Je ne Parle Pas Francais!

10:17 PM Paris

                As I sit on the bathroom floor (this is the only room where the wifi works) reflecting on the day, Andy and I realize that we didn’t have any misadventures today! How boring… no just kidding. It’s much less stressful that way!

                We think Marie likes us now! She greeted us with a cheery bonjour and good morning and asked us if she made our coffee too strong yesterday (of course not… she made it just like I would have… Jeremy would have called it sludge… I don’t think Marie would like Jeremy either though… Ha).  Andy was definitely sucking up to her this morning but we definitely think it worked.  She’s lived in this house for 30 some years and she runs the bed and breakfast while sometimes having long term exchange students stay as well.  When flipping through her French to English dictionary, Andy found a note that a student wrote her saying “Marie, won’t be home for dinner tonight, a boy at school asked me out.”  It sounds like she loves having the students here because they are her company for dinner! 

                After breakfast we took the puke green line back to the city center and went straight to the Louvre.  The weather was lousy again today (no pockets of sunshine at all) but we still had our cheapo umbrella from yesterday.  The line for the Louvre took about 30 minutes and one of the Brits chatting behind us sounded exactly like Sansa Stark from Game of Thrones… we miss that show by the way.  We’ll be furious if we accidentally read spoilers on facebook.  Once inside the Louvre we had to stand in an equally long line to buy tickets; I joked that years of waiting in line for roller coasters prepared me for this.  Hey, at least this ride would last longer than 60 seconds! 

                I was so surprised at how they just let you take pictures all over the Louvre; they’ll practically crucify you if they catch you taking a picture of Michaelangelo’s David in Florence, yet you can snap as many shots as you want of the Mona Lisa.  We have some of Andy and I with her ;)  We saw a lot of paintings but by the time we got to the ancient Egyptians, I felt extremely sick.  We left to go to the pharmacy down the street and get some lunch; we figure we’ll go back to the Louvre later – it is open late on Wednesdays and Fridays!  I start to feel better while eating – we had found a little café called Chez Claude.  It was €15.80 to get an entrée and appetizer or an entrée and dessert – Andy picked the first and I picked the latter! His starter was a crab meat and avocado dish (so good with bread!).  The avocado was mashed, so we joked that he manages to eat guac where ever he goes.  For entrée, he got salmon with potatoes and I went Italian with cheesy, pesto-y ravioli – both delicious.  Dad would appreciated that the salmon came with the skin on! For dessert, I got an apple tart (which had a super light, flaky pastry crust) with raspberry and caramel sauce and ice cream.  Andy described it as the most delicious dessert he’s ever had in his life. It was pretty damn good!! Everything in France tastes good – much like Italy.  Andy’s card got rejected so we had mini panic attacks about that (good thing we always have cash).  Turns out it must have just been their system because it was accepted when we tried it at another shop.

                After lunch we walked a few blocks to Notre Dame.  The entry is free, so we stood in line to get in – it was still very rainy so the line only took about 10 minutes.  The inside is so beautiful, it reminded me of cathedrals in Rome and reminded Andy of cathedrals of London :P If only we had Rick Steves Paris, we would be getting a lot more out of these visits… unfortunately, Rick isn’t sold at most vendors and with our tight budget, buying an expensive guide book for two days isn’t really worth it L Going site seeing completely blind isn’t all bad though. We like to look things up once we get home!  Once outside again, we got in a line along the side of the cathedral to climb the towers.  This line wasn’t moving AT ALL and the rain was just beating down on us… frustrated and wanting to get indoors, we gave up and set out for the Louvre, round two.

                Re-entry into the Louvre is super easy, just make sure you save your tickets! You get to skip the line to get into the museum and obviously, don’t have to stand in the ticket line again.  We’re pretty soaking wet at this point – that goodness I remembered my Mom’s pink rain jacket.  I’d be a crabby mess without it by now.  We wandered through what felt like miles of ancient Egypt, Rome, Cyprus, and other middle eastern histories as well as the preserved medieval castle portion that existed before the Louvre was built.  I was really looking forward to the exhibit of the history of the museum but it had closed already! I can’t explain this because my map said that all exhibits should have stayed open til past 9 because it was Friday.  I guess I’ll just have to wiki it!

                It had FINALLY stopped raining and we wandered into a bunch of dinky souvenir stores to get some trinkets for various family members.  I got Megan a small thing (don’t get too excited!!) because she loves Paris and I have a very good feeling both her and her mom read this blog!  We walked back to the puke green line and took it back to our little town in the outskirts of Paris.  Turns out, just one more train stop and it’s a dodgy area with a little more theft – Marie had her bicycle stolen there - they actually cut the lock!  We’re very glad we didn’t go to that stop by accident the first night when we were lost; our area is VERY nice.  I haven’t felt unsafe since getting to Paris, thank goodness.  If you’re an aimless wanderer like we are, we highly recommend googling areas to avoid in the cities you’re visiting! It would definitely save you some stress.

                For dinner we stopped at a pastry shop and smiled and pointed at a berry fruit tart and a chocolate thing because they were pretty!  We also got a quiche Lorraine which the worker heated up for us (YUM).  The woman who rang us up spoke a tiny bit of English and told us our total was €19.  That seemed a little high… but when we got our change back we realized she just had the English word for 19 confused with 9. Haha. She didn’t have anywhere to sit in house so we went across the street to the butcher to grab a bottle of wine (delicious wine for €5 or less can be found everywhere! This one was €4.40).  The butcher didn’t speak English at all but we could tell he was very excited to use the two words he did know with us (“yes!” and “bye bye!”).  If only we spoke French… he seemed extremely kind and babbled quite a lot about something…

                The quiche and pastries were divine; the chocolate one was like chocolate mousse layered cake with a coffee flavor and the fruit tart had strawberries and raspberries on a delicious shortbread-like cookie base.  Andy said that Andrew would have loved it but I said he would have been like, why put all these fruit, jam and glaze on a perfectly good shortbread?? Tomorrow, before we leave, I’m insisting on more pastries and quiche!

                No crazy mishaps today, just one beautiful, rainy, Parisian day.  We love it here!! I’m thinking of moving. Haha, just kidding. Maybe.