Bienvenue au paradis

This is the last blog, but with pictures added.

Well now, it’s pretty hard to top the events of Paris and Heather’s blog.  The next few days were pretty uneventful, but exactly what we needed.  Heather left off where we boarded our train that was actually going somewhere instead of sitting in a train station all night.  It was a high speed train going 300km/h, which was just fast enough for how we wanted to leave Paris!  I finished my last blog on the train and then my sleepy side overcame me and I dozed off for most of the trip.  When I woke up, Heather had told me all about how beautiful the countryside was.  We travelled through Avignon, which will make sense to those of you who know the song “Sur le Pont d’Avignon”.  She didn’t get to see the bridge, but I think that will be on our list for our next Europe trip ;)

We arrived in Marseille to the welcoming sight of sun.  We had both felt trapped inside a rain cloud with no sun for the last two weeks.  Walking from the platform into the train station with the sun and smell of salt water instantly made us happy and relieved to be starting a new adventure.  I had been to Marseille five years ago on my Europe trip with Stacy and so I remembered a lot of where things were and how to get places.  Instead of taking the bus or metro to our apartment, I wanted to walk through the city and show see the things I remember from my last trip.  We eventually made it to the apartment after a 45min plus walk with our packs (maybe could have planned that better).  Upon arriving at the apartment, we realize that the only directions we had from the landlord is how to get to the building, but not which apartment was the one we would be staying in.  We borrowed the phone of the guy fixing the intercom for the building and got a hold of the landlord.  When she arrived, to our dismay, we had to walk to the very top of the building, 98 steps in total (we counted!).   When she opened the door we had instant smiles on our faces.  It was a cute little studio with a great layout and a separate bathroom.  Yup, not cooking from the toilet in this apartment!  The fridge was even human size!  We were very excited and celebrated by having a nice nap on a human sized bed.

Even though it was only about noon, it felt like midnight because of our past night’s escapade.  We figured we had better make the best of the day and go explore.  We headed right for the coast and found a cute little sandy beach and Heather instantly fell in love with Marseille.  The sunshine, the coastal breeze, the water, the sand . . . pretty much a paradise for my girl!  We had a little lunch on the dock as we watched kids play in the water.  We took a walk along the water and I tried to convince Heather that it really wasn’t that cold.  She wasn’t so convinced saying that I couldn’t feel the cold because my feet were numb.  In the next day or so I would eventually convince her to go in the water.

From the beach we took a long walk up the coast along the road, checking out the restaurants and little stores in between staring at the sea.  After that, we walked all the way back to the old port where there were literally over a thousand sailboats all sandwiched into the harbor.  We wandered in and around the cobblestone streets as we window shopped for sunglasses and earrings for Heather.  At this point we were both pretty tired and sore of walking, so we bought our metro/bus tickets for our time here and headed back to the apartment.  We hadn’t eaten anything for supper yet, so we left again to find a restaurant.  At this point it was nearly 9pm and all the restaurants were either closed, closing, or only serving drinks.  That’s one thing that still bugs me about France, the fact that they only eat between 7 and 9 and if you miss those hours, too bad for you.  As much as the food is so much better over here, I sure do appreciate the convenience of service back home.  Anytime you go into a restaurant back home that is open, you will be served food (and not have to wait 20 minutes for the bill).  The restaurants will also be open early until late, instead of a narrow window like here. 

That being said, we resorted to buying some groceries and cooking a meal.  We went to the casino.  Yup, they have a grocery store called Casino.  We decided on Gnocchi in a cream sauce with lamb chops and asparagus.  On the side we had ciabatta bread with camembert cheese, and for dessert we had religious chocolate. haha  I guess that’s what they call large cream puffs here.  We were hurried out of the grocery store, because even they close at 9.  You would think in a city of almost a million people and the second largest city in France that they would stay open later than 9 . . . guess that’s not the French way.  We picked up what we hadn’t been able to get there at a little corner store by our place and then headed back to cook up some delicious food. 

We haven’t cooked with lamb very much, but over here it is cheaper than beef (and tastier in our opinion).  Our meal came out tasting so good thanks to Heather and her sauce making skills.  However, the asparagus were cut exceptionally well and boiled by yours truly!  We had enough food for a second meal, so the leftovers would become our supper the following night.

The next morning our plan was to head out to Le Chateau d’If.  I thought I would include a picture of my attire, because it will shock those who know how fond I am of socks . . .

