang to finish it. =(

After our tea shopping, we went over to Restaurant Chartier for our dinner. 

As told by Mr Pierre, Restaurant Chartier served the most authentic and traditional french cuisine. We certainly can tell by the interior of the restaurant and a look at the menu. 

It is very cramp up, a typical French restaurant set up and even the waiter uniform is very 'French'. It was not a surprise for the waiter to scribble down our order on the table mat itself as we were informed earlier by Mr Pierre. haha. An very interesting way to remember what are our orders. 

Let's look at some food shall we?

My jambon salad 

The jamon serrano is good as usual but I prefer it to be slightly thinner so it is less chewier and it goes superbly well with the gerkin on the side.

Their set menu prawn salad

B's Pate

Surprisingly, pate goes well with gerkin too! Arrr..it makes my mouth waters now. haha

Beef Bouguignon.

Beef bouguignon is a traditional french beef stew and this one, of probably the most authentic one that I had tasted so far. It is very filling because the portion was huge! it is like one whole slab of beef being put on your plate with a lot of macaronis. It has a very strong taste and may not be everyone's favorite dish.

Salmon Steak

Grilled Lamb

Grilled Steak with herb Butter

As you can see from all the food pictures above, a traditional french meal consist of protein and a lot of carbo. Where are the vegetables? Like what my friend told me, a lot of vegetables are not available during winter. Hmmm, I want my vege!!!! Overall, perhaps our expectation towards Chartier is too high and we eventually left with dissapointment. Or maybe is the food that we had chosen. Anyways, you should go there for the experience and hey, order duck confit next time. I heard from my friend it was darn good!

Galaries La Fayette

If you are a fashionista, you should know what is Galaries la Fayette. It is one of the most high end shopping mall in Paris and everything inside,are mostly well known brands. So yeap, not my cup of tea, window shopping will do. haha.

The interior is awesome though!

And so, that ends our second day in Paris. A lot of walking involved, and surprisingly, I miss all the walking! haha. 

Stressed

Okay, for some reason, I am scare now. huhu~~~

Well. Not trying to boast or anything, I had finally completed my Literature Review part of my dissertation which was a damn hard work I am telling you. All the journals I had been reading, all the research online, cracking my head up down left right to spill something out is so not fun.

And comes my tutor which is our lovely lecturer that followed us to France. He recently became my tutor because my previous one will be on maternity leave soon. So yea, he has no idea of what I am doing so far and I am suppose to meet up with him next week. So what if he thinks that whatever that I am doing now is not right? Or something is missing here and there and I have to change the whole thing! OMG! You know how scary is that? Partially because I have completed my Literature review and collected 80 percent of my data, I can not afford to turn back now.

Oh my oh my~~ Please please tell me that everything that I am doing now is correct and I am on the right track. I know I still have time to redo if anything goes wrong, but, but, all my hard work! All the time I had spent on researching and all..pray pray pray...

I am going to freak out soon. Stupid dissertation, you are stressing me mentally and physically you know! Erm, maybe not physically la. College is starting tomorrow. How fast~~ =( All the assignements, exams, experiments and that problematic dissertation..ARR! I don't want to go back to college!

Jalan Jalan Perancis 2

Here comes Day 2 part 1

Musee du Louvre

How can you miss out this popular tourist destination when you are in Paris. Like my mum said, it is one of the biggest and most influential museum in the world. Before going to Musee du Louvre, we decided to walk to the opposite direction where 'Eye of Paris' lies.

While walking towards 'Eye of Paris'

We were caught up by some awesome looking 18sx statues and we started to camwhore with most of it. Like the picture above. =p Oh well, they were left there for a reason. haha.

Eye of Paris

Looking gorgeous isn't it? It is right opposite Musee du Louvre and you just can not miss it. If you have look through my pictures in FB, you may notice I have a lot of tree pictures. Well, I have a certain special liking for trees during winter. I keep telling people that and they will stare at me one kind. haha. For me, the trees are now asleep and resting, waiting to bloom when spring sneaks in.Hmm..okay, I am weird. =p

And so, comes my picture with trees. haha

Its huge im telling you.

