france
My last month off work began with a trip from Bali back to Hong Kong, a night at home and a day unpacking, doing laundry and repacking then back to the airport… destination Paris. I landed bright n early, then immediately spent an hour sitting in the airport doing life admin (buying a house in NZ while travelling around the world makes for some fun situations!).
The friends (HK mates, from France, now living in London) I was meeting weren’t arriving for another 12 hours so I had a whole day to myself in Paris. I dropped my bag in a train station locker and headed out to find some new sides of Paris as I’ve been lucky enough to do all the classic tourist things on previous trips. I opted for a self guided street art tour and was super impressed by how good it was. The art is all in a part of Paris I’d never been to (the 13th arrondissement) and mostly huge pieces on the sides of buildings in a ton of different styles. The tour used an app and you listened on your headphones, it would tell you “turn left, look to your right” type of instructions to get you around, and then when you’re in front of a piece of art you’d hear about the artist, any special meaning etc. It was a perfect way to explore Paris as a solo traveller. I then made my way to the Coulée Verte René-Dumont, also known as the Promenade Plantée, an old railway line that’s been turned into an amazing green belt running nearly 5km. Some parts are planted with gardens either side, other areas are more park-like with open green spaces, there are tunnels, plazas, ponds, grafitti, sculptures and street art. In places it rises up to the 2nd or 3rd story allowing you peeps into Parisian apartments, and near one end it runs over a viaduct with each archway containing a cute store of some sort. It was lunchtime when I arrived to the viaduct and multiple stores had a small table outside where the staff were sharing lunch together, so wholesome! I wrapped up the day with a ridiculous hot chocolate served with a pile of cream, and some reading in a cute park then made my way to meet my friends and grab my luggage. Our accomodation for the night was at one of my friends parent’s houses, which is an incredible historical building: the left hand section of the Russian section from Paris’s World Fair of 1878!! This set the tone for upcoming intriguing accomodation options on this trip.
Next morning we headed for Lyon by train, where two Rugby World Cup games awaited us. After the first of many delicious traditional french style lunches we met up with the rest of our crew (me + 4 frenchies for the week) and made our way to our “chalet”. We’d chosen accomodation to be close to the rugby stadium and it turned out it was kinda like a camping park, right beside a lake, with a bunch of little cabin type houses on it.
The next two days each started with buffet breakfasts ad chill time at the park and then epic multi course lunches at local restaurants in Lyon tasting the local specialties. But the highlight of both days was heading to the stadium for evening rugby world cup games. The first one was All Blacks v Uruguay, the French crowd got right into it and the atmosphere was awesome even though the game was one-sided. The final night in Lyon was France vs Italy, we headed to the stadium early to soak up the vibes - all the French were dressed up and singing and it was such a great energy. The game was also pretty one sided but the stadium bought a whole extra level of energy for their home team, epic! After the game we decided we needed to check out the so-called “Nightclub” in the basement of the restaurant in the camping ground - we were shocked to find it was totally legit! From bouncers stopping us cos we’d drunk a beer outside the entrance, to a Moët photo wall and a DJ accompanied by a saxophonist it was a hilarious discovery and totally worth the visit.
Our crew separated the next morning and the original 3 of us set off for the countryside. First stop was the castle, yes the castle, that they got married in. Owned by friends of the family we’d managed to score an invitation to lunch, which somehow managed to pull off being very simple but extremely delicious and fancy feeling. Paired with wine and cheese of course all while seated on a long table in a dining room literally hundreds of years old, a bit of a pinch me situation. Our host for the night was my friends sister, who recently moved to the countryside because her fiance got a job as a policeman there. The job includes housing and so we discovered that our beds for the night were sharing a wall with the local holding cells - a very normal apartment in a very unusual setting! We were treated to another incredible meal, centered around a local cheese and rolled ourselves into bed. A quiet morning recovering and a quick walk around the village and to a waterfall then we were on the train back to Paris for one more night in the Russian world expo house before we said our farewells. It was really special to spend time with our HK friends and some of their family, and get to experience France through a bunch of totally lovely French people.