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this place, it is the prison that housed Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo.  It is also the prison that held the real life Man in the Iron Mask from whom the inspiration for the movie is derived.  The castle was actually originally built as a fortress to protect Marseille from invaders in the 16^th century.  It was later converted to a prison and last used to hold German soldiers prisoners during the first world war.  Since then it has been a tourist attraction.  We took a boat out to the island of only 3 hectares.  You are pretty much allowed anywhere in the castle and island, we took full advantage.  We visited all the little rooms and prison cells, read the history, took in the view from the top of the towers, walked around the grounds . . . It was really neat. 

A view from our boat sailing out of the harbor

Our boat as it drops us off and loads up to head back to shore

Us with the Mediterranean and Marseille in the background

Heather on the bridge to the castle.  The castle has only one entrance . . .

Heather sneaking from one cell to the next, just like Edmond Dantes

Me being married . . . I mean being captive in Chateau d'If

View of If from the top of the castle

Look, they already have Heather's old initials in the wall

Ain't she a cutee!!

Europe sure does love their spiral stairs

Chateau d'If with us in the distance

Chateau d'If from our boat

As we were sailing back to land we could see a very angry cloud heading right for us, so we decided that heading to the beach might not be the most enjoyable thing.  We did a little bit more walking through the streets before heading back to the apartment.  We stopped at a hot dog vendor and had two pretty good hot dogs with “crispies”, what we came to find out were deep fried onions.  Still not anywhere near a Costco hot dog from Canada, but by European standards not bad.  The rest of our night was filled up with Skype, eating leftovers, watching funny videos on YouTube, and watching Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  It was a good movie but very slow moving.

So that’s the end of my post.  I’m so glad to see so many people commenting and enjoying the blogs.  We really are having a great time here and can’t wait for our next adventure . . .

Get the hence Sat... I mean Paris...

Okay blog followers are you ready for this post? It’s going to be a rollercoaster read, so sit down, buckle yourself in and keep your hands and feet in the cart or they might get torn off by an angry Canadian woman.

So Tuesday we slept in a little because I had not been feeling great, we finally got up to… well not sunshine but at least the rain had stopped. We were too late to head to Versailles so once again it goes on the list of sights not seen. Deciding to walk the Champs d’Elysee we set out for the Louvre metro station.  There was a souvenir shop that Lyle wanted to check out that was in our Paris pass book. According to the map (which has proven itself wrong on many occasions) was just across from the Louvre at the next Metro station. So we walk, and we pass the metro… and the address on the next building is 168, we are looking for 99. We stop for our morning crepes and after two more blocks we are only at 154… clearly this is not happening since we are heading the opposite direction of the walk we want to eventually be on, so we give up and turn ourselves around.

 We did make two good finds on our way back to the Louvre, a Paris tea towel (I have collected tea towels from each city we have been in and am planning on using them for a quilt front) and a small silver Eiffel tower charm for my bracelet. Let it be known that buying charms is not overly expensive if you shop anywhere other than Harrods.

We find ourselves back at the Louvre, which we didn’t visit due to the crappy weather on Monday… oh well we had both seen it on prior trips, so not a loss. We walked through the Tuillerie gardens with the Arc de Triomphe in our distant sight. Now there were two more things other than walking that were on our agenda for the day: I wanted to try French macarons and I wanted to see the catacombs (Jason & I tried on our last trip but the line up was too long). We window shopped along the way, looking at items that were far overpriced (1330 euro for a blazer just seems a bit ridiculous) and laughing at some of the French fashion ideas, oh and still hating the smoke. Seriously the French need some serious public health campaigns on the health effects of smoking!

We found some macarons and it was about time for a sugar fix anyway so we stopped and bought a box of 12 mini ones and ate them as we walked. There was two of each flavor: chocolate, coconut, lemon, raspberry, pistachio and caramel. The pistachio was my least favorite though still good and the rest were really awesome! Again a product I recommend finding and trying… my next challenge will be learning how to make them, which could be dangerous!

When we made it back to the beginning of the Champs d’Elysee we headed for the metro to go check out the catacombs.  We exit the metro and begin our search in the poorly signed Paris, took us 5-10 minutes but then we spotted the line up and headed for the end. We reach the end of the line and stand there for about 1.5 seconds before an employee says, “Your too late, you won’t get in.” So I was thoroughly disheartened since the two places I wanted to see didn’t happen.

