Blogging On - Paris 2018

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Since returning from my last trip to the USA literally tens of people have asked me "who would win a fight between a monkey and a badger?"  In addition to this at least one has suggested I do some more blogging.  The main focus of this trip is the France vs. England Six Nations fixture but the group I am travelling with are real culture vultures so I expect to be reporting on the contents of Paris' many famous museums and tourist attractions.  Or possibly just a load of bars.  Either way a badger would win.

Preparation for this trip has been quite challenging, we were keen to avoid a repeat of last year's Ireland England £350 match tickets debacle  (would have been worth it had England won).  So this time we took a different approach and made sure we had match tickets before committing to a hotel and Eurostar booking.  Only kidding.  Everything was booked then the scrabble for tickets started.  Luckily the Stade De France is a bit bigger than the Aviva stadium so we came up trumps and at face value.

Hotel wise as usual Brenda made the a choice, thanks to my previous travels in the US I had quite a lot of Hotels.com points making this weekend's accommodation almost a freebee.   The parts of the trip I have been tasked with are booking a table for Friday dinner and for my own edification tracking down a bar I visited on a work jolly about 11 years ago.

Part one was no problem, using my fluent French I stumbled my way through a phone call to the excellent  Le Wepler, a Parisian favourite of mine.  I will report back after the fact in case I booked a table for one or something but I am fairly confident part one was a success.

Part two was trickier.  I interviewed several colleagues but the group-think was along the lines of "we went there at about 2:00AM of course I don't remember the name, I think it was underground in sort of a cave."  I didn't get where I am today by giving up so easily, so I set about Google maps and bars near the previous hotel.   It turns out there are quite a few that are in sort of cave type things.  Undeterred I remembered a photo taken in said bar and my colleague Matt came up with the goods:

tired and emotional 
As can be seen clearing in some sort of cave type setting.  As this bar was the venue for an afterparty my next forensic trick was to draw up a map of potential bars within a short stagger of the hotel we were billeted in that evening.  This lead me to Le Sherwood (named after ITV Saturday Teatime series Sherwood) a quick glance at the photo section of their web site bought back some memories but I could not be sure and I have been in a lot of bars.  However the smoking gun came in the form of this picture:

Le Sherwood
In particular the woodwork to the right of the archway clearly matches that in the 'three monkeys picture'.  I don't know if I will visit the bar again but after all this effort I am going to have a damn good go at it.

I am currently in the coffee shop under my flat waiting for the taxi to take me on the first leg of the journey, specifically to St Neots Station (SNO station code fans) where I will catch a train to KGX.

Day one report to follow.


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