One of our friends was super nice and let us stay with her this weekend in Paris, leaving (me, especially) a few more dollars to spend on macarons! JK is spending the summer working in a lab in Paris but lives in Évry, a suburb that is a half hour train ride from Paris itself. She had to leave for work, leaving us to lock -up and head into the city ourselves.
We were to wake up at 8 so we could make it to an 11 o'clock city tour in time. When the alarm rang, we clearly weren't ready to get out of bed. Oh well, there's a 2pm tour too. . .
Problem is, our host took her house key with her! After a few distressed emails, a search for an old man with a small white dog and an encounter with an angry building manager, the door was locked and we could finally head out. Unfortunately JG and I are both terrible with directions but somehow we ended up on a bus that goes to a train station that gets us to the right place. Travelling is hard!
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| Buses here are whimsical-er |
Eventually the train took us to a place that looks like Paris and we were suddenly in front of Paris' Hotel de ville (city hall), where there was a beach volleyball court and a man that blows giant soap bubbles. I'm really wondering if this place is for real.
Keep in mind that this whole time were running around looking for where the tour is supposed to start, running past the famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore, Notre Dame and crossing bridges over an over. Somehow we never found the tour, but oh well. In my opinion, Paris is best explored without a guide.
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| Scotty lives at shakespeare and co. |
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| See up there? It's Quasimodo's home |
Dinner plans were up at Montmartre, a small, umm. . . mountain in Paris. We had a bit of extra time in the after noon and decided to do a bit more sightseeing. Somehow we ended up taking the scenic route to our scenic sights and got tickets for the Batobus, a hop on-hop off boat tour along the Seine. I was asleep for half the 60-min round trip, but it's not like I missed anything, it was raining! We hopped-off the boat tour in the Église St. Germain-des-Prés area and checked out the beautiful church while we waited for the rain to end.
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| I <3 privileged student pricing |
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| Wedding at St. Germain |
Despite the weather, dinner up at Monmartre was fabulous. Of note, the hilarious English menu they gave us. My burnt cream was delicious, thank you very much.
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| yum greedy pancakes |
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| Real size? a small dessert plate, yummmm |
Our Greedy pancakes gave us just enough energy to go see Sacré-Coeur. And what's a trip to Paris without seeing its most famous landmark, the Tour Eiffel?
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| Subways don't climb mountains, its riders do |
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| Sacre-Coeur in the rain |
Louvre day tomorrow, 6:30am wake-up call anyone?
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