Exploring Gare d'Austerlitz.

When living in a big city like Paris, you find that even though there is always something new to explore and a never ending supply of fascinating places to discover, you get to know certain places fairly well. For example, I use line 10 on the metro everyday, and can now reel off all the stops on the line without even realising that I had adopted this 'talent'!

Whilst I've explored most stops on my line, somewhere I had never been is the dreaded 'end of the line', which for me is Gare d'Austerlitz. I don't know why, but I always imagine that when I come to the end of the line that I'll be in the middle of nowhere, some suburban place so different to the heart of Paris. 

Of course I was mistaken. Even if it is the end of the line, Gare d'Austerlitz does still fall within zone 1 of Paris. 

After visiting an Arabic cafe, and the beautiful 'Jardin des Plantes', some friends and I visited Galerie de paléontologie et d’anatomie comparée (Gallery of Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy). 

So this museum is definitely not going to be for everyone, but we thought it was really fascinating! After being confronted by an army of animal skeletons on the bottom floor, we ventured higher and found Dinosaurs, Mammoths and even a Sabre-toothed tiger. 

The area is really beautiful, and definitely worth a visit if you have half a day. From now on I am changing my 'end of the line' perceptions!

Bonjour, Paris. Hej, Ikea.

So I haven't written a post in a long, long time, but I have my excuses- I MOVED TO PARIS!

The city of lights welcomed me at the end of August and since then a lot has happened that I can't wait to share with you all. BUT FIRST, some practicalities.

Whenever I move, the first place I try and locate is an Ikea. I've come to realise that for some people, Ikea is like Marmite, you either love it or you hate it. But if I could, I would move in to one of their little show-homes and live happily ever after. Time and time again, they have saved me from spending a tonne of money on furnishing 'home', which is fantastic when I know I will only be in a certain place for a short-ish amount of time. 

Besides, after living in Sweden back in 2012, I feel a little nostalgic and heaps of excitement when there- especially for the meatballs!! 

Full on nostalga!!

When I first arrived in Paris, I asked a few people how best to get to Ikea, to which they all replied something along the lines of: "It's impossible without a car". Luckily for us, the Ikea at Thiais Village has caught onto this little problem, and now provides a free, yes, gratuite, service from the metro Denfert-Rochereau straight to the store in only 16 minutes!

 All you need to do is take this bus:

From this location:

At these times:

I wasn't sure if I believed that the bus would be as quick as it said, but it really was. And very popular. I've been a couple of times now and the bus has nearly always been full- so I recommend that you get there 10 minutes before the bus is due to leave. 

Now you can eat all the meatballs, crayfish and princess cake (my absolute favourite) that you like!

Sadly, only fries and no mash with the meatballs.