Tinker and Tailor: Surprise!

I have been hugging a delicious secret for several months now and trying desperately not to spill the beans.

It was Edward's birthday this week and as it happened to be a particularly exciting birthday I thought it warranted a particularly exciting present. A trip to Paris seemed to fit the bill and having sneakily cleared it with his boss, I made all the arrangements and concentrated on not bursting with excitement. Luckily he hadn't guessed a thing and so was completely surprised and big eyed when I handed him his golden ticket.

We were up horribly early on Wednesday to catch the train from St Pancras, arriving in Paris mid morning, just in time to look round the Sacre Coeur in Montmartre before settling down to ice cold panaches and lunch at Le Cafe des Deux Moulins (of 'Amelie' fame!).

Our hotel was one of lastminute.com's 'Top Secret' hotel deals - where you know the general area the hotel is in but not much more than that. This meant we ended up about 15 minutes walk from the Arc de Triomphe with a room at a very affordable rate. It was worth the mystery, the hotel was lovely and then we hardly spent any time in it anyway!

We visited all sorts of places but didn't actually go in them or up them. The best bit was wandering around the city drinking it all in. There is a fab bike rental system and we grabbed a couple and cycled along the river one afternoon. It was by far the best way to travel - no sore feet, cheap and fairly fast, while still being above ground with the ability to stop and look at things.

One of the best meals we had was takeaway falafel from Chez H'anna in Le Marais - an enormous needs-two-hands-and-full-concentration warm pitta stuffed with sauces, cruditees and delicious falafel. It cost only 5.50euros each and was ridiculously good.

The top of our food list however, has to be supper we had at Bistrot Victoires on Thursday evening. We had spent the afternoon wandering around the art galleries and tiny independent shops in St Germain des Pres and wandering back across the river, found this gem just a few streets back from the Jardin des Tuileries. We both had steak (full of flavour and cooked to perfection) and chips (slim, crisp and fluffy) washed down with a kir au cassis, all extremely good and very reasonably priced at 11euros for entrecote and frites.

We cycled along the river in growing darkness to look at Notre Dame and sat and watched some street performers before dragging ourselves back to the hotel and falling into bed. There is something so nice about wandering the streets of Paris at night. Perfect temperature and great atmosphere. There were loads of people out even at midnight!