Paris – Champs-Élysées

The Avenue des Champs-Élysées is a Parisien street which is famous for its theatres, cafés and luxury shops, and for the military parade that takes place each year on the avenue on 14 July to celebrate Bastille Day. The name is French for Elysian Fields, the paradise for dead heroes in Greek mythology [thanks Wikipedia]. I hadn't heard of it before but the experience came highly recommended by Hisham so this was our destination for the day. We once again braved Paris's public transport system to get there..

What it feels like when trying to change trains

.. but were rewarded by some spontaneous and beautiful piano playing in the middle of the train station..

"For you to play!"

.. and then arrived to see another lovely Christmas market spread out for us to enjoy as we began our wandering along the Champs-Élysées.

Macarons!

Massive French mallowpuffs!

CHOCOLATE!

There were so many delicious looking goodies that we had to try some. 

Chocolate by the slab. I know it's the same thing as buying a king sized block of chocolate but in my head this is way fancier.

Then we started walking along the Champs-Élysées itself and shopped with the French 1% in places like Ralph Lauren and Gucci. The shop assistants looked us up and down with a slight sneer adorning their lips as it was obvious we weren't genuine buyers but rather the much despised tourists littering their stores with unsophisticated and inexpensive fashion.

We had fun playing with a smart car in the Renault showroom which had Batman doors and then continued meandering our way up to the Arc de Triomphe

where Adam was much more interested in his mid-afternoon snack:

Chippies!!!

balancing act fail #1

balancing act fail #2

and then headed back down the other side of the street.

It was another really cold day so we stopped in at a cafe to warm up with a hot chocolate. We had wanted the experience of sitting at a table facing the street to do a bit of people watching but by the time we decided on a cafe we were so cold that we forgot and just went to the table they suggested which happened to be right at the back of the shop. The hot chocolate was delicious though and we got nicely warmed up.

and then by the time we headed outside again it was almost dark already. We braved the traffic to get a photo of the Champs before heading back home to recover from our adventures of the day.

Finally it was time for our first game of Trex. Pronounced 'tricks', Trex is a four-player Middle Eastern card game mainly played in the Levant region (Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine) which has four rounds, each consisting of five games. Four are similar to Hearts but each has different cards to avoid, and the fifth is almost identical to Sevens. Trex is big in Hisham's family and the guys were all really looking forward to playing with us. This is after the first round of the first game and I'm second from the left: I'm winning! not for much longer though. The whole game takes about two hours to play so after this we were all shot and fell into bed to slumber the rest of the night away.