A French Wedding and a few Days in Paris

Back in June I was lucky enough to attend a wedding in France. My friend Bill's son Nick was getting wed to a young lady from Orleans.

Of course I tied everything into a trip to the UK to visit my mother in Chesterfield. The trip from Chesterfield to France couldn't have been easier - the train from Chesterfield goes to St Pancras in London, which is now the new and very fine terminal for the Eurostar train to Paris (catching a train to go south to France from a station on the north side of London doesn't seem logical, but that's the way they built it).

The short trip across Paris on the Metro and another train to Montargis was not quite as stress free. Paris Metro and the train station did not (on that day) appear to have any human ticket vendors, just hundreds of machines taking the dreaded chip and pin credit cards which we Americans do not have. I purchased a highly inflated Metro ticket from a dubious character on the Gare Du Nord, and then gave up completely on the train ticket to Montargis and just got on the train sans ticket (not that I would encourage this behavior, but no one collected the fare, and I just walked out the station at the end of the line in Montargis).

Montargis is a delightful little town - home of the praline (first made in the time of Louis XIII) and once visited by Joan of Arc. On top of that, if Chinese history is to be believed, it was also instrumental in the formation of the Chinese Communist Party - who would have expected that? It will soon be visited by the Tour De France, it being the finish and start of stages in this year's Tour (the course was decorated with these nice little cycling jersey flags).


The wedding was quite wonderful - a bilingual ceremony in a little Catholic Church, a long reception in a nearby Chateau, and a lunch there the next day. I had heard the wedding reception could be long, but I didn't imagine it to be quite so long - we started at the church around 2:30 and we left the reception around 1:00 am after the cake came out. Apparently the younger guests saw the dawn come up.


Interestingly outside the church a Frenchman approached me and asked if I was American (yes was the simplest answer). He then went on to relate the story of Americans passing through the town in their tanks during the liberation of the Second World War. He was 4 at the time and he remembers the Americans distributing sweets and chewing gum to the children.

Axelle, the bride, being a cabaret dancer, had many cabaret dancer friends which provided wonderful entertainment for the wedding (this was after the hors d' ouvres and champaigne and a 6 course meal, just before the elaborate cake and sugar sculptures).



After the wedding, we (Bill, Cathy, Brian, Allison, and Nigel) met up in Paris to enjoy a few days in the city. We did a few things I hadn't done before like climbing to the top of the Eiffel Tower (see aboove), and riding on a river boat on the Seine. I finished up sipping a Pernod at a cafe outside the Gare Du Nord before stepping aboard the oh-so-fast Eurostar to London, and the not-quite-as-fast Midland Mainline to Chesterfield.

Here are some photos from the trip.