Lost in Paris

Today is, sadly, our last full day in Paris. We will have just enough time for breakfast tomorrow and then it will be a train to Amsterdam. One great thing about the swap in hostels is that we are literally 10 feet away from the train station we need to be at tomorrow, which means an extra half hour of sleep in the morning!

We actually slept in this morning. We planned a lazy day in Paris, we had a few sites we still wanted to see but we were just going to go wherever the wind blew us and get lost. I know that there are people who would think that is a stupid idea and would have crammed this day full of more sites and sounds, but this is our trip and not theirs, so they can do what they like when they come to Paris.

Before we got on the Metro (because we have mastered the Paris subway system), we stopped at La Poste (the post office) to buy some stamps. You had to buy them from a machine...and in French, so it obviously took us a few tries to get it right. Hopefully my post cards make it home.

We spent the majority of our day in the Latin Quarter (which, I needed to explain to Whitney was not because it was Latin as in Latino but because it was where Paris' first college was located and they originally only spoke Latin there).

I took the book crawl international today! Whitney placated me by allowing a trip to Shakespeare and Company, a bookstore that was frequented and beloved by Mr. Ernest Hemingway and described as "a wonderland of books" by Henry Miller.

Books are cool

Does my nerdiness show if I say that this has definitely been one of the things I have loved the most about my stay here? It wasn't just a book store, it was more like half store/half museum. They had a selection of new books, used books and first editions that you were encouraged to pick up, look at and touch. Up on the second floor, they had a piano that you were invited to play (I didn't, because that is never a good idea), they also had a bunch of old typewriters and nooks where people left messages for the customers who would come after them. They do a lot of readings and workshops there, although I was obviously unable to attend one... for now. One the first floor, they had a hole in the floor that was for people to drop donations into to "Feed the starving writers," I was nearly in tears. The whole place was a bit of a shrine to Hemingway, and I mean, why not? To top it all off, I made a new friend, because up on the second floor, they had a cat! What is more Hemingway than that? Actually, a polydactyl cat would be more Hemingway than this deaf cat was, but still!

Kitty!

Also, yes, I did buy a book. And yes, it was by Hemingway. I also bought a tote bag!

After that, we went back and found the market we had visited on Monday because Whitney needed to feed her scarf obsession. While we were there, I fed myself, having found a baker (with his tray, like always) and bought myself another croissant. She's shopping, I'm eating, what else is new?

We got lost some more in our search for the Jardin du Luxemborg, but eventually we found it. The Jardin du Luxembord is the second largest public garden in France and is actually where the French Senate is located today (it was originally built by Marie de' Medici). When we first got there, a bunch of people dressed in Victorian garb were dancing a gazebo. It was equal parts strange and endearing -- apparently they were preparing for a later performance. We walked further out into the park and found the large "basin," where people were playing with tiny sailboats. We decided to rent one, which became known as the Star Ship, because it had a star on it's sail. Our ship was a fighter, because we basically managed to hit every other ship in the water and the statue in the middle, but she made it back in one piece! We called it "The little ship that could."

There she is.

After we were done there, we planned on going to Le Procope, which is the oldest cafe in Paris and was a favorite of Voltaire and Balzac [insert Princess Diaries and Music Man references here] but it was a little steep for us so we kept on moving. We eventually chose Cafe de Paris for lunch (mostly because the menus were in English) and were not disappointed. We ordered a Coke to share even though they're pricey here because it came in a glass bottle and it all felt very fancy. I got escargot again -- just six this time -- because even though snails are ugly, they are delicious. Whitney got French onion soup (which I stole some of) and almost cried because it was to die for.

That was where we reached the end of what we had planned to do for the day, so we flipped open our guide book and decided we would go to the Bastille. This was a let down; the book didn't tell us that the Bastille was just a giant pillar and a traffic circle! Yes, it was a shiny pillar, but the most interesting thing about being there was witnessing a minor car accident. Whitney said that we'd gone to storm the Bastille and it got scared, so it ran away and left a column there instead. Victor Hugo's house was only a few blocks away, so we went there. We didn't go in because we weren't that interested in it, but the whole thing led to Whitney stomping through the streets of Paris singing "One Day More" -- more like the six words she knows of it -- for about a half an hour.

After that, we decided to head for the hostel to blog and regroup for tonight and tomorrow.

One thing that I didn't blog about the past two days is that there is a special place in Hell for people who graffiti churches. Both the dome at Sacre-Coeur and the towers at Notre-Dame had been graffiti-ed. It's a church, are you really so desperate for attention that you need to scribble or even carve your name into it?God can see what you're doing! You're practically up his nose when you're in those places, so you should just cut the crap. With that being said, today I saw a cool bit of art that had been sprayed onto the side of a building that I wanted to share with you.

Souhait vous étiez ici.