We headed back to Saint-Michel for dinner since the prices were cheaper there and ended up ordering those crazy meat skewers you saw in Lyle’s last post! I got a mixed meat one and Lyle ordered a mixed seafood one (he is loving the fresh seafood over here) both were very yummy J we had already decided on crepes for dessert later so we skipped that at the restaurant. FYI it takes forever for the French to bring the bill, if you are here be sure to ask for it unless you want to sit in the restaurant for an extra half hour.

Next we headed to our favorite wifi spot to try and get a few things done, it ended up taking me days to finish that blog post because pictures take forever to upload to the blog. By the time we left there we were ready for crepes so we stopped at the local place and then headed home to clean and pack and prepare for our night train.

So we packed, cleaned, blow dried the wet shoes, and tried to be prepared and early as we could be since we did not want a repeat of our previous train experience… oh how I wish it had been that simple!

We got off the metro at Gare (Station) de Lyon and needed to walk to Gare Austerlitz, which should have been a 10 minute walk but took 20 because signs in Paris suck!  Yes the phase I hate Paris has escaped our mouths at many points. Anyhow we made it to the station and the lady who helped us with the missing reservation (we realised that the girl who had made all of our reservations the day before had missed one of us on one leg of the journey so we wanted to be sure we remedied that before one of us got left behind) was really great and we were set to go find our train and wait the hour or so before boarding…

So as we are leaving the ticket area I see the word supprime next to our train info, I don’t recognize it so I ask Lyle if it means on time and he says no it means suspended. I start to freak out, not openly…yet. We walk over to the platforms to see the same thing, there are about 10 rail workers standing there so we go over to ask about our train. The man informs us there has been a problem with the line and that the train has been cancelled. I am furious. So I ask him what we are supposed to do, he tells us we can sleep in the train in the station that night and we will be put on a train the next day. Now remember back to them telling us there was no room on the trains… ya not happy!! Nor am I happy that we have now paid for place to stay which are not sleeping in, that we paid a reservation fee for a night train which is more and now have to sleep on it and then take a different train (from the station we had just walked from). I sit being angry and Lyle goes in to the office where we are directed in order to fix our reservation. The French aren’t overly helpful in my experience nor do lines move quickly… so I sit and watch Lyle move slowly through the line. Eventually he comes back and says we are on an 8:30 train the next morning (funny how there was no room for us the day before) and that we now have to get in the next line to board the train. I have to pee (it’s become a regular thing these days) so I head to the washroom (toilet as they like to call it) only to find out I need 50 cents to use the bathroom. Really the entire city smells like urine… maybe if you didn’t charge people to use the toilet they wouldn’t urinate on EVERYTHING!!!! I head back to Lyle to get some money, fuming about how much I hate the city and how its run. Anyhow business done I get back in line… a few minutes later they start handing out free bottles of water… in Lyle’s words “ Ya that’s gonna make everything better” (insert eye roll with that). The next thing to appear is a large sign indicating that the toilettes will be free for passengers on our train but are closed from midnight to 6am, though apparently there are others somewhere nearby (doesn’t tell us where). The line is moving at a snail’s pace, because one person is trying to check everyone in; this makes Lyle a bit angrier, though he is doing better than me. We finally get past check in and they give us a box of food, which turns out to be orange juice, coffee, biscotti and fruit cocktail…odd!

We found the correct train car and squished ourselves with packs on down the hall to our “sleeper car”. We see on the sign outside the door that we have the middle bunks and are across from each other… very romantic honeymoon set up. I am between a mother and teenage son, Lyle at this point is between 2 empty bunks. If you have never had the luxury of being in one of these cars let me give you some ideas of space available. Lyle would almost be able to lay in the bunk if he was fully stretched out (he’s 5’10”), it is about 30 inches deep and my niece Hailey who is 4 might be able to sit up in it without hitting her head. So now add in a fully grown adult with a sleeping bag and pillow… oh and all your luggage… are you freakin’ kidding me! Ya, that was to be our set up for the night, so excited I was for bedtime.  Before bed I needed one more trip to the loo, this time a nice guy was playing toilet police and so I ask in my rusty French, “the toilet is free for those on the train that doesn’t move?” He giggles and hands me my token and life is well tolerable for a moment.

