Paris, paris and more Paris!!!

Friday, July 9, 2010
We are in Paris...and it is amazing!!! We slept in today...since we had a hotel and it was fabulous, we had to take advantage of the fact that we had clean bodies and a nice bed. What we didn’t have however, was clean laundry. We found a lavarie and did one massive load of laundry between the two of us. It was great...but again so hot out! We couldn’t believe hot it got over night...but here we were, wandering the streets of paris with our bags and looking for our hostel. Since we are masters at public transport we got back on the subway and made it fairly easily to our hostel. We were in a pretty sketchy part of town but were comforted by the fact that the building was large, we were close to the metro station and we were high up in the building. No worries! So after we got checked in, we went adventuring in Paris. It was late afternoon by now and we didn’t really have much planned but we had a few ideas. First we went to see Pont Neuf and see what is was all about. It is a bridge that separates mainland Paris from the island that Notre Dame and a lot of the judicial and government buildings are. It was nice but not all that exciting. It did however, lead us to a cute café right on the waterfront. We sat down and had a nice light dinner. We had escargot (very French of us, we know!) and each had a delicious salad. Heather had an “everything salad” it had tuna, lettuce, egg, anchovies, peppers etc. While I had goats cheese on toasted bread which lay on top of a salad with roasted walnuts and a Dijon sauce. It was really good! We of course had bread with the meal and they served us Dijon mustard which was really good but definitely had some horseradish in it and gave us a bit of a jolt. We had a Kronenberg as well...while in France, you have to drink the local stuff. Anyhow, after supper we wondered over to the Louvre as there is free admission for anyone under 26 after 6pm on Fridays. Just our luck!!! So we got to go exploring in the Louvre and of course saw the Mona Lisa. Really hyped small piece of art on a massive wall and covered in glass. It was really cool because it is a piece of history and such a well recognized piece of art however, it wasn’t very glamorous. So after the Louvre we headed over to the Eiffel Tower. It is still stinking hot out and we are walking around Paris but we soon enough found a convenience store to get some water and beer. We arrived at the Eiffel tower and it was a huge party on the lawn. People were picnicking, drinking, playing sports, hanging out, playing music etc. It was kind of a cool vibe and everyone, tourists and locals alike were just sitting by this massive structure. So since it was getting late and we weren’t able to bring our beer with us up the Eiffel Tower, we decided to hang out on the grass and take it all in. The tower was lit up when we got there but every hour in the evening they have a lights display. So there are flashing lights going off on the Eiffel Tower for a few minutes. Really cool!!! We stayed there until pretty late before we hoped back on the metro to get back to the hostel. I should also mention too, that Heather in her infinite wisdom, decided to try and use her metro ticket more than once and on several occasions it worked. So our single fair tickets often turned into day passes. Working the system!!!