What I did on my holidays

A few days in Paris, visiting friends and doing the usual touristy things:


Travel by Eurostar, of course, which, despite their best attempts to turn it into some hideous airline-style experience, is still a remarkably civilised way to travel:


There's even a bat-squeak of romance left...

And once in Paris there's fortunately no escaping from many traditional elements of La France:


Many French buildings have a formal, Classical monumentality missing from their English equivalents:


Although sometimes that Classicism topples over into glorious pastiche:


Celebrated on one or other of my blogs before, Paris's promenade plantée is a delightful re-use of a redundant railway viaduct:


The joys of the aerial park contrast sharply with the heavy monumentality of the viaduct's engineering:


But this post is in danger of becoming one long boast, so let's finish with French food -- in this, one of the most joyfully over-the-top restaurants in the city:


Well of course I had to have lunch at Le Train Bleu.