Last weekend I went to Paris with a good friend of mine!! We drove from Rotterdam early in the morning and it was awesome. It was the first time we were driving ourselves. Well technically she drove and I watched the road and pigged out on the way :).
The trip was quite steady, we had a couple of scary moments, but luckily nothing happend 🙂 The weather was great while we were on the road. We knew we would probably have a little bit of rain, but we didn’t experience any until we actually arrived in Paris.
It started POURING the moment we arrived in Paris!! In the end we missed our exit and had to drive another round and somehow we had to pay another toll *sob*
Anyway, we stayed in hotel The Acropole, which had a subway station right in front of their building!!! The subway station was called Porte d’Orleans and on the corner you also had all kinds of other public transport stops. Even though I think it’s slightly far from the major sightseeing spots, the location is really nice. It took us about 15-20 minutes to get to the Champs for example.
We were really lucky, cuz upon arrival the receptionist told us the room we booked wasn’t available. So they’ve upgraded our room for free and we got a room with 2 queensize beds and a large bathroom 😀 *HOORAY*
The round circle shaped mirrors were cool! Instant fisheye effect :’)
We refreshed ourselves a bit and decided to hit the town. Since it was just a short trip, we arrive friday afternoon and will be leaving sunday afternoon, we wrote down a few spots where we wanted to go to.
The weather was just beautiful just then!! The sun was shining and if it wasn’t for the small puddles on the sidewalks, I would have thought the rain didn’t happend at all.
We went to Pont Alexandre first. The view was great and I loved looking over the Seine.The weather was great, the view was great, but the wind not so great. My hair was going everywhere, so I’ll spare myself and skip the unflattering pictures :’)
After Pont Alexandre, we’ve continued our trip to the Champs-Élysées. We’re in PARIS (!) and I was dying to get some macaroons!! I know most of the people love Laduree, but personally I prefer Pierre Hermé. It’s more flavorful and it has a better texture compared to Laduree’s macaroons.
I really love the buildings in Paris and I would have loved to take a look inside all of them, but I know M wasn’t that much into it, so we didn’t. We just took pretty pictures in front of the buildings 🙂
We found Pierre Hermé near Arc de Triomphe and got some macaroons to nibble on when I get back to the hotel. Since we still couldn’t decide on what to eat, we had a small snack and a drink at the Champs.
We had bruschetta at some Italian (Ohh the irony!) at one of the restaurants. It was really nice, but be prepared to pay a lot for your drinks in Paris. I knew Paris was going to be expensive and it’s not cheap to sit outside, but our drinks were more expensive then the food ^^”. I’m not really sure what to think of that. Beside that I’m still convinced that French people are grumpy most of the time. Some of them will still try to help you when you speak to the in English, but most of them will just ignore or snarl at you. Our hotel receptionist and the gard at the parking lot were really nice though. I haven’t been in Paris for more than 6 years and my French got too rusty for it, so I was bit disappointed Paris didn’t got more foreigners friendly over the years.
In the end we decided to have diner near our hotel, cuz we were both really tired and didn’t want to bother to look further. We actually had couscous! It was really nice. The two of us ordered a couscous with mixed grill a la the chef and an all vegetable one. I can’t live without my veggies :)!
Instead of grilled vegetables, we got a vegetable soup kind of thing. It was hearty and well spiced. It was really delicious to pour the soup with all kinds of vegetable over the couscous!! The perfect comfort food after a long day of traveling.
The mixed grill on the other hand wasn’t really special. We got some chicken, skewers, merguez and beef. Some of the meat were slightly overcooked, but tasted okay in general.
We really got our value for the money for our diner. Combined it costed us about 30 euro’s including drinks. We weren’t able to finish everything. The vegetable soup alone was already way too much for the two of us (I’m really craving for some of the couscous with the veggies now I’m writing this post ^^”).
Back at the hotel I couldn’t wait to try our macaroons!!! We’ve got a small box with 7 piece just to try their current flavors 🙂
The packaging is adorable!!
The mint one got squashed a little bit, but it still tasted great!! I loved all of them, but my favorite is definitely the Salted-butter Caramel one!! It’s soooo good. It has a slightly burn in a good way taste. The chewy caramel <3!!!! Luckily I can only get them in France, or else I might end up eating them everyday!! These macaroons are slightly more expensive compared to Laduree’s, but totally worth the money!! We had our zen-moment while eating all the macaroons 😀
The next day we’ve continued our adventure and decided to have lunch at KONG near Pont Neuf. We took the subway and got off at Cité so we could take a stroll to KONG.
When we got out of the subway, we were in just in middle of a flower market! It was adorable!! I love flowers and plants. They were also selling all kinds of decorations <3. I’m a total sucker for this kind of stuff!! I was telling myself not to buy anything xD I won’t need any of it! We took a walk through it and everything reminded me of Dille & Kamille in Rotterdam (Cheryl wrote a post about it, you can read it here).
We crossed over the river at Pont Neuf to go to KONG. The view was nice and the weather made me feel even better!
I saw that there were also a lot of stalls along the river, where you could buy old vogues, posters, books, dvds and more. You could also get locks to “lock your love”, but we skipped that part :’).
I would love to learn French just to read the books!!! There were sooo many books and magazines. I wished I wasn’t so lazy during French classes in High School :’).
Finally we arrived at Kong for our brunch. KONG is mostly famous for their beautiful view and location. Their menu consisted Asian-fusion dishes.
For Lunch they had a special lunch menu or you could also order a la carte. M wasn’t very hungry, so she decide to take two starters and I decided to take a 2 course lunch menu.
For starter I order the Sea Bream duo. The flavors were so so. The tartare was overly seasoned. It had too much spices and tasted slightly oily. The sashimi was nice though. I wasn’t really impressed by the plating. It was kinda messy and the waiter spilled the soysauce while putting the plate down. M laughed at me for picking at the flaws and told me she’s a food barbarian compared to me :’)
M ordered the Fois Gras with Brioche and she got a really royal serving of the fois gras. She said it tasted nice, just like fois gras does. I wasn’t really impressed by the dish to be honest. I was hoping for a more elegant way of serving.
For mains I had the Flank Steak with pepper sauce. I love pepper sauce, so usually if I see it on a menu I always end up ordering it. I liked this one much better! The sauce was well seasoned and the steak was nicely done.
M said she just wanted to have the oyster, as the fois gras was quite heavy. So she ordered 6 oysters 🙂 The oysters were nice. Just oysters 🙂
The overall experience at KONG was so so. I wouldn’t go back for a second time, even though the view is really nice. The food, the service and the price is totally not worth the effort. It was way overpriced and the food wasn’t very nice. I think they wanted to go for a sophisticated high-end kind of style, but they didn’t really lived up to the expectations except for the price.
If you do consider going to KONG, I advice you just to take a drink and enjoy the view.
We strolled more streets of Paris and ate more food, but more of that in Part two 🙂
xoxo
The Ticking Chopsticks 
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