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Days 575-576, 8-9 Jan '16, Farewell Malta - Bonjour Paris! The 8th was packing and cleaning day. Most definitely never a favourite day, but slow but sure won the race and we eventually wrangled everything back into our bags. Rather chuffed to be flying Air France to Paris tomorrow... 23kg each for our check-in backs (vs. 20kg) and 12kg (that's right, 12kg!) for carry-on. C'est super! The day of the 9th actually dawned not too shabby. Darn hard to see the dawn at 4.30 am which probably helped. We were at the airport 2 hours in advance (that's "HST" - Hardie Standard Travel Time) - and secured our exit row seats with just a tiny bit of eyelash batting on my part. Excellent flight. Made even more excellent by all the people eyeing off the empty exit row seats surrounding ours. "No - They are premium seats and cost €25 per seat" - was the curt response everyone received. Lucky us then - even got our snack served first. The day continued to get better and better. I'd booked a transfer from Orly airport to our hotel as a "man with a sign" was going to cost about the same as a taxi (and a whole lot less if the traffic was rubbish). Night before the flight James looked up the company on Tripadvisor. Whoops. So many bad reviews we were starting to wonder if they even had cars... let alone drivers. In any event, nothing could rain on our parade and the promised driver with sign and clean tidy car was waiting for us. And the traffic was rubbish - but he knew where to go to get out of it and we arrived at the hotel at noon - 2 full hours earlier than official check-in. 'Lo and behold! Our room had been done early (thankfully the previous occupants had checked out much earlier than standard 12 noon checkout. And it was an upgraded room. Wow - must be time to get a lotto ticket. We puttered the rest of the day away strolling the streets still covered in Christmas lights. Also discarded Christmas trees... which is a little sad. Like orphans or abandoned Paddington Bears... the pre-loved chrissie trees were out as the 12 days of Christmas came to an end on the 6th and the decorations all came down (private ones at least). The shops however are going crazy - the 6th is the first day of the January sales in France and the reductions are pretty great - up to 70% in some cases. As night fell we headed into the fabulous Galeries Lafayette - absolute scrum! I am so innocent, that when we walked in a security man demanded that we open our jackets and bags. I thought... hang on, we've not even been in yet - haven't had a chance to nick anything. Of course it was more a case of searching us for explosive vests and weapons. Ahhh... Well that would explain why he didn't want to see our shopping and receipts when we left. We used the opportunity of the sales to buy James a new watch at 40% off and it was so much fun to leave the store with a chic Galeries Lafayette bag. We walked and walked across down basically heading towards the Louvre and choosing our streets based on who had the nicest Christmas lights. Tres simple. We headed back to the 9th on the metro and went to one of our fave Paris spots - Restaurant du Paradis for a special dinner for James's birthday - if anything the food has improved beyond fabulous to amazing in the space of a year. The fishtank experiment in the wall however has not survived the year. C'est la vie. Hit the sack and went to sleep almost immediately... Had been up since 4.30 am after-all. Walking tour of Paris planned for Sunday.
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