Back in the bunk we try to arrange ourselves into the most comfortable positions and thanks to my 7$ Air Transat kit I am equipped with a sleep mask, ear plugs and my trusty fleece blanket. Sleeping pill ingested I begin to drift, until we are awaken by our tardy car mates who make quite the ruckus getting into their spaces and then out and then noisily back in. Ok finally settled in I pass out while Lyle is working on his blog, wakeup call is at 6 and I need some rest. I wake up at 3:14 and have to pee really desperately, of course the toilets are closed and I am not sure this is the best time to go exploring on my own. I definitely considered urinating on the tracks… everyone else in Paris seems to.  I eventually fall asleep before waking up again with completely cramped up hips.  The lady below me wakes up at 5:30 and now I am up for good. It takes her 15 minutes to get her son out of bed, all the while I am thinking of how to pass the time until the toilet opens up. I folded my blankets and tried to get everything ready, put my shoes on and finally headed out…

Please keep in mind that I have had to pee desperately for 3 hours now! I get to the toilet and the morning toilet police is a woman giving a man in front of me a hard time because he doesn’t have his paper work, so I run back to the train to get our tickets and documentation of change. The fact that I haven’t wet myself is a miracle, I get back to the toilet police and she tells me I need this date stamped form and I will have to go to the office to get that paperwork. I storm out and in a very raised voice comment on how much I hate Paris and the people, yes I am furious, exhausted and trying not to have an accident. I head back to our car, tell Lyle we are leaving and grab my stuff. Lyle quickly grabs his stuff, asks what’s wrong and we head out as I explain how ridiculous the whole situation is. I have decided that I will either find a toilet on the way out or wait until we get to the next station… Lyle will have none of it! He heads straight for the bathroom and yells at the woman that this is the third time his wife has come to use the toilet… and she quickly hands him a token… all you can do is laugh at the whole situation. Business taken care of we got the heck out of dodge and headed for the next station.

We had to check in there and the lady kindly bumped us to the train that left just after 7, so we had just enough time to grab a quick bite and get on the next train!

I hope this post kept you highly entertained, both Lyle and I had moments of extreme frustration over those few days and even though we had some really great times and good memories in Paris we have decided that it’s probably not a place we would return to. I am grateful for a husband who loves me and puts up with me when I am angry. We have so much fun together and this really is the trip of a lifetime.

Love you all,

H&L

We didn't start the bloggin . . . it was always bloggin since the world was bloggin

Ladies and gentlemen . . .  let’s get ready to rummmmmmbbbbbbbllleee . . .  or blog, because that’s exciting too right ;)  So I am blogging from a very cramped bed on a train that is not moving in a Paris station.  That is a little teaser for an epic blog to come from Heather.  That will be the one after mine and trust me; you are going to enjoy it!!!  Until then, it will be my pleasure to once again take you through the amazing honeymoon adventure.  We have nicknamed it “the honeymoon you wish you had”.  So here we go . . .

Sunday morning we were diligent in getting up early and getting ready to go to church.  We had researched the address and location the day before so we knew when church was and where we needed to go.  First thing to go wrong was the fact that my white shirt got left behind in Canada during all the packing and repacking of the wedding.  So I just wore my nicest shirt and we headed out in the rain to church.  We get off at our stop from the metro and immediately we know we are in trouble when we both wanted to go in different directions.  We couldn’t print out a map and the one we have isn’t very detailed, so we were hoping it would be easy to find with the street address.  Every metro exit has a large map of the surrounding area, so we were hoping that would have the street.  Second thing to go wrong, the street didn’t even show up on the large map, so we had our memory of a large dot on a small map.  After searching for a while in the rain, we couldn’t find the church.  Heather had been there last time she was in Paris and she said it was super hard to find because there are no signs and on a very short side street.  So that was a fail.  Feeling sad that we had missed church twice now, we figured we would just get on with the day.

Our first place to visit was called “The Paris Story”.  It was on our Paris Pass and was a 40-50 minute movie that tells the history of Paris from the early Gaelic tribe that inhabited the island from before Christ to present day Paris.  That was something that both Heather and I are interested in and we finally got our fill of history.  Anyone wanted to know more about the early history and development of the city over time would like it. 

After the movie we had planned on going across the street to the Opera and taking a tour there.  Third thing to go wrong was that the auditorium was closed because of rehearsal.  It was at about this time that we were both feeling like we had had enough of trying to do these things we had planned and decided to just wing it.  We had a hop-on hop-off ticket from the Paris Pass so we decided to just jump on a bus and see the city from the top of a double decker.  We got to see all the major places in the city and only needed three sweaters to keep Heather from turning to ice. 

