Four days in Paris

The past few days have been a bit of a holiday comedown for me. This time last week, I was in beautiful Paris, sitting in a park by the Eiffel Tower, devouring a massive baguette (probably with mayo on my chin) whilst the locals strolled along with their dogs and groups of tourists sped ahead on segways.

Our long weekend away really was brilliant - we did pretty much everything you could possibly manage in the time we had! We saw all the usual sights, visited an abundance of museums and galleries, ventured to every corner of the city and spent our evenings on a cruise along the Seine and at a cabaret show a stone's throw from the Moulin Rouge.  Something which we found really worked in our favour is that if you're an EU citizen and aged between 18-26 then you get into a lot of the museums and galleries for free - just flash your ID and you're in, no questions asked!  Also, if you're in that age bracket and visiting over a weekend then the metro day tickets are vastly reduced in price, which was perfect for us because it meant that we could just hop on and hop off at whichever stops we fancied without having to worry about how many journeys we'd made. 

Whilst we were there we also took the opportunity to sample as many French delicacies as possible, ie. we ate a lot.  I'm all about a good pâtisserie and freshly-baked bread, and when there's an offering on literally every street it can be difficult to resist!  But hey, when in Paris, eat like a beast (or something similar). 

Having been lucky enough to spend four spectacularly jam-packed days in the French capital, I thought I'd share some of my favourite snaps from our time there.

The Returned

I think the last time I paid any real attention to a soundtrack from a TV programme was the mixes from The OC.  The music played a huge part in the programme and any episode which featured a performance at the Bait Shop was always a winner!  Fast forward a few years and I've found myself listening to another soundtrack to another programme I really enjoyed - Les Revenants or The Returned, a French thriller shown on Channel 4 which finished a few weeks ago.

The soundtrack is just by one band this time, Mogwai, and is perfect for those times when you want something chilled and heavily instrumental.  Apparently, the producers asked them to start writing the album before they began filming so that it could be used as inspiration and this definitely comes across - the haunting melodies do a lot to generate the atmosphere on screen and their impact is not lost when you're listening to the audio alone.

I really enjoyed the series and would highly recommend you give it a watch but if you're not one for subtitles (or dead French people...), you should definitely still listen to the soundtrack.  I, for one, am really looking forward to hearing what accompanies the next series.