A Long Weekend in Paris!

Chopin Grave

The last weekend of May, Alessio and I visited Paris, for me it was my fifth time, for Alessio it was his first. The main reason was because we were invited to the wedding of Heidi and Lamine, so I planned numerous activities that would be of interest to Alessio.

We arrived on Saturday around lunchtime and we headed straight for our hotel which was very near to the Arc de Triomphe which I already posted about. I thought Alessio would really like to visit Musée de l´Armée which is situated at Les Invalides, this is the national military museum of France. He liked seeing the exhibition on guns, tanks, weapons, different types of uniforms and war, we also saw the tomb of Napoleon I.

Afterwards we headed to see the Eiffel Tower, no trip to Paris is complete without seeing it (although you can see it from afar in many places) it is one of my favorite sights.  We did more wondering around the beautiful streets and found somewhere to eat.

The next day was rainy but we headed to an area which was new to me too, situated on the left bank of the river Seine is the Parc André Citroen. One of the highlights is a tethered helium balloon which you can go in and rises 300m and you see some of the Parisian sights. Sadly due to the weather we could not go in the balloon so we just walked around the park which was full of people jogging.

That evening was the wedding which I do not have so good photos to show you all! We had a good time and saw some friends which I do not see regularly.

Finally on the Monday our last day we only really had the morning to do some exploring, so we visited the Pere Lachaise Cemetery which I had wanted to visit for some time.  This cemetery has quite a lot of famous people buried here such as Oscar Wilde, Moliere, Chopin, and Jim Morrison which I wanted to see. Unfortunately I wondered up and down the row where he is buried but could not see it. Alessio had a great time climbing over the graves and jumping around, in fact he was so pleased to be here he shouted out "Mummy thank you for bringing me here"!

So our long weekend in Paris was over we headed to the Gare de Lyon for our train back to Zurich. If travelling to Paris from Zurich the train is much better than the plane as you are right in the centre of Paris on arrival!