Kiwi Roaming

Bordeaux first. We bid farewell to Saint-Émilion and headed back to Bordeaux for a night before heading up to Paris to meet Milla for the weekend. Another train/bus situation then we had to find our Ibis hotel which was interesting – there are 4 x Ibis near the main train station and the one I chose for us was next to a 2 hectare construction site (will be amazing when this new precinct has been built) so all very hard to navigate.

One of our jobs for Bordeaux was haircuts so we scoped out the cost of barbers and decided to go and find ourselves some clippers instead. This involved a long walk across town to a Hypermarket which was 3 storied with electronics on the top floor. It was mid afternoon as we walked so we stopped for kebabs in a long road of food places we had completely missed last time. The hypermarket mall was near our old hotel (ironicly) and had a couple of other household goods stores in it too. Clippers purchased we headed out to the river so we could see the mirror pond actually as a mirror today – it was overcast but no wind yay.

Haircuts in the hotel, which I must say was terrible, there was a bed, one side table, a small ensuite and that’s it! no safe, kettle, cups, wardrobe – nothing in the tiny room. Bed was ok but the welcome drinks excluded wine! a travesty.

Paris – next morning we caught the TGV to Paris where we are meeting Milla for 48 hours of fun. We caught a train to take us into Paris Montparnasse Gare which is where Milla’s train from Nates came into that evening. We also booked ourselves into the Mecure Gare Montparnasse, a business hotel about 250m from the hotel at the other end of the building. We got an interconnected family room which was pleasant enough – and had a safe, cups, kettle, wardrobe and welcome waters and chocolates too. The Welcome drinks were yummy as well.

With about 5 hours to kill before Milla arrived we headed off to Musée de l’Orangerie which has been on Steve’s list to visit every time we’ve been in Paris. It’s such a unique museum because Monet designed the exhibition space himself as the best possible space to display his water lilies. The building was originally built by Napoleon to store his citrus trees of all things.

We couldn’t buy a same day ticket so we walked there and queued. We haven’t stayed in the 6th Arrondissment before so the walk through Saint Germaine was lovely. The queue was moving along ok and it only took about 45 mins to get inside. We had a lovely chat with the couple in front of us, young Australian Americans who live in Ireland on their first trip to Paris. The Monet collection was crowded and wonderful, funnily enough we think these were not his best water lilies and have seen others in other museums we enjoyed more – more vibrant I guess. The galleries are oval which allows you to see the large canvas in a single view. Loved being there.

The Musée de l’Orangerie also has exhibition space in the basement, they discovered ancient ruins when building it – it’s right by Place de la Concorde so in a wonderful location – which are on display too. The two permanent collections there are fantastic. Both are collections from art dealers from the early 20th century who bought paintings from unknown artists working in Paris so we got to see early Picasso, Cézanne, Matisse, Renoir and even one Toulouse-Lautrec.

We had no idea Picasso painted portraits (for money of course) and had never seen the Matisse fauvism style before either. We really enjoyed these exhibits and the space.

Back to the Gare Montparnasse to meet Milla, her train was retard (late) and my crazy sister was messaging in the small hours of the morning her time while we waited. It was awesome spending a weekend with a teen who was excited about everything we did. She was missing vegetables so we selected ramen for dinner which was yummy and probably the cheapest meal of our weekend.

Bedtime before our busy Paris weekend.