After snapping some pictures at the 'Eye of Paris', we walked back to Musee du Louvre. Yeap, its a transparent looking pyramid building. But do not underestimate the size of it because of the artifacts were kept under where we stood in that picture. I heard it was huge underneath. Yeap, I heard. We did not went it because of time constraint. My mum nagged me for one whole day because I did not went it and see Mona Lisa. Oh well, till next time Mona Lisa. =p

Us us..=)

Seriously, why are all the buildings in France are built in a way where it is very very straights? Nice nice nice..proper planning it is...

Next stop..time to hunt down some food to fill our tummy..and guess what we saw? None other than a Boulangerie ( Shop that is specialize in bread and pastry ) When you come to France, the thing you can not miss and MUST not miss, will be their arrays of bread and pastries. Eating sandwich as breakfast lunch and dinner is pretty normal in France, and as a bread lover myself, I have no objections or rejections to the wonderful sandwiches of France. Like this one, is one of the best I had eaten in Paris.

Roasted beef sandwich with pickle

But bear in mind, in France, they use a lot of mustard in their sauce, not so much of the white american mayo. So whenever you see a squeeze bottle which appears to look like a mayo, please be extra careful, it might just be a super spicy French mustard which taste exactly like wasabi. Like us, we thought it was mayo so we squeeze super a lot on our sandwich and once you bite on it, hmmmmm, SPICY AR! haha. So be careful people..

Then comes Chez Claude where we had our first proper French set lunch.

It look like a gloomy shabby restaurant from the outside..At first we were attracted to their price value set lunch with duck confit in it. So without thinking much, we went in and sat down. It was pretty empty when we first reached there, and was thinking hmm..looks like a quiet restaurant.But I was wrong, the crowd started to walk into the restaurant and it was all jam packed while we were having our lunch. So what we ate there?

I had escargot as starter

Actually it was my very first time eating escargot actually and I don't know how to use the cutlery that was used to grab the snails. Ahem, memalukan. =p Anyways, the escargot was filled with some pesto like paste with olive oil and it taste good. The sauce is good to eat with bread though. =)

B had French Onion Soup

This is probably the best French Onion Soup I had tasted so far. It is very tasty, the seasoning is just perfect and goes very well with the cheese crouton and bread. They certainly weren't stingy with their onions. =)

I had Grilled Steak with bernaise sauce as main

My doneness for this steak is..cheng cheng cheng! Medium rare o! muahaha..Well, I know a good piece of steak taste really juicy and awesome when it is medium rare so hey, why not. and indeed, the doneness is perfect and perhaps for some people it is too bloody, but surpringly, i love it. =p The steak goes really well with bernaise sauce too...One flaw about this dish is, where is my vege!! 

B had Duck Confit as main

One thing about duck confit is, the whole duck thigh itself is cook in fats slowly until it is tender from the inside and crispy on the outside. It is not easy to get this kind of texture before it is quite time consuming and the control of fire is very important. But Chez Claude had hit it right on the correct key and delivered a splendid dish. Perhaps one small thing that should be included in this dish, some kind of sauce. Because with all the duck confit and fries, it may be a bit too dry. But, it is till spot on! 

Others had grilled lamb with potato and herb butter

The doneness of the lamb is awesome and very well seasoned. The potatoes were very good too, just the right texture and seasoning.

Grilled Salmon with spinach

Perhaps the dish with the most vegetables of the day and I love it. haha. The salmon is fresh and tender and the sauce compliments really well with the fish and spinach.

The best Creme Bulee I ever had!

The texture is as smooth as an ice cream and it just melts away in your mouth. It has a crunchy texture because of the torched caramelize sugar and that creamy smooth sweet custard below. Oh~~~ Heaven~~~

Overall, our lunch was AWESOME! Perhaps one of the best meals I had in France along the trip. All the dishes were done to perfection and did not dissapoint us at all. Thumbs up to Chez Claude!

