greetings from Paris

[tielan]

So, there was pretty much half a day, if not more, where I was in transit. Admittedly, it was business class transit, so it was kind of sort of perhaps just a little bit amazing...

But before that, there were weird waterfall ceramic animals cafe, and a Hello Kitty shop in Ho Chi Minh city...

So one thing about Vietnam is that they do creepy twee like nowhere else on the planet that I've visited.

So, imagine a tropical themed coffee-cafe, complete with plastic foliage and a couple of waterfalls, one of which has ceramic animals frolicking in the water:



Add white garden-setting type seating, covered with cottage-flower cushions, and some American farmhouse-style shutterings high up on the wall that open to blank wall...

The coffee was great - the traditional cafe sua da: individual drip coffee with sweetened condensed milk:

Vietnamese iced coffee. #Vietnam #coffee #SelAndTheWorld2016

A video posted by Mad Quilter's Disease (seldear) on Jul 11, 2016 at 8:10pm PDT

Then there was a brief visit to the Hello Kitty store: "I never dreamed there was so much pink in the universe..."



I came away with a couple of things for the kids of a friend. :)

And then lunch, the name of which I have forgotten:

I can't remember what this is called, only that it was pretty delicious! #Vietnam #SelAndTheWorld2016

A video posted by Mad Quilter's Disease (seldear) on Jul 12, 2016 at 8:18am PDT

I upgraded to Business Class at the airport from an economy ticket. It cost a lot, but it was wonderful.



It was a 13-hour flight, and I got about 5 hours of decent sleep...and then discovered that the chair folded out into a flatbed (but you had to get off it and flip the back forward and do things and YOU COULD SLEEP FLAT). And I discovered this after the 5 hours of sleep, which was decent, but not quite enough to keep me from crashing around 4pm and sleeping until 8pm once I reached Paris.

This time, we're probably only briefly going into 'the city' and the touristy parts, and we're staying well away from the crowds in the centre; we'll have our own little hangout and party.

But I had about three hours before the first of my friends turned up, so I did some exploring around and found a 'marche' which is a food market. And HOMG. There was CHEESE.



So. Much. Cheese.

(I love cheese. So. Much. Cheese.)

And here are me and my Spidergirls in Paris!



And now it's time to kick them off the bed and go to bed myself...