We got off at Notre-Dame and did a little walking around of Ile-de-Ste Louis. The island is right next to Ile-de-la-Cite which is where Notre-Dame stands.  St-Louis is where a lot of old buildings with beautiful architecture have been mostly untouched from newer style building.  It was neat to walk through, and that’s also where we walked right next to La Seine, the equivalent of the Thames for those unfamiliar with it. 

After our walk we returned to Ile-de-la-Cite and had some delicious ice cream and more crepes.  Heather eyed the salted caramel earlier and couldn’t hold back.haha We then headed to Le Pont d’Amour Eternellle, or the bridge of eternal love.  The pedestrian bridge linking the island to the south shore has thousands of locks locked to the railing.  The locks have the names of couples and dates and love sayings.  It was so neat to see from afar and even cooler up close.  Needless to say we bought a lock from a cute little Frenchmen on the bridge, signed our names, put the date, and locked it to the bridge.  We tossed one key into the river and kept one for each of us.  It’s definitely one of the coolest things we have done so far.  Maybe one day we will be back and our lock will still be there.  Some locks were the old, old style and others even had engravings on them.

Walking along the south shore or as they say “the left shore”, because that makes sense when you look on a map . . . we saw some paintings that were absolutely gorgeous of Paris.  They were the originals of oil on canvas.  We bought one with the Eiffel Tower in the background in black and white with red trees as accents.  We have been collecting prints of paintings from each city, but this is the first original we have.  Most of the south shore in lined with vendors selling art, books, souvenirs, and anything else you can think of.  After weaving from shore to shore we found a niche called St. Michel on the south shore.  It is in the Latin district, so called because university students study Latin in school there.  The area is filled with little shops and amazing food.  Each tiny restaurant has someone outside trying to coerce you into coming into their restaurant.  We were offered free wine from the place we decided to go to, but took the apple juice instead.haha most of the restaurants were either kebab places with their spit of meat rotating in the window, or a foreign food with skewers of giant seafood and meets in a display case for me to drool over.  We chose a Greek place and needless to say the food was amazing.  All restaurants offer a sort of shortened menu that you pick an appetizer, main course, and dessert all for one price.  I ended up having some amazing escargot in butter, pork sirloin in a blue cheese sauce, and crème brulee.  Heather had an avocado with shrimp and mayonnaise salad, lamb chops, and chocolate mousse.  As usual we had to wait nearly 20+ minutes for the bill, but we made friends with an Aussie couple and the man’s parents sitting next to us.  After a wonderful night, we headed home . . . but not before stopping for another crepe to top up the stomachs ;)

Monday . . . oh what a day . . . long story short, it was a brutal day.  We woke up to rain and it didn’t stop raining the entire day.  We had planned on going to the Louvre and walk the Champs D’Elysee, but after a few minutes outside and already having our feet soaking wet we decided to abandon that idea.  Instead we went to the train station because we had to make reservations with the type of train ticket we have.  We bought a flexi ticket, which means we can travel 6 days within a two month span in between France and Italy.  Everytime we want to take the train we just reserve a ticket and we are good to go.  Well here is where a bad day turns really bad.  The finer than fine print says there they have fees to make the reservation and that the reservation is mandatory.  Well the first train we try to book, Paris to Marseille, is full.  Well, it’s not really full, but they only allow so many people on the train with our type of ticket.  Oh, and bytheway, there are 7 trains leaving that day for Marseille . . . yup.  So we are pretty disgusted with that, but it gets better.  The only other option that would allow us to not spend an extra night in Paris at our own expense is to take an overnight train to Toulouse, then a local train in the morning to Marseille.  So not being happy with that, we see there is no other option, so we agree.  “So that will be 43 Euros, please”.  Yup, just for saying we are going to take this train they want over 60$.  At that point I storm out of the train station and to the nearest Wi-Fi (which is now McDonalds) and see if there is any way of getting a refund on the tickets and flying instead.  Long story short, there is too much red tape involved, not to mention the price to fly at the last minute is higher than what we would have paid if we had known about the train mess earlier.  We also have to make reservations for 5 more trips which is almost 400$ we were not expecting to pay.  Feeling overly frustrated and disheartened, we concede to the extremely stupid system of train travel and go to book the rest of our tickets.  When we get there we find out that we can only book 4 of the 6 trips because the other two have to be done locally.  Just add another nuisance to our travels.  It ends up costing us about 140$ for 4 reservations, better than expected but still disgusting.

