World Tour

July 22 - Saturday "Chillin' in Paris" "Yes, I was in Paris for the weekend." How many people can say that? I never thought I would be that someone and yet here I am chillin' in Paris as my sister and I had phrased it. We agreed not to drive ourselves mad by trying to see every site in one weekend - that's crazy. I like to be outside so I thought just going out and wandering about - taking it all in seemed like a good idea - with just a few major sites as a goal on this trip. My sister is used to travelling first class for work. Flying first class and staying in posh hotels doesn't seem to phase her anymore. I've been camping for the last one and a half + months and having a bed to sleep in at night is pretty darned exciting for me, not to mention a bathroom to share with only one other person and not a whole campground or that I can just switch on a light to go to the bathroom and not have to strap on a headlamp, put my shoes on and schlep to the bathroom, or that there wouldn't be any bugs in my bed, or that I would be sleeping on a real pillow with real sheets instead of sleeping on my clothes in a sleeping bag or that the shower wasn't coin operated - I could go on but you get the idea. This was a girls weekend and I was going to enjoy it. My luggage consisted of one large pannier and one small pannier some of the contents of which I would be sending home with Mary. One of the things I miss from home is wearing jeans and when I saw Mary pull hers out of her suitcase I was reminded of my necessarily limited wardrobe. When she pulled out three pairs of jeans I was reminded of the fact that we are travelling in two very different ways. Oh, one thing Mary did bring was pictures and video snippets of our two cats, Luna and Tracker that she took with her mobile phone. I think they've gotten bigger but there they were flopping onto their sides in typical Luna and Tracker fashion waiting expectantly for their bellies to be rubbed. We lost an hour with the time change to France and ended up sleeping in so our day didn't start until later in the morning. We were hoping to find a Saturday street market but no such luck. Instead we bought sandwiches at the local market and some fruit from a fruitstand nearby. We didn't have any hard and fast plan for the day or for the weekend for that matter and so we began wandering around the city. We spent a lot of our day going in and out of little shops on the way to 'Paris's trendiest shopping mall' which was near the opera house. Window shopping with Jon is not very enjoyable, because it's not his thing, which is fine, but I had missed the shopping aspect from life and got only so much satisfaction out of looking around a grocery store which has been about all the shopping (window or otherwise)that I've done on this trip despite Jon's encouraging me to go out. Having him wait patiently outside after he takes 30 seconds to look around a store leaves me feeling guilty for making him wait. I was hoping to buy a Tour de France cycling jersey while we were out but didn't feel like spending £65 on one jersey. Now that Jon was at The Open we opted not to buy them since neither one of us would be attending the final day of the Tour. Once we arrived at "The trendiest shopping experience in Paris" we came up with a game plan. Since there was only so much luggage space we could fill, and after careful thought, I had limited my shopping to shoes and accessories only. Mary agreed that this seemed reasonable. With that in mind we briefly looked at the accessories and determined they were a bit too expensive so we made our way up to the shoes department. We got to the top of the escalators and entered a shoe mecca. An ENTIRE floor dedicated to women's shoes - and they were having a sale! "Whoa. OK, we have to be systematic about this." - S So I figured out a pattern I would follow as to not miss seeing a single shoe and began shopping. When I had nearly finished with the entire floor I finally found and bought a great pair of shoes. The place was packed and Mary was waiting for me in a comfy lime green chair by the elevators not having found anything interesting. We walked out of the store and oriented ourselves and started heading back to our room. Earlier in the day shortly after we had left our room we stopped at a nearby gallery that caught Mary's eye. All of the artists paint on the same three sizes of canvas. After some deliberation she picked out a really cool oil painting by a man named Candy (only in France...). The painting was wrapped in bubble wrap - not burlap as Mary thought the woman had said and we were on to do more shopping. After eating lunch on the steps of the opera house. Sandwiches and a pear tart with a chocolate pastry cream type filling for me and I got Mary hooked on the raspberry/strawberry fillet begniet donut. We continued on towards our room. Another long walk in the heat and we were pooped by the time we got back. There was laundry to do so we gathered everything up and walked back out and down the street to the laundramat. While Mary was getting the laundry started I went on got some coffees for us and then headed back to the room. After we both took a short nap and were ready to head back out and tackle the more sites. The sun was just starting to go down (boy, time was going by fast) as we walked out into the street. We stopped at the creperie stand across the one lane road and ordered. Mary had the cheese/fromagge crepe and I ordered something that I wasn't quite sure about but decided to try anyway. I recognized some of the ingredient list: fromagge, salade but that was it. Turns out that I ordered the tastiest crepe EVER. Cheese and some kind of lettuce, salt, pepper, thyme leaves, and this sesame paste made of who knows what (besides sesame). It was really good. Mary and I both agreed that every culture probably has their own version of a tortilla and therefore a Taco del Mar type of burritos which is essentially what these crepes-to-go were. Well, we love Taco del Mar so of course we loved these crepes. We munched as we walked about the Seine towards Notre Dame. It was beautiful in the light of the setting sun. There wasn't a ton of people there and it was free to get into the cathedral itself - great! We enjoyed the view of the outside as we approached the entrance. The front was fenced off and we could only see people coming out so we walked to the side thinking there was a separate way to get in but found only the line to climb the stairs to the top of the cathedral - all 422 of them - and you got to pay £14 to do it. Not interested but we were directed to the entrance to the church which was in the middle of evening service. The sculputres and metal work on the outside of the were amazing, the doors were massive and the scrollwork on them was exquisite. FYI: do not go into a building to admire the stained glass windows when the sun has already gone down. It was really dark in there. It was dusk by the time we got in and could bearly see in front of us. The candles looked cool but you could barely make out the stained glass window designs. We thought we would go in the evening to avoid the crowds - which we did. I guess we didn't think about the fact that we wouldn't be able to get the full affect of the windows - duh. Well, so much for that. We decided to head in the direction of the hotel and passed by a busy pedestrian only road and decided to change course to see what it was all about. People were everywhere. There were stalls selling souvenirs but it was mostly restaurants. It looked like we had entered the Geek section of town as evidenced by the food and names of the eateries. It was colorful and lit up with interior lights from the restaurants spilling into the streets. Tables and chairs allowed a small path to walk through as everyone seemed to be having the best time of their lives. It was a giant party atmosphere but not in a drunken frat party kind of way more like a giant family celebration kind of way. It was winding down to the end of another hot day in Paris. On the way back we stopped at a jewelery store that was also nearly across the way from our hotel. We had gone there at least twice before and they had many nice pieces that I had been eyeing. Finally, I decided that Iwas going to buy something and went in to purchase a necklace that I liked the first night we went in. I'm a believer in retail therapy. Back in our room we looked over the treasures we had obtained and made a game plan for tomorrow, our last day in Paris. We'd go to the Eiffel Tower as early as possible to avoid the lines and then just hang out until late afternoon before catching our train back to England later int he evening shortly after 7pm.