Un petit vacance a Paris.

The plan took seed a few days beforehand. I had booked a week off at work with no plans at all to fill the time. I got to thinking that I would rather do something productive during the week rather than veg out or waste my time staring at the mountains of images I one day would like to get edited.

_mg_0231_webSo, I thought I would check out how much it would cost to get away for a few days. My first thought was to go down to Brighton, but the weather hadn’t been great, and I know I would get bored down there pretty quick. I have wanted to go back to Paris for ages now, so thought I’d check out the prices for the hell of it. I assumed it would be very expensive so didn’t look too hard at first. To my surprise though, I found that during my week off, I could get a National Express coach to London for £11 return, a Eurostar to Paris for £69 return and a hotel room over there for £25 night.

I was pretty shocked I could manage the trip so _mg_0359_webcheaply! I had a quick look at flights, but with all the crap about baggage allowances, trying to park at the airport and the extra time waiting for check in, I decided the train would be much better. The train also takes you straight in to Gare du Nord rather than having to make my way from Charles de Gaulle, which would have meant a bit of a journey on the RER.

I decided to go for it and booked my tickets and accommodation on the Friday afternoon. A couple of hours later I had everything printed out and ready. I would be spending most of Monday travelling and coming back on the first Eurostar on Friday – I don’t do early, so Friday is going to be interesting. I had also booked the hotel room for Monday to Wednesday. There was no point booking a room for Thursday night as I know I can’t wake up at 0400 so I’d just do an all-nighter and maybe go up to Sacre Coeur to do some night shooting.

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I packed my rucksack with barely enough to get by. Some clothes, a couple of Snickers, some coffee (?!*), a power adapter, cables and my camera kit. I only took two lenses with me which were my trusty Sigma 24-70mm EX DG f2.8 and my brand new Sigma 50mm EX DG f1.4. I also packed every camera battery and memory card I owned. The plan was starting to come together…