Tea & croissant: Parisian chic

Are you tired yet of my trip? Well, too bad because there are lots more of them 🤣

Breakfast is important to start a long day of walking on the right foot (no pun intended). To save money, we bought a box of salami, baguette and mass manufactured croissant instead of going to cafes to get our morning fix. Oh and that's the tea I stole took from my Nottingham hotel. Although the salami was those prepacked type, it was not bad and almost comparable to those you get at hotel breakfast buffet.

Part of my research took me to this thread and one point that they reiterated was that the cafes in Paris don't all make their own croissants. They merely buy those and reheat it to your order while charging you a bomb for it. So I heeded the advise and just buy these supermarket variety type and skipped out on the bakeries. Yes, one week in Paris without consuming any croissant. At all.

The first cup of coffee in Paris. To be honest, we were in some dingy neighborhood and the shops were selling dresses with sequins that won't look out of place from an episode of Bold and Beautiful. Like 20years ago. This cafe was manned by some middle Eastern looking men who spoke French and were kind off rowdy but they didn't quite bother us. Rather tired from looking for a good cup of joe, we decided to just rest here and try our luck.

It turned out to be the cheapest and best cup of coffee we had the entire trip. Maybe it was from our lowered expectations. Maybe it was that good. At €2, we had a nice table inside, away from the cold wind and noise from the street with good hot coffee. It goes to show that you really can't judge a book from its cover.

I could have easily cropped my head out but then it'll look weird with my hair cut off as well. Plus, I want to show just how damn straight my hair is capable of being. Thanks to daily blow drying. The amount of blow drying for that week alone is easily the amount I do in a year. That's also during my quarterly haircut.

My wardrobe never saw the need for a jacket, what more a winter version. It didn't make sense to buy it in Malaysia where it'll be more expensive. So I bought this from Primark in Nottingham. The girls were gushing about how cheap the things there were. What I didn't account for was the change of season from spring to summer so most of the clothes on the rack were what I'd get from back home. This was literally the last one. So much so that they had to do a run around to just find out the price. At €10, it was dirt cheap. Exactly what I wanted too.

Of course, it wasn't the warmest of jacket for the cold harsh winter but it does a snugly job of keeping you warm from spring climate. Just don't expect it to do much when it's rainy and wind is blowing. You're better off dead in that case.

As you may observe, winter attire really don't differ much. You're basically wrapped up from (at least) the neck to your toes. Even with dresses or skirts, they do wear leggings or stockings because it gets really chilly, thanks to the wind. I thought my month long stint in Sydney would have prepped me for a 15℃ average temperature but it turned out that the Internet weather forecast is as accurate as Chinese fortune telling.

Paris subway is easy to navigate around, provided that you know the station that you are aiming for. Definitely less confusing than London's as the color coding is more distinct. I know of someone who named his firstborn, Étienne. It's cool giving your kid some cool name but have you thought about him having to live with it his entire life? I guess they would have done their homework and felt it's OK for a Chinese boy to grow up on Malaysian soil with a French name that sounds like a girl's. Oh and probably get used to having the name mispronounced. His entire life.

Yea, I had my fair share of interesting name calling.

Unlike the previous tomatoes, these were like layers of them squeezed vertically into one. Not cheap at €5.99.

Is it the weather or that the French government does a good job at maintaining their gardens?

Or could it be that our weather is so unforgiving that our flowers pale in comparison to these? Perhaps we aren't doing as much as we should to ensure the flowers bloom to their full potential.

I think it's a combination of both. Of course, there is also no denying that after 30years of looking at the same bougainvillea, hibiscus, ixora etc., one is probably sick and tired of them.

The air here is generally clean and crisp. No smell of fume or smoke unless if you are in the middle of traffic. The parks are perfect for dating, strolling, picnicking or generally people watching. I watch you, you watch me. What's the allure? Well, means you really have a lot of free time and nothing better to do.

We took the scenic routes on foot to enjoy the scenery. The buildings are old but well maintained. Did I mention how perfect the weather is to be exploring a foreign city?

If you had asked me to do the same thing in KL, I would ask you to go fly kite. This is why I make the lousiest of tour guide to colleagues who come over from overseas.

Look, even Chow Chow is enjoying it 🐶

Contrary to popular belief, the streets of Paris aren't filled with cheese shops such as this. In fact, I think we saw only a handful of them and you really have to go into a residential neighborhood to find them.

It would have been good to buy some back but I wasn't so sure if it was going to survive the long journey back.