Girls Gone Abroad

Lundi a Paris and Shan was the first one awake this morning. She purposely left the blackout blinds open to let in the light so she wouldn't sleep too long... I heard her get up and go and Sandy and I got rolling shortly after she headed out. Her breakfast gathering experience wasn't nearly as fun as mine was... Unfortunately the good boulanger on Rue St Louis en L'Ile isn't open on Monday, so she had to go to the "snobby" boulangerie and the boulanger wasn't very nice to her - still she ended up with 3 croissants and 2 pain au chocolat, so the necessities were received! She also met up with my cafe man to get cafe creme and he speaks english so no problem there. All in all, she got us what we needed, just not the best experience in total, so I will go tomorrow.

We were out of the apartment in good time and headed to Notre Dame - it is just a ways down the street and across the bridge to the Ile de la Cite, quite close. We waited in line and headed up another massive amount of circular stairs to the towers and looked out over the city - quite the view. The highest tower was open and coming down from there we ran into a woman who worked up on the tower - she was not a small woman, wearing a down snowmobile suit (very puffy), and yelling up the spiral stair case that is all of 2 1/2 feet wide - "Stop coming down the stairs!" She was trying to come up, but couldn't fit with anyone coming down. She let Sandy and Shan go by, but they were several stairs in front of me. Shan tried to tell her we were friends, but she told me "it is impossible - go back up!" So, I went back up and waited for the female quasi moto to pass and then headed down again... For the main towers there are 2 staircases, one for up and one for down, but to the high tower only one for both and at the 2 1/2 ft wide on a spiral, trying to pass was tres dangereuse to say the least!

At the bottom we realized that our line was only for the towers, not the inside, that was another line that was very long by the time we came down so we decided to come back later. We headed towards the Louvre and the line for Ste Chapelle was not too bad so we jumped in. Just as we were very near the front a large group of German tourists (30 or so peeps) came to the front and were obviously meeting their tour guide. The started cutting in line right behind us until the door guard came and gave the tour guide a ration of angry French to which she tried to rebut, but she was no match for him - it was quite heated and entertaining! Poor woman though, I have no doubt she had a group reservation and thought she was doing the right thing, then was humiliated in front of her entire group - ultimately they went to the end of a now very long line.

Ste Chapelle - well, words don't describe how beautiful the stained glass is on the upper level of this church - you start on the bottom and there are only signs in French that even elude to there being an upper level. The lower level stained glass is quite pretty so you think - hmmph this is nice. I saw the sign however for the "haute" and told Sandy and Shan we needed to go upstairs - when I entered the room I couldn't believe it - crazy pretty. I think Shan captured it best with her camera, but I haven't had time to fix the picture problem I'm having so you will have to wait - maybe I can remedy the situation on Wed during our train ride to Nice. Just trust me, if you are ever here, it is very worth the visit.

Next up, the Louvre. We were starving so we headed to the food court and had crepes for lunch. They were ok, but I am sure there are much better in Paris food stands. We decided to head to the French sculpture area, something we were all interested in, and it didn't disappoint. We all had our different tastes, but they were really cool. I know that place is huge, but man you just don't realize how huge until you keep walking and walking and walking and there seems to be no end - plus 4 floors worth of no end. Finally when our feet started to ache a bit, we headed to see Mona, and after that quickly found les toilettes and the sortie (exit).

From slow travel, I have a nice guide for Paris from a guy named Tom. Shan, Trav and others will attest I am pretty good at digging on the web and finding a local blog or web page or whatever that provides good info about the city we are visiting. In Tom's section about shopping in Paris he has a recommendation for those with a watch fetish for a small shop in the marais on the Rue de Verrerie called La Montre du Marais. Well, I am one with a watch fetish and thought that might be a nice thing to buy while here so after the Louvre we headed toward the Marais and my watch shop.

Of course, a cafe called our name just a little ways into our journey, we were a bit parched from our time in the Louvre and there were nice outside seats available! We enjoyed a couple beers, then decided to be on our way. We took an attempt at renting the city bikes, but after a few unsuccessful tries right in front of all the people at the cafe, we decided walking would be just fine. I swear I will get one of those bikes before this trip is over...

The owner of the watch shop was just as Tom described and after I picked a watch for myself, he started to help me match other watches to my style and of course to Sandy and Shan too. I left with 2 new watches and Shan with one too! It was great fun and he was extremely nice, he especially liked Shan and especially her "bon derriere" that Sandy and I happened to point out! Never seen Shan blush for 20 minutes straight - she was very relieved to leave and get into the cool air to cool off! He definitely would have been willing to give Lloyd a run for his money...

We headed back to the apartment to chill and make a dinner reservation - by the time we did we needed to make it for 10 PM to have time to get cleaned up. None of can believe we have been eating so late, but it just happens and paris restaurants don't heat up for dinner till at least 8 PM anyway. Tonight's dinner was just okay - probably the least best we have had so far, but still, we are in Paris so nothing is ever terrible. From there we headed out to find a jazz club called 7 Lezards, but we walked the entire street it was supposed to be on and never found it. I stumbled into another bar to ask and they said it was far away - I think they just wanted us to stay there for a drink so we did! Of course we were virtually the only girls in the place since it appeared to be a gay bar... :-) Amnesia was the name..

We finished at Amnesia and headed toward our place with intentions to stop somewhere else if we saw something cool - we ran into a bar called Stolly's and they were playing good classic american rock, so I figured we should give it a try. We are on the fence whether this bar was gay too, but I don't think so... Either way, the music was better than the french techno pop at the other place and the beer was cold and good so not a bad stopover. From there - home!

Now I think it is 3:20 ish and so I better crash since I told Shan I would get breakfast in the morning! Oh, happy days in Paris!

"strong like bull"