So with that mess behind us we decide to just call it a day, get some food and go home (still raining like crazy and still soaked from the knee down.  We get some crepes, go to the laundry mat next to our apartment and wait for our clothes to dry.  Now at this point you would think the day was a write-off and nothing really bad could go wrong just doing the laundry, right?  Well we set the laundry to colours, which means in the rest of the world and according to their diagram that the temperature would be cold enough to not make our colours bleed to our whites.  Not in Paris!  Instead of heating to 60 like it said it would, it heats to 90 and when we take our clothes out, all the synthetic whites have turned completely green because my travel pants bled.  So picture our whites coming out green and wondering who put their clothes in with ours, until we realized what had happened.  So at this point I was expecting Heather to lose it and start packing to leave Paris, but instead she busts out laughing.  I guess everything had gone wrong and this was just too much to handle before unless you laughed it off.  So off we went to buy some bleach and by the end of the night our whites were a beautiful shade of yellow.haha  Yup, great day!  Now we did manage to salvage a little bit of it because the only English channel on TV was showing Anaconda 2 and Python.  Two very . . . ummm, epic . . . movies.  So we finished off the day with a marathon of snake movies before turning in for the night.

A blog post from Heider

Well now it is really my turn to fill you in on what we have been up to…

Friday morning we headed to the Eiffel Tower, we stopped at a creperie for our mandatory dosing of the delicious food.  I had a ham, egg and cheese crepe and it was so good. I am not sure what cheese they use but it is very tasty!

 As we arrived at the tower the line ups were crazy! Turns out only one lift was working, we however were taking the stairs so our line was somewhat shorter. The last time I was in Paris I was quite sick so I was not able to go up the tower, and Lyle says everyone needs to walk the stairs at least once. We bought tickets to go all the way to the top. This consists of walking about 700 steps, with a one floor stop in the middle; and then taking the lift to the top observation deck. The stairs were killer on my already sore calves but I made it J We made it to the very top despite some very pushy tourists who disliked following the line.

On a side note, we are realizing why the world thinks Canadians are so polite. We have found people from many different countries to be pushy and quite demanding. Queue jumpers are common and it drives me crazy. This polite Canadian has about had it!

The top observation deck was quite cool; we had a wonderful view of all of Paris and its surroundings. We learned that the Calgary tower is about 181 meters tall, the Eiffel tower is about 320 ish metres (Lyle says that is a guess, but it was 300 something), and the CN tower is 553 meters.

Glad to say I survived all the steps, though my calves have been on fire ever since! The next adventure was to ride the carousel across from the tower. I had seen it last time I was here but didn’t get to ride it, so Lyle and I paid the admission and found our animals. Really Lyle let me pick mine and then he chose the one beside me; I rode the ostrich and he had a horse. I have a secret love for carousels, you can ask my friends Kim and Jen who are my normal carousel riding buddies. If ever you are in Helena, Montana head to the indoor carousel there, it is fabulous!

After riding the carousel and enjoying another round of crepes, we headed to a Seine river cruise that came with our Paris passes. We chose seats on the outside of the boat and settled in for our hour long journey.  We learned much about the bridges and the key buildings that we passed and the weather was nice enough to be able to enjoy being outside. We passed a second island that I had not been on and a bridge of eternal love. We will come back to that one in Lyle’s next post.

We wandered across the bridge to Trocadero square which has beautiful fountains and landscaping. We stopped for a while to watch a street dance performance, they were okay… not superb and we didn’t stay long enough to give them any money. So many people want money from you, performers in the subway, gypsies and all sorts of random people…including ones who will suck you in to buying string bracelets… just ask Lyle ;)

We headed into the Musee de l’architerture et patrimonie at the far end of the square. Rather than a museum about the actual architecture in Paris it was a museum of large scale molds of different pieces of Catholic churches around France… somewhat less interesting that we were hoping for…so we moved through it pretty quickly.

Next we were off to Hardrock Café for dinner, since we got a free hot fudge sundae courtesy of our Paris passes. I enjoy all of the music memorabilia in the cafes, Vegas has an amazing display! This one did have one of John Lennon’s jackets and some very cool signed guitars. Lyle ordered the nachos for dinner, and they were much better than the ones he had in London. I actually really enjoyed his nachos J most nachos over here come standard with beans and then meat can be added, he went meatless and the beans were so tasty! I ordered a chicken mac & cheese, it was pretty good… too many red peppers for my taste. We also only made it through a portion of our meals… apparently stomachs are shrinking. The hot fudge sundaes were very yummy and since there is always room for ice cream we were able to finish those no problem.

