Travel to France, Île-de-France, Paris.

It is morning, it is sunny, and we are in Paris! We decide to eat in the hotel breakfast room- a lovely subterranean cave with a dandy machine that makes lattes- to help us get an earlier start on the day. John has already been down to the front desk to assure that we are moving out of the light-less room. Getting ready for the day in the interior, no-window bathroom has been a challenge. Luckily the hotel hair dryer is hardwired in so that worked, however I am not quite sure if my make-up is on my face, at all. "Oui, oui. We will move you, just pack up your luggage and we will take care of it." Pack up. oh. The room is 10x10 with a European king bed; we have unpacked everything so we could stack and hide suitcases in order to move around. Luckily we have been using packing cubes and envelopes and the rest we just kind of throw in...We are on a mission to see the Louvre! The lady at the front desk (who is now beginning to show that she is not very fond of us) assures us that the Louvre is "very close.

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Travel to France, Île-de-France, Paris.

I don't know how we will go past L'Orangerie as our favourite so far - this gallery is such a gem, and perfect with kids as it is so small and peaceful. We hopped on our trusty velibs and rodein the sunshine through the Tuileries gardens this morning on our way there. The avenues of trees are truly beautiful. I ignored the fact that the restaurant in the gardens is a tourist trap, and took my time enjoying a cafe-au-lait and watching the people go past.

With our Paris passes we skipped the queue at L'Orangerie and were admitted very quickly to the gallery, which only allows a small number of people to enter at a time. I had no idea that L'Orangerie had been built expressly to house Monet's paintings. The beautiful colours of the artwork and unique white curved walls, combined with magnificent natural light, captured everyone's imaginations, and we spent quite a long time just wandering, or sitting and admiring. The children were quite awed to be seeing Monet's paintings "In the flesh" rather than on notecards or coasters!

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Travel to France, Île-de-France, Louvres.

And so we are well installed in our Marais apartment which we’ve found to be even more charming than in its website photos (if that is possible). Our welcome was made even warmer on the cool and drizzly Paris morning we arrived when we found that our host Hans had provided us with a most generous care package of fruit, milk, juice, brioche and jams, cheese and wine, Nespresso coffee maker plus capsules and all capped off with a miniature Eiffel Tower. The apartment absolutely ticks all the boxes – light and airy, on a quiet street, with a boulangerie a few doors down, and across from that a café (Les Temps du Cerise) with a zinc topped bar, the Seine at one end of the street, and the Rue San Antoine (with fruit shops, traiteurs, bottle shops, boulangeries, supermarkets and other smart shops ) at the other, and all of this within a stone’s throw (fortunately not in the May 1968 sense) of the Place de la Bastille. There is a danger that one could very comfortably spend a long time here without ever really needing to go more than a few hundred metres from the front door; fortunately we Bienvenue a Paris arrival care package compliments of our generous host Hans.have not been seduced into that trap.

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