Belleville

This is a view from one of the four hills in Paris. This is the Eastern one, in the 19eme, the others are in Montmartre (North), the Latin Quarter (South) and Mont Valerien (West), which is the hill I live on! You can see the Eiffel Tower, and the Tour Montparnasse.

K and I decided we wanted to do something productive today, so I went round hers at 1pm (early for us!) and we had lunch - cheese and ham baguettes, tres French - and then set off to Belleville, which is the area this hill is in. We walked round for ages, because the weather was amazing - it was about 12 degrees - and just enjoyed being outdoors. We went to another park called Parc des Buttes Chaumont which was lovely and had a (mock, I assume) Corinthian temple on top of a cliff. Weird.

We were aiming to go to the cinema to see The King's Speech, but it turns out it was just a preview so we didn't arrive in time to get tickets. K went home after that, and I went to meet up with D and her boyfriend A, at A's friend's flat for a party. It was okay, and I got to speak a lot of French, but the real highlight was driving home past the Sacre Coeur, Moulin Rouge and the Arc de Triomphe. It never fails to please me how just one short journey through Paris can take you past so many quintessentially Parisian edifices.