We saved Montparnasse tower for the end of the day because I wanted Lyle to see the lights on the Eiffel tower. We got to the top just before 9, but because the sun had not yet set the light show was not visible. We found a Ferris wheel in the skyline and I am still trying to figure out what it is… if any of you know please fill me in! We decided to wait for the next show at 10 and huddled in against the glass to avoid the rain (we have not been good about carrying the umbrella in Paris). The hour finally passed and the glittery show on the tower started, to me this is when the tower looks beautiful and Lyle agreed! He took many pictures and we enjoyed the sight before heading home for the night.

Saturday we enjoyed a sleep in day and got a late start, which was really nice. We had a list of 8 things we wanted to do but realized that wasn’t very feasible so cut out a few and headed to “Ile de la cite” to begin the day. When we got to the square in front of Notre Dame there was a bread festival going on, and vendors on the outskirts were selling sandwiches with the fresh baguettes. We decided on ham and brie sandwiches and found a space to eat. They were very good sandwiches, but strange as you can see from the photographs.

The line ups for the tours of Notre Dame were huge and we decided it wasn’t that important to us. We headed instead for the Archeological crypt, which took us far longer to find that it should have because signage in Paris is pitiful to say the least. Arrows do not go in the directions they should… eventually we found the Crypte and we were both fascinated by it. The crypte was the preserved and labelled archeological dig that occurred in the 70’s discovering foundations and building remnants from the last 1800 years on the site in front of the Notre Dame. Very cool, very interesting, highly recommended!

Musee Rodin was our next stop; it is housed in an old mansion and contains a number of Auguste Rodin’s pieces. Some of his plaster casts, a large number of bronze casts (many of which are housed in the stunning gardens, which are my real reason for visiting the museum) as well as some Van Gough painting and works from a few other artists.  The front rose gardens have some of the most beautiful colored roses I have ever seen. The gardens continue around back and are massive and make for a beautiful stroll.

We wandered from here over to Place des Invalides, to see Napoleon’s tomb as well as a few museums housed in the same complex. We started with the “church” that the tomb is housed in, I use the term church loosely because although it had an alter like a typical Catholic church the rest of it was simply shrines to dead military leaders. Napoleon’s tomb was a little dumbfounding for both of us, so an emperor who was exiled twice (and died in exile) end up buried in a massively ornate church with a tomb that is gigantic. I first commented to Lyle that for such a small man the tomb was overkill, seriously it could hold 8-10 coffins I am sure. Later we found out he was cremated… now it really seems like over kill. Anyhow the French like there pomp and displays of wealth and this was very typical.

We skipped most of the military museum, mostly because we were on museum overload, and headed to the museum of military models (I think that is the best translation). It was on the 5^th floor… have I mentioned my burning calves? So we hike to the top to find a dark, stuffy room with large models of cities and fortresses. During the first half I had heard of none of them and wasn’t very interested… if you are well versed in 17^th and 18^th century French history outside of Paris you might find this interesting… otherwise I would skip it. Near the end we did find the model of Chateau d’If and that was exciting. We will be heading there next week and I am excited to check it out! If you are unfamiliar with the Chateau d’If watch Count of Monte Cristo for the most famous, but fictional prisoner of the jail.

Upon leaving the museum it started to pour… oh how I love the rain when we forget the umbrella. It was now dinner time so we explored the area to find somewhere to eat. There was a café/restaurant offering non-stop service which is critical on days that you want to eat on a North American timeline, otherwise don’t expect to be served dinner before 7pm. The café was called La Source and was just a block from the museum. Lyle started with Foie Gras, which I reluctantly tried (we have an agreement to try something at least once) and did not like, definitely not on my list of try again foods. For a main course I had roast beef and mashed potatoes and they were very good, Lyle had a fish in a cream sauce served with ratatouille and both were amazing! For dessert I ordered chocolate mousse and it was heavenly, the perfect consistency and a nice chocolaty flavour.

We had another painful experience with the internet at starbucks (and appreciate the inability of the French to spell my name) before calling it a night J

Hope all is well with everyone back home,

Love you

H & L