Remí Gaillard in Paris

Many of this joker’s stunts and tricks are performed in and around Paris. If you want to have the opportunity to see this crazy French man, get yourself to Paris for a long weekend. If you book some paris accommodation soon, you might even get the chance to walk right past the man in action!

The crazy prankster from Montpelier has become well known for his public stunts. Amongst his most famous is his treadmill stunt, where he runs into a supermarket and jumps up onto the carousel to do a bit of running. The stunned faces of the other shoppers are something to laugh about, whereas good old Rémi just gets on with his exercise!

Gaillard disguised himself with a Lorient team shirt, got through security and took part in the celebrations of Lorient’s win of Coupe de France at the Stade de France. It went as far as greeting president Jacques Chirac, performing victory runs with Lorient players around the pitch holding the cup, giving a TV interview, and signing autographs. He appeared in several photos days later in editions of French journal L’Equipe. Since then, he has appeared in commercials, on tv programmes and has carried on his stunts in France.

Gaillard was born in paris apartments on 7th February 1975 in Montpellier, France and it’s still unknown as to why he chose this strange roll in life! One of Gaillard’s most celebrated series of pranks, titled “Kangaroo Rampage”, involved Gaillard dressed in a kangaroo costume. Gaillard steals food, coffee, a parking attendant’s ticket book, a policeman’s hat, kicks a golfer into a water hazard, and kicks sand in beach goers faces. Although you find yourself really not wanting to laugh at the misfortunes of these poor people minding their own business, you’ll find that a sneaky smirk will appear on your face, or you’ll literally burst out laughing, he’s certainly got the knack of making people laugh.

April Fool’s

If you’re planning a long weekend in Paris at the beginning of April, watch out! April fools day is about!

To say that France celebrated April Fool’s Day would be an understatement. This day of the year is not only special because of the jokey aspect, but because there are traditions that come with it too. Particularly taking place around paris apartments and the Champs Elysées, you might find you get an unwanted visited stuck to your back.

Still not sure what I mean? Well, on 1^st April in Paris, it is traditional to stick a paper fish on the backs of the unsuspecting – hence the name “poisson d’Avril,” or April fish. Dating back several centuries, this traditional supposedly came about because of a change in the start of the year. Before 1564, under Charles IX, the New Year started on Easter day, then the 25 March or 1 April. On 9 August 1564, though, the king determined the New Year to start on 1 January. It had previously been tradition to give a little present for the beginning of New Year and this habit continued on 1st April.

Why this present then turned into a fish, no one knows but some suspect it was because fishing was prohibited at this time of year or because the 1^st April is Pisces. Who knows? It is an interesting tradition anyway. Be aware that whilst you’re reading your English or French newspaper back at your Paris accommodation, that the press often likes to print a fake story on this day, such as that of 2008 claiming that flying penguins had been discovered. This story by the Telegraph, claimed that instead of huddling together in the cold like penguins normally do, a group of penguins found on King George Island, some 750 miles south of the Falkland Islands, had chosen to take off, thousands ending up thousands of miles away in the Amazonian rainforest to find winter sun.

A Long Weekend in Paris

A long weekend in Paris

If you are planning a long weekend in Paris, don’t make the same mistakes I made; a) going in December and b) staying in the Three Ducks hostel. Book some real paris accommodation! I will start with a and get to b later.

Firstly, December weather in Paris does not bode well for sightseeing. Well, December 2008 weather that is. The weekend I went to Paris, it wasn’t that kind of crisp, fresh winter weather, but the kind that makes just not want to do anything apart from stay in bed. Your face hurt when you went outside.

On our first day, (the Saturday), we thought it would be a good idea to visit the Eiffel tower. Bear in mind that the ground was icy, this wasn’t a very good idea. What’s worse is, we are poor students and decided walking up would be better than taking the lift. The view from the top was fantastic. You could see right out over Paris, including the Seine, all the important museums and even the Sacre Coeur in Montmartre. It was breathtaking.

As well as all the plaques to explain what you could see, there were childrens’ versions that were easy to read, with interesting little facts that I found myself reading too. Needless to say, I absolutely froze on the visit to the Eiffel tower, but to make up for it, I bought myself a hot chocolate with an enormous heap of cream on the top, and it was possibly the nicest hot chocolate I’ve ever had.

Now onto b). The Three Ducks Hostel. After my experience here, I would always choose to stay in paris apartments rather than a hostel. Silly me, there I was thinking, we’re in Paris, how bad can the hostel be? But in reality, it was awful, the toilets were outside, the bedrooms stank and the sheets were scratchy. What made it worse was that we were sharing a room with 6 men!

So what’s the moral of the story – go to Paris, just do a little research first!

Paris after Christmas

Have you ever visited Paris at Christmas? It is a fantastic place to go, it’s full of amazing streets, lights everwhere, and the Eiffel Tower, don’t get me started. It glitters with blue lights everynight, lighting up the windows in the city and catching your eye wherever you are. The shops are kitted out for Christmas, with their windows decorated in the most magnificent fashion, from Ladurée, which decorates its macaroons beautifully, to Galeries Lafayette, where you feel a magnetic attraction to each and everyone of its products. (Or maybe that’s just because I’m a shopaholic).

So after Christmas, it appears to me, Paris is just as cool as it was before. It’s still full of tourists renting their paris accommodation, the shops are still doing a roaring trade and it seems like people are still happy. The snow that they had in Paris put everyone in an excited mood, it’s a shame that it was over so quickly. With the beginning of a new year, came the beginning of many new exhibitions, restaurant openings and new starts. Just one of the many of those is the new exhibitions at the Galerie Fiat bringing a zesty start to 2009, a feeing that we hope will last the entire year and ending with the Paris Photo exhibitions from 19th – 22nd November 2009. (Don’t forget to book your paris apartments in time for this baby).

And there are those that are on their way out, such as the fantastic exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg, it started in October 16th 2008 and will finish on February 22nd 2009. Exhibiting the The Berardo collection, this show of some of the finest works by a big selection of artists, is arranged in four major stages; surrealism (Miró, Dali, Ernst, Breton…), abstraction from 1910 to the immediate post-war (Mondrian, Tanguy, Arp…), the confrontation Europe-US of the 1960s with new realism and Pop Art (Warhol, Klein, Soulages, Mitchell…) and creation post-1970 (Schnabel, Stella…). Offering the Parisian public a huge selection of fantastic works.

Ladurée le Bar

Looking for one of the most luxurious bars in Paris? Staying in luxurious paris apartments? Are you one of the lucky ones who has some cash to spend in this time of credit crunch? If so, good for you! Because there is a special bar in the centre of Parisian nightlife that is calling your name as we speak. That bar is called: “Ladurée le Bar” and can be found at 75 avenue des Champs-Élysées Paris VIII or 13 rue Lincoln Paris VIII (Tel: 01 40 75 08 75).

Since having opened in September 2008, Ladurée le Bar has been a big success with Parisians alike. Having reached the top in terms of delicious sweets and treats, Ladurée saw fit to expand into a new and booming market and opened Le Bar. Offering a mouthwatering menu of savoury dishes as well as a sumptuous cocktail to complement, it goes without saying that Le Bar is the ultimate in sophistication.

The décor is to die for. If only my paris accommodation looked like this bar! With a resin undulating in the middle of the room as the centre piece and an array of chic stools, the bar shines and glows in the light coming from below it. Created by designer and antiques dealer Roxane Rodriguez, is a flamoboyant neo Art Nouveau creation and nothing like the traditional dining room of the original Ladurée patisserie that we all know and love. The bar is also decorated with stained glass in which butterflies are trapped and with sparkling lights on the ceiling.

After the overall stunning appearance of the bar comes the menu, which is to die for. Amongst the best you will find organic pumpkin soup with royal scampi, blue Breton lobster carpaccio and loin of veal carpaccio. Then, moving onto desert, it is imperative that you try the “Millefeuille framboise” consisting of caramelized puff pastry, light vanilla cream, fresh raspberries and whipped cream.

Ladurée macaroons

Perhaps one of the most delicious luxuries on the French market, Ladurée macaroons are bound to get your juices going. (Macaroon = small, round cakes, crisp on the outside, smooth in the middle).

On a recent trip to Paris, the products waiting patiently to be gobbled down in the beautifully decorated window of this lavish shop immediately caught my eye.

Ladurée shops can be found dotted around Paris, at the Champ Elysées, Bonaparte, Royale y magasin du printemps. The wonders you will find inside these shops include not only their famous macaroons, but sweets, pastries and other desserts, brought to you by their talented 45 pastry chefs and 40 cooks.

As I dashed out of the paris apartments where I was staying, to the nearest Ladurée shop, I literally couldn’t stop my mouth watering at what was on offer, from their beautiful chocolates to their macaroons, which deserve their own paragraph;

Amongst the many variety of flavours, I would consider Orange Saffron to be my absolute favourite. Ladurée changes and updates its macaroons seasonally, creating a new flavour with each change of season. However, amongst the permanent choices, you will find; Chocolate, Dark chocolate, Vanilla, Coffee, Rose petal, Pistachio, Salted butter Caramel, Cherry amaretto, Raspberry, Orange blossom, Liquorice, certain to tempt you!

The history of this historical shop is a long and vibrant one, beginning with a man called Louis Ernest Ladurée in 1862. This humble miller from France’s southwest opened a bakery at 16 rue Royale in Paris. Since then, with the work of David Holder and many others, the success of Ladurée has grown and still today, the traditional methods of creating their well known macaroons is upkept.

Ladurée has come so far that it now has a tea salon, restaurant, pastry shop, chocolate shop, ice cream parlour and a fantastic bar serving its trademark delicious macaroon cocktail. Needless to say, a trip to one of these Ladurée and a handful of purchases is bound to make your day, just don’t forget to arrange some luxurious paris accommodation to go with it!

The Oldest Bar in Paris: Café Procope

If you’re looking for a quiet corner in Paris to have a drink and a chat near your paris accommodation, you’re destined to end up in Café Procope. This is the oldest café in not only Paris and France, but the entire world. It opened in rue de l’Ancienne Comédie, 6th arrondissement in 1686 by the Sicilian Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli.

Café Procope, in the street then known as rue des Fossés-Saint-Germain-des-Prés, started as a café where gentlemen of fashion might drink coffee, the exotic beverage that had previously been served in taverns, or eat a sorbet, served up in porcelain cups. The escorted ladies who appeared at Café Procope in its earliest days soon disappeared.

Eighteenth century the Procope was the meeting place of the intellectual establishment, and of the nouvellistes of the scandal-gossip trade, whose remarks at Procope were repeated in the police reports. Not all the Encyclopédistes drank forty cups of coffee a day like Voltaire, who mixed his with chocolate, but they all met at Procope, as did Benjamin Franklin, John Paul Jones, Thomas Jefferson.

Personally, the buzzing atmosphere of this café has always been something that has attracted me to go there time and time again, and it certainly will attract you. Just as in the past, the jokes, laughter and discussions carry on today, though it could be said, with a few more tourists!

Although the place is very very old, the décor and structure of the restaurant is intact, with tasteful colours, tablecloths and paintings. Needless to say, maintenance has been carried out on this charming restaurant to prevent it from disintegration. Finally, with Café Procope being situated in the 6th arrondissement, this makes it very easy for you to get there as it is so centrally located. The metro nearest metro stop is “Odéon” and there are many delightful paris apartments in the surrounding districts for you to take advantage of.

Café Procope: 13 rue de l’Ancienne Comédie – 75006 Paris • Tél. : 01 40 46 79 00

The Eiffel Tower in Paris

Something I’m sure many of you have done in the past is climb the Eiffel Tower in the wintry cold. I visited Paris in mid December and certainly was not prepared for the weather that was awaiting me…

I left my Paris accommodation on a cold Saturday morning and headed out with my friend in the direction of the Eiffel Tower. The cold hit me straight away and I noticed that every single Parisian that I could see was wrapped up in beret and scarf, so wrapped up in fact that it was impossible to see their faces!

The Eiffel tower is 1,063 ft high and has been visited by more than 200,000,000 since its construction in 1889. There are two ways of getting up the tower, be it by foot or by lift. For some strange reason, my friend and I chose the walking option, not a good idea considering the weather. It costs €3.40 for students to walk up to the second floor, but if you want to go all the way to the top, it costs an extra €5. Going up in the lift costs €5 and you pay again to go all the way to the top.

Our long journey up the Eiffel tower was a long and slow one, and included the numbing of my feet and freezing of my toes. When at the top, there are lots of interesting hints and facts about the Eiffel tower, including a guide for children that tells them when it was built, how high it is and why it was built in the first place, (for the Universal Exhibition in 1889).

As well as this, you can see the roofs of many Paris apartments all the way across Paris and the boards point out the many different sites that you can see, informing you of what they are.

The Sacre Coeur in Paris

I went to Paris at the weekend for the first time since I was a small child. Needless to say, the hazy memories of standing in front of the Eiffel Tower were not really enough to go by and before I visited Paris this weekend I couldn’t have really told you the first thing about it. Now I feel like I’m a Paris expert!

Firstly, I really have to comment on about the choice there is with regards to beautiful Paris apartments. Particularly in the 15^th arrondissements there are plenty of small but compact apartments to chose from, make sure you get the perfect one for you. I stayed just outside Montmartre, perfect because this is where I spent most of my time – in the Sacre Coeur!

The Sacre Coeur is enormous and made out of white stone. It can be seen from the Eiffel Tower and is really something to see. It is simply a lovely experience climbing the steps up to the entrance with the sun shining on your back, then you turn round to a stunningly clear view of Paris, a view which I probably will never forget and thought about for hours back in my Paris accommodation.

However, perhaps the best thing about this church is the mosaic inside the dome. I was impressed beyond words with this and it was certainly a moving experience to stand below it. From the back of the church, the huge mosaic of Jesus Christ with his arms open appears as though he is standing up straight and looking down on the congretation. Yet from the front of the church by the alter, you realise that the dome is curved and the talent it must have taken to make the mosaic appear like this is astounding.

This experience is bound to be moving in so many ways, not least of all because of the beauty of this church but because of the candles you can light to remember loved ones who have passed away. Something that I particularly liked about the Sacre-Coeur was the fact that all the decorations, mosaics, statues and carvings were tasteful and not over the top. Finally, do not forget to look at the beautiful stained glass windows.

Zoo Bois de Vincennes, Paris

Parc Zoologique de Paris is an exciting place to visit whether you’re a small child or a fully grown adult! The French capital has two zoos, yet Zoo Bois de Vincennes is the official “Zoo de Paris”. Situated in the eastern part of Paris, the zoo can be found within a large, pleasant wooded area where you will find a castle and the botanical garden “Parque Floral” which also has a pretty lake, perfect for renting small boats.

So, leave your central Paris apartment or Paris accommodation and make your way to this lovely place. The zoo is special as it houses more than 200 species of animals. Monkeys leap around the trees, and the Giant Panda is the star of the show. As well as this, over-seven-year-olds can ascend the 65m Grand Rocher – either by lift or by walking up the 352 steps. Furthermore, there are notices at the entrance to the zoo stating feeding times and information about new born animals that you should go and see. One of the rarest residents of the zoo, the Madagascan “Aye-aye” is situated just after the giraffes. Rare due to native superstition, the characteristic long, spindly fingers of the Aye-aye are said to frighten villagers, who view the Aye-aye as a harbinger of evil. Others believe that should one point its long middle finger at you, you would be condemned to death. Some say the appearance of an Aye-aye in a village predicts the death of a villager, and the only way to prevent this is to kill the Aye-aye.

You can get to this exciting zoo by taking the metro to Porte Doree, walking to bois de Vincennes (5mins) then through the park alongside the huge boating lake to the entrance. The zoo is situated at 53 av de St-Maurice, 12th and is open in Summer from 9am-6pm Mon-Sat, 9am-6.30pm Sun and bank hols. During Winter the zoo is open 9am-5pm Mon-Sat and 9am-5.30pm Sun and bank hols.