When it comes to dessert, everywhere in Paris you can see one pastry shop after another and everything on the display counter seems to be SO tempting. The colors, presentation and even the price is pretty affordable. Despite having a full tummy from our lunch, we still bought a little macaroon frambois as our dessert. 

Macaroon tower anyone? and this is not even Pierre Herme or Laduree and it looks so nice.

Tempting right? 

This is what we bought. Macaroon Frambois. It is actually two huge raspberry or rose flavor macaroon sandwich between raspberries and lychee filling in the middle. Well, of course we had this before we tried the one at Pierre Herme. It can not be compared at all because Pierre Herme's Ispahan had reached the heaven point of how a dessert should be. As for this macaroon frambois, it still taste awesome and it has a really nice texture to it. The macaroon is soft and once you bite into it, it just melts away. Thumbs up!

Oh la la~~ Isn't all these food making you hungry? I am...

To be continued~~

Jalan Jalan Perancis 1

Okay. I need a little break from my work so yeap, I shall blog about my France Trip! Wheeee~

KLIA - Dubai International Airport

First time flying with Emirate and honestly, it is not as good as I expected it was. Perhaps it was my first impression of the unprofessional air stewardess who does not smile and literally threw my food on my tray. The food was quite good though even though I did not eat much because it was midnight when we flew to Dubai and they have a snack meal and breakfast meal in the same flight. 

The best breakfast I had in flight..Scramble egg on top of potatoes, mushrooms and sausages. 

Dubai International Airport

We arrived at Dubai International Airport at the most busy time where we lined up for almost an hour before we could go through the custom. It was a total chaos. But thanks to the super long line, we don't have to wait long before boarding on to our connecting flight to Paris.

Dubai - Paris

After 7 hours of long and exhausting flight, we are finally stepping on Paris's soil! Hooray! First thing we know, it is cold wei! Especially when the wind starts blowing, you feel like gosh! I want a face mask now! Thank god I have my Michelin jacket. XD After a quick wash up at our hotel, we straight went to the Metro, heading towards - Champs Elysees around 5pm. 

One thing I REALLY admire about their metro is punctuality. It only takes 2 minutes for each carriage to arrive and if you think the train will wait for you, then you are wrong. It will only stop in each station for awhile, just enough time for people to walk out and walk in. If you are dilly dallying and taking your own sweet time, either you will be stucked in the train or you will just miss it. So yeap, very efficient and our KTM is NO WHERE near their metro system. tsk tsk tsk. 

First glimpse of Champs Elysees

Champs Elysees is one of the most prestigious streets in Europe where all the shopping malls, cafes, specialties shops etc located. And certainly, it live up to its name. 

Anyone not familiar with this brand? I doubt so. haha

Yeap. We are not so much of a shopper (especially with branded things), so we walked pass all the shops while hunting for food to eat. But since Wayne needs to buy a purse for his mum, we have the chance to walk into this prestigious LV outlet to see what is all these madness about. I would not say I am shop struck, but I certainly admire the professionalism of all the employees working there. Even though I really don't understand why will people spent a fortune on bags and purse, but hey, it is still an interesting experience.

Next stop Arc de Triomphe.

Arc de Triomphe is one of the most famous monuments in Paris and it is built to honour those who fought and died for France during the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars. 

Yes, you can reach the top of Arc de Triomphe. But first, you need to go through this.

Spiral Stairs >.<

Because of this, I found out that I am scare of spiral stairs. It was such a torturous moment to climb up all these stairs, what more coming down. Urghh. But, the view above is really worth it.

Next stop, Eiffel Tower

How can you miss Eiffel Tower when you go to Paris right? It is a die die must go place to visit in Paris and the sight is just Breath taking. Seriously, it just looks amazing whether it is from far, or when you are just underneath it. 

Caught camwhoring..=p

And that, concludes our first evening in Paris. As you can see, we were rushing rushing and rushing to those three places because we wanted to utilize our time in Paris. At the end of the day, we were so exhausted because of the long hours flight and also nonstop walking and walking in Paris. 

To be continue~~~~