Engaged in Paris

So here's how it went:

The French celebrate Toussaint (All Saint's) holiday with a week off school. This meant for the first half of the week I was looking after Noah and Lily-rose while Michelle went to Lyon to visit John (friend from Freiburg). On Friday I took the TGV (train) to Paris (250km=1 hour!) and met John and Michelle who arrived from Lyon an hour later.

We stayed in a cheap (and loud) hotel but were out most of the time. We had a wonderful weekend walking through Paris, seeing the sight, Montmartre, the Seine, Louvre, Champs Elysee, Arc de Triumph, Tour Eiffel, Quartier Latin and even made it to a flea market. Sunday we went to mass together in a church we'd found on our wanderings and Monday (Nov. 6) saw us enjoying a lovely lunch with the Cox family (Amanda Cox went to school with the Brauds) which came in a package with a bomb scare! A suitcase was left at the door of the restaurant and the Parisien bomb squad spent about an hour and a half taping off the area (while we lunched inside), redirecting traffic and pedestrians (while we lunched inside) and attaching a controlled-explosion explosive (while we lunched inside). They finally requested that we move back away from the windows and blew open the empty case.... great security guys - if it were a real explosive it probably would have been detonated at least an hour before!

After a long lunch we meandered some more before John had to head back to Lyon. We were very sad to see him go since we'd had such a wonderful time catching up, exploring and talking over the weekend.

After John left I took Michelle to Montmartre where we looked out over the city of lights and tried to find a restaurant with a free table. After what seemed like an age we finally found the perfect place. It was even full of Francophones and not the touristy-types one expects - Not an annoying Aussie or American in sight =)
We had a delicious French dinner over a few hours and then wandered back to the Sacre Coeur Basilica (Sacred Heart) where I proposed to Michelle around midnight. She said yes.