We woke up around 8 and I took a shower. This shower was horrible. The water never really got hot and the holder thing was broken so you had to hold the shower head the whole time. The situation was such a huge inconvenience.
I went downstairs to figure out the room situation and he said to put the stuff back in 44 and then after 2pm we could check into room 29. I made sure it was just a single room and he said yes. Ok, fine, everything is working out.
We had our stale bread and started our 2nd day in Paris. We took the metro to Montematre and went to Sacre Couer. You have to walk up a million steps but it is worth it. Again, there were men harassing you trying to sell you stuff. This time it was men trying to tie bracelets around your wrist. Unlike the Eiffel Tower people this was kinda scary. We were able to get away from them after saying we didn’t have any money.
You are allowed to walk around the perimeter of the church free of charge. It was so amazing. I still can’t get over how beautiful it was.
Sacre Coeur and the view from the steps.
Then we walked around Montmarte and tried to find the café where Amelie was filmed. We finally found it and it didn’t even really look like it was in the movie. Next to the bathroom there was a little shrine with two gnomes and polaroids of the gnome in different places. It was neat. Sitting down was nice.
various montmarte and a crepe making stand
Montmarte was very french. It was probably the most non touristy part once we walked away from Sacre Couer. After that we decided to go to the Catacombs which in retrospect might have been a bad idea. We “queued” for a good hour, maybe more. We met this really nice family. The mother lives somewhere near Newcastle and the son and his family live in Norway. While we were waiting this man dressed in a lion suit was walking around. He came up to us and said something in French. We didn’t know what he said something about “presente” something something, and then he just walked away. He went down to these girls and what he was doing was if you cut the tag of your undies off you can take a picture with him. I think they do crazy stuff like this for bachelor parties. You will read something like this later too.
The catacombs were crazy. Once you walked down a whole bunch of steps and down these tunnels it was just rooms and rooms of bones. It was so creepy. Really really creepy. I don’t think I have been that creeped out…ever. Eww. Just thinking about it gives me the willy’s.
When we left the catacombs we bought some water at a grocery store and decided to head to Paris’ largest covered marketplace. It was supposed to have a lot of good food. We found it and it was pretty cool but all of the menu’s were in French. It was a little too daunting and there were no vegetarian options, except falafel and we had a lot of falafel already.
We walked around some more in desperate need of foooood. And we ran into this huge protest. It was a protest protest more like a march. The Kurdish people were yelling about something and beating loud drums. There were Kurds as far as the eye could see. It was pretty neat. We walked away from the protest and toward the hotel. We ran into them again as they were climbing the Republique statue. We found this restaurant that had a vegetarian burger and even though it was 13 euros we decided to go in. The waitress came and when we ordered she said they were out of the vegetarian burger. We decided to go somewhere else.
So….we ended up at the McDonald’s that is near the hotel. We got two fries, a salad, and two drinks. (14 euros!) It served its purpose of tiding us over until we found real food. We went back to the hotel and we searched for vegetarian restaurants on the internet. We found one near Centre Pompidou so we decided to go to the museum and then eat.
Getting to Centre Pompidou was easy for the most part. Sometimes when you have to switch lines on the metro you have to walk up and down stairs and tunnels for 5 minutes. This was the case. The museum had a Kandinsky exhibit so we got a little excited. We rode the gerbil tube escalator up to the top (which has a awesome view of the city too) and once we got there they had signs saying the museum pass did not cover the Kandisky…great. So looked in the shop and then walked to the restaurant. We didn’t even eat there. It was pretty expensive and everything sounded a little gross. I don’t like goat cheese. Anyway, our search for food lived on.
However, we did find a true French patisserie and we got a croissant, pain au lait, and a choisson aux pommes. It was soooo tasty. Pari did not order in fluent francais. Pari was worried that the buttery bread was going to get on her rain jacket that she made me haul it around in the backpack alllll day long.
We walked and waked and all of a sudden we realized that we were in gay Paris! And then we realized that we were near L’as du Fallafel. We didn’t know if they were going to be open because of Sabath but we went anyway. It was closed but there was yet another falafel place near there. The line was pretty long and we were tired so we decided to sit and eat inside. I figured that it would be a little more expensive but not that much more. If you get a falafel from the street it is 5 euros. Well, the falafel in the restaurant was almost 12. The only difference was that it is on a plate and you get pita on the side. We didn’t care, we were so tired and hungry.
The place was really tiny and there was only one waiter. He was a little crazy running all around. And this restaurant was the gayest