Day 2: Avebury & train to Paris

On our second day in England, Neil and I woke up early and went on the most beautiful run in the Cotswolds. Cannot even tell you how many times I have daydreamed about that run since, it was absolutely magical and one of the very best parts of the trip for me. When we got back, Abigail was just starting to get going, so she walked down to the village to check it out while Neil & I got ready to go. 

The drive back towards London was so gorgeous! We kept an eye out for the chalk horses in Wiltshire and sure enough...

Just very very cool. 

We debated between going to Stonehenge and Avebury and ultimately decided on Avebury after talking to some British friends (we were a little tight on time this day and worried about tour times at Stonehenge, etc. I do wish we'd been able to go because we were SO close, but I really loved Avebury. We went to both when I was a teenager and I found the original rock where my sisters and I all posed in extreme grumpiness and sent a photo to my parents for old times' sake.  

Thankfully this teenager was not at all grumpy and feeling MUCH better! 

I love how you can just wander between the stones (and there's a village built through a solid half of it!). 

Lots of sheep grazing too and wandering through the stones, which made it all feel very lovely and pastoral and idyllic. 

Here's a shot of the circle going right up (and eventually through!) the village! 

Then we drove back to London, dropped off the car, breathed a sigh of relief about the whole "driving on the other side of the road" thing, and walked to Kings' Cross. The very nice Avis guy gave us such sweet tips about what bits of the city near us he thought we would like, but we didn't have time to check them out. Gosh, seriously everything I saw I wanted to just dig in and stay for weeks. I would really really really love to live in England at some point. 

Such a beautiful station! 

Had to detour on our way to the Eurostar.

Then we sat there forever because our train was delayed (but thankfully it was NOT cancelled as most of the others were, thanks to rail workers' strikes). So we finally got into Paris as the sun was setting...

We tried to get metro tickets but we went to the wrong machine and the lines were super long, so we ended up just walking to our AirBnB from Gare du Nord. I would...not do this again. I was tired and it was not a super nice part of the city so it was kind of stressful. 

But also PARIS. 

Then we found our AirBnB, figured out which one of the restaurants on my list was still open and seating diners (we ended up at Dame Tartine and yes the servers were truly as kind as the reviews say, definitely the perfect place to go on your first night). 

Escargot of course...

Then a bunch of tartines, sorry the picture is not rotated. Mine was the smoked salmon and radish one. 

Then the best creme brulee I have ever eaten in my entire life, hands down, no contest, truly amazing. We weren't even going to get dessert because we were pretty full and very tired but when we asked for the bill the waitress was truly shocked and told us we HAD to have dessert. She was not wrong. 

And then back to our AirBnb in Le Marais. Funny thing here...the walk to Dame Tartine felt SO long the first night, and then we passed it a million times afterwards and every time we passed it we were like "oh, almost home, super close now." 



Here is a very blurry photo I took out the window showing the charming little courtyard of our Airbnb, which I really loved. It was teeny tiny but absolutely perfect and the location was unbeatable.