Cruise dining!

I remember that I promised you a post about my trip to Paris. Here goes...I actually went there for a dinner with a JPA official, it was a kind of exclusive invitation for a small group of students.

We went onto a bateau parisien!! For cruise dining (I bet I'll never get to go on it again, it's so expensive...unless if I end up working for JPA in Paris of course. lol)

So...let's start with some sights from the boat.

just a bridge in the distance

some prettily lighted up building (I've no idea what it is)

prettily lighted bridge

Er, what was this building already? (I really don't know Paris... :P )
Okay, I checked (just for you!) It's l'institut de France. Don't ask me more. :P

and this is l'Assemblée Nationale (the National Assembly)

Eiffel tower in the background
We started the cruise just beside the Eiffel tower (but on the river, of course ;P ), and here we were coming back towards the starting point.

We had two round tables for 20 people. Actually round tables are kinda rare in France. I think it's because each person has their own plate, and it's not like there's anything to put in the middle of the table, unlike Asian meals where we have the shared food in the middle. Ours were probably the only round tables in the boat...all the others were square tables lined up (as you will be able to see in a later photo)

Our two tables.
My place was just opposite where I was taking the photo, at the near table.

So you see, we weren't quite able to just get up and take photos whenever we wanted. Some of my photos were taken from my seat (I could just lean back a bit and snap a photo towards the front of the boat), but then it would include some empty seats or tables as well. Later, before dessert, we went outside to the side of the boat and there's where we snapped some other nicer photos (no glass in between!)

Now, I'm sure you want to know what we ate. Here's a collage of all the dishes I have pictures of (some of them from a friend). In short, the three on the top are desserts, the bottom-right one and the two on the middle-left are appetizers, and the rest are main dishes except for the three bowls on the middle-right, which are the side dishes for the main course. The bottom-centre dish is actually only fish, my friend added the 3 blobs of veggies for the photo ;) (and by the way, the fish was supposed to come with a sauce...except that it had alcohol in it and so the Muslims asked for the dish without sauce.

(click to enlarge)

The menu was in English...I don't know whether it was because they requested it. Probably...otherwise there'd be only foreigners on the boat :P

There was music while we were dining...there was a stage at the back of the boat (which we couldn't see from our tables) The singer and the violinist walked around the boat, stopping at a few places to perform (so that everyone could at least see them for a while, I guess)

A photographer even came along to take photos of us, as a group at the table, individually or in groups of twos or threes. Then they developed the photos and asked us if we wanted to buy them, for 20€ each. What a rip-off! I could take the photo myself... Of course, they mounted it on a cardboard souvenir thingy. We each got to choose one since JPA paid for it ^_^ (they negotiated a group price)

We took a group photo at the end of the meal, just before leaving.

There were two cameras...I hate it when there's more than one camera! You never know where to look -_-

Before that, I had taken photos with two of my juniors:

with Patrick, and En. Faris (our new attaché in Paris) joining in at the back :P

with Yong Chang

Then there are the pics taken by Anati:

There, the tables in the boat...

and a pic from outside ^_^

And not forgetting the Eiffel tower.

with As and Ummu (from left); Anati was the photographer

These were taken just outside the boat.

Actually I reached Paris in the morning...and met up with some people before going for the dinner.

I met up with Firdaus first, and we walked around a bit...and took a photo in front of Notre-Dame.


Then we met up with Faeez and Asilda. This was on Place Georges Pompidou.


And Asilda introduced me to a lovely cupcake shop in Paris, called Berko (you can see the bag in the pic!) I didn't dare to take out my camera in the shop, so I took these pics using my phone.



If you want to know more about these cupcakes (like where to find them :P ) or just see better pictures, head over to backpackers-zone ;)

Well, that's all for this trip!