Today was spent exploring PARIS! Loved it.
It seemed that everyone who I’ve talked to that has been to Paris would either comment that it was beautiful, or dirty. To me – kinda both. There did seem to be a lot of litter, but looking at the architecture seemed to make up for that.
My mom’s sister, Joanne had bought us hop on hop off bus tickets to see the Paris attractions. We took the metro from our sweet little hotel in Montparnasse to the city centre. After the rain last night, we were hoping that it was done – but no such luck. It rained! At points, it rained hard – at other points, it stopped and the sun shone. Loved it! Even when it rained, we had fun… And laughed and laughed at the absurdity of it. Of course the rainy moments were the times that we chose to sit on the top of the open air tour bus, and the times that the string on my poncho hat would fail…!
We had a breakfast of croissants and fruit from a bakery and fruit stand, and began our tour of Paris. We saw the Eiffel tower, the Louvre, the Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, and many other places that I hadn’t heard of, but I have now!!
Karis had been looking forward to the Louvre, so I was happy that we walked around there with her (even though we did not go inside) I had no idea how big that was!!!! Also loved the bridge of locks across the street. Beautiful
We explored the Notre Dame. I’m terrible at European history. Okay ..ALL history… And had no idea until a few days ago that Notre Dame was even in Paris until Aunt Margie mentioned it. Amazing! Not being Catholic, I’m sure that we didn’t appreciate it to it’s fullest, but did appreciate it none the less! (The fist of MANY churches we will visit in the next month!!) we each lit a candle and said a prayer.
After Note Dame, we had lunch at a cute cafe nearby and the waiter had us giggling. Funny, even when we try to speak French, people will immediately switch to English. They can tell we suck at their language and know we are English! Our waiter was sarcastic and quick witted. Even ran to hide behind the counter when the police drove by. Funny dude!
We decided that we would climb the Eiffel Tower. You are able to climb about half way on your own – so we did just that! We moaned and groaned the whole way telling ourselves that it was good training for climbing the Pyrenees (that comes Thursday!!!!) Karis… Who continually cracks us all up, posed for her “I-Fell tower” picture…
When heading back to the metro, we decided to take our time. We wandered down a street full of bakeries, fruit and vegetable stores, cafés, etc… The strawberries here look so amazing, that we decided we’d buy some. While at the fruit shop, we saw something weird. We asked the man working outside what these strange things were. Karis was very interested. He responded that they were raw almonds. We bought one. Just one. A basket of strawberries and one almond. The guy at the till was very amused at us. He called to the man outside and they both laughed at us. Stupid Canadians! I suppose it would be the same as someone buying just one grape! In the meantime, Mom was perplexed about the white asparagus! This is when I took my favourite picture so far this trip…
As for a few other interesting things seen today… A freaky clown with a plastic face, a cat casually walking along a narrow ridge high up on a building, a singing woman and an accordion playing man on the metro and a WHOLE LOTTA teeny cars with amazing parking abilities!