On Thursday evening last week Uns surprised me by saying we were off to Paris for the weekend which I totally wasn't expecting. All along I was told to keep the weekend free but that was it, she'd organised the entire weekend's plans. We were leaving early on Saturday morning, so after work on Friday I stopped in briefly at Jones' with a few of the work guys before heading home to pack and get our things together before the weekend.

On Saturday morning we woke insanely early to get a taxi over to St. Pancras station to catch the 6am Eurostar over to Paris, arriving there just after 9am local time. From Gare du Nord we caught the Metro over to Saint-Germain-des-Pres and nestled in at Cafe de Flore for coffee, breakfast and a hot chocolate. After something to eat we headed over to Hôtel des Deux Continents to just drop our bags, but luckily our room was available so we were able to check in early.

Once checked in and having dropped our bags, we decided to head over to the Louvre since it was starting to rain and being indoors for the afternoon made more sense. I guess everyone else in Paris had a similar idea as well... the queue to get inside was insane. After queueing in the rain for sometime, we figured we'd just pay the fast-track price and jump the queue to get in quicker! Once inside, we thought we'd head directly to see the Mona Lisa, followed by the Winged Victory of Samothrace, The Venus de Milo, the Virgin of the Rocks and the Dying Slave statues.

We spent a good few hours walking around there looking at various art works and rooms and displays - just unbelievable how big the Louvre actually is. Apparently there are over 380,000 pieces in total - but not all of the collection is exhibited to the public. It's said that if you ever have 100 days spare, you could probably squeeze in every piece of art, but you could only spend 30 seconds on each piece - and that's if you were there all day, every day. Crazy! I had been to the Louvre before, back in 2006 on my first Contiki tour, but was very brief and mainly just to see the Mona Lisa, so was good to return and see it (and others) a bit more leisurely.

After we were done with the artworks, it was back to the hotel to shower and change and make our way over to the river for our dinner boat cruise for the evening. It was a two hour cruise which went up and down the Seine River, taking in all the sights while enjoying a really nice three course meal. Once done with the cruise, we decided to walk over to the Louvre entrance to see the glass pyramid lit up at night before heading back to the hotel after a fantastic evening!

The weather forecast for yesterday was rain, rain and more rain, starting from around 10am. Which was pretty much the time Uns had booked tickets for our priority entrance to the Eiffel Tower :) So to avoid getting completely soaked, we decided to get up early and walk from the hotel, along the river to the Eiffel Tower and get breakfast there, while the weather was still dry. Annoyingly, there was almost no queue for the Eiffel Tower when we first got there, but we only had our time slot later on so decided to first get breakfast at Le Cafe Gustave before going up.

Then as expected, come 10am, it started to bucket it down! Between the rain and gusting wind, it really was a combination of the worst possible weather, especially while we had to stand around waiting for the rest of the group to arrive before we could all go up. Slightly more amusing now though to look back on :) We got the lift up to the second floor and decided, since the weather wasn't ideal, we'd head down to the first floor, walk around there, watch the feature film about the Tower and also grab a coffee. Once the weather had cleared, we landed up getting scuppered by not being able to get back up, but managed to convince one of the lift operators to take us back up to the second floor. From there we caught the lift up to the third floor at the very top and spent a bit of time there. But probably not as long as we'd like to have though, the gusting wind certainly didn't make it all that pleasant to be outside.

Once back down on the ground again, we decided to catch a taxi back to the hotel to shower and change and warm up a bit after getting fairly soaked during our time at the Eiffel Tower. After changing into dry clothes, we decided to pop in to Laduree opposite the hotel for a coffee and macaroons which turned into a disaster with their "cafe blanc" not actually been a direct translation of "white coffee" at all, but rather an infusion of lemon, lime and orange zest, flavoured with orange blossom water! Yeah, we couldn't understand that one either :/ After leaving there suitably unimpressed, we returned to Cafe de Flore for a hot chocolate and then headed up towards Montmartre. The plan for the afternoon was to walk around Montmartre and the Sacre-Coeur Basilica and then later on head over to Moulin Rouge for dinner and a show which I was really looking forward to! The show lasted a couple of hours and was super impressive - with an unbelievable amount of lights, colour and music and all things cabaret :)

Then this morning we had a really early start to get through to Gare du Nord in good time for the 6:45am Eurostar service back to London, arriving back into St. Pancras just after 8am local time. Once there, we grabbed some breakfast and some coffee and then both headed off to work for the day. It's only half way through the morning now, no doubt going to be a long day today, but so much better having had a full day around Paris yesterday and not always having to check the time for our return flight or train! Definitely an awesome surprise and really good weekend away :)