Honeymoon Day 11: Swimming, Star Wars underpants, and Blue Tea
Quick! Do all the last minute things we want to do in Paris!
Our very quick 1.5 days in Paris on the honeymoon was action packed, and this morning was no exception. Our first stop was the absolutely crazy swimming pool on the bottom floor of the amazing Raffles Le Royal Monceau Paris. This super unusual and amazing spa/pool was underneath of an outdoor terrace (you can see the roof in these two photos below). I had a tea at the entrance to the pool area, and then we went to go take a swim in this crazy place. As we were swimming, it started raining outside on the upper deck and there were rain droplets visible from the pool! Of course, this was all in Phillipe Starck-designed style, with mirrors everywhere and bright white paint everywhere, interesting and weird metal work, etc. Check this madness out!
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| Crazy! |
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| A view from the upper deck from online, this is the roof of the pool |
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| Ever seen billowy curtains on the wall of a swimming pool before?! Me neither. |
After a swim, we tried out the hot tub and then went off to try the spa areas. I tried the warm seat, steam room, sauna and shower. The design of the place was so unusual I had to snap a few photos when no one was in there (thankfully it was very quiet so there was so one else in there at all, really!)
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| Warm seat to relax on |
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| Shower area, steam room |
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| Crazy epic rain shower thing!! See video below. |
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| Back to the classic Phillipe Starck style, TONS of mirrors everywhere... in the change room portion of the pool! |
Amazing. The best.
We met up outside of the spa area and had a mini-muffin and a cappucino there before heading back to the room. Upstairs, we took a few more photos of our awesome room and then we split the remaining to-do items: we needed to both pack AND do laundry... so, Michal packed while I raced around outside to take care of some "chores" before flying out of CDG later that day.
First stop was the Laverie -- I found one close-ish and walked about 10 min down some verrrry French sideroads to find it. Along the way I saw tons of cobbler shops making handmade dress shoes, it was so cool. I wasn't sure how it was gonna go at the Laverie but it was fine -- I chucked the laundry in and it was a pretty fancy machine, actually! You entered the info into a main machine and then selected digitally on the machine the cycle you wanted. Pretty fun and I read the whole instructions in French before realizing later that another sign on another wall was in English. haha.
With our laundry safely in a washing machine, I raced back past the hotel towards the Eric Kayser to grab a baguette for lunch. But wait!!! A Celio store! It was sortof of a side-road so I figured I might be lucky and they might have my Star Wars underpants that I desperately wanted to buy. "Excuse-et-moi... est-ce que vous avez un Boite de Star War?"... "Oui!" Yay!!!!!
The lady had kindly helped me after I had already rifled through several boxes, opening them all up to check the designs (as there were 4 or 5 different designs, and you couldn't tell which one it was from the outside of the box). "Can I help?"... "Different designs?"... "I think so..." After a pretty minimal amount of effort she said, "These seem all the same." I had already jumbled up things enough to try to find all the possible designs, so I just got one box and well as a single Darth Vader one that seemed to be extra special. I also got some awesome Celio socks and another 5 pack of nice varied colour boxers. Between Celio and Pull-In, Paris sure knows how to make a kick-ass boxer short, let me tell you!
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| Damn this was awesome. |
After that excitement I made it to Eric Kayser and got Le Baguette Eternale... sounds good! I got a cookie and a pain au chocolat to take back for lunch, too.
Don't forget, the laundry still needed to be dried! So I schlepped again.. 10 min back to the hotel area, past our hotel, and then 10 more min to the Laverie. Thankfully no one stole our clothes (though I just got so many new boxer shorts I probably would have been OK if they did), and I switched them from the washer into a dryer. Now, time for lunch. On the walk back (again!) to the hotel, I stopped a small local Franprix mini grocery store and picked up some awesome looking 8 Euros of various cheeses, Bonne Maman jam, and a 7up Saveur Mojito flavour pop can. Now back to the hotel room to check in on Michal, eat some lunch and drop off all the stuff I just bought :)
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| Lunch of champions |
After a great lunch and regaling Michal about 5 times with the same story about how I got 50% off all the things at Celio, Michal packed the stuff I just bought while I then raced back and forth, ONE MORE TIME, to go pick UP the dry laundry!!!! OMG we are insane.
We packed the last of the clothes and checked out of the hotel. The was still enough time for a quick tea at Mariage Freres, a fancy-as-heck tea place that is very similar to TWG Tea from Singapore, it has the same sort of vibe (and I always wondered if they were related somehow). They had an actual Mariage Freres sit-down tea room and it was right near the hotel so we went to check it out. Michal chose the "Mariage" tea and I got "Marco Polo Bleu" tea. SERIOUSLY, BLUE TEA. I had never heard of it before and it was sooo crazy I had to try it. Seriously, the colour was nuts! The guy said it was on the scale of teas between Black tea and Green tea. Very odd indeed. It was sortof bluey-green. Insane!
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| Ladies and gentlemen, BLUE tea!!! |
The blue tea looked SO weird but I loved trying it. It had a good, mild flavour, and was a bit "malty" and "vanilla-y". So cray. With tea we also had some scones which were great and some "Tea Madelines" which were FANTASTIC. We got Rose and Earl Grey tea-infused madelines and they were soft and very tasty. A delicious and fabulous spot to take a short rest amidst the running around! The tea menu here was insane too, it was like the Multnomah Whisky Library of tea!
What a great wrap-up day to the Europe portion of our honeymoon adventure. On the way back to the hotel to grab our bags, Michal found a store called "Naf Naf" that was her exact style of funky and cute and really matched the types of clothes she likes. It was so great, and "Tres Parisienne"! This place was totally Michal's style and she got a few things. Fun! And crazy right as we were about to leave for the airport!
We got our bags and took an Uber (Uue-beaaarrr!) to CDG. That was sweet and very easy. Upon arrival to the airport we were surprised to see a long line for checking in for Air Seychelles -- kind of surprising! Quite a busy flight! We were a bit concerned about our luggage weight but it was all good and no problems. Amazingly, we each only packed ONE bag for this month-long, multi-continent, every-type-of-weather trip each and had not yet gone over the weight limit.
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| Here we go!!!!! |
It was such a good plan to do this flight from Paris and to be able to arrive in the Seychelles but not to be jetlagged or to have to deal with a major time difference since we had already intentionally acclimatized to the time zone over the past week in Europe, and Seychelles was only a couple hours different in time zone than France.
We had a great chicken dinner on the plane and when they came around with the drink cart I asked the stewardess "what would the locals recommend?" She said the Takamaka Bay Dark Rum and Coke was the best choice. I was very excited to try that and she seemed very pleased that I chose the rum of the Seychelles.
And then began our next part of the trip... to the magnificent Indian Ocean paradise of The Seychelles... we could hardly wait for the next part of this insane adventure around the world.
