After a few hours sleeping on a coach I arrived into the city as the sun rose over the rooftops. I’ve realised one of my favourite times to look around in a new city is in the morning when everything is closed and there aren’t many others around (excluding the late night stragglers weaving their way through the streets). I dropped my bag at the hostel and meandered my way down towards the Seine. It was calm and relatively peaceful and thankfully there was many a bakery open to satisfy my breakfast cravings. With an overflowing paper bag of delicious smelling pastries I barely managed until I reached the Louvre before ripping open the greasy buttery soaked bag. I can’t even name what I ate, except it was delicious, decadent, laden with butter, dripping with flakey crumbs, drizzled with chocolate and sticky with almond paste. It pretty much set the tone for the rest of the weekend.

When the sister finally arrived the day had thankfully turned into an absolute scorcher after an earlier torrential downpour and having been caught in sprinklers. We followed the rest of the masses of tourists down the Champs d’Elysees stopping for the obligatory hot chocolate and pastries in Angelina (unbelievably good, although anything with nuts, nougat, pastry cream and chocolate gets my vote). We decided against climbing to the top of the Arc de Triomphe as we seem to have a serious aversion to incredibly long queues. The days wandering was rounded off with a meal in the area near Odeon, in a forgettable restaurant with poor wine. Oh well, you know what they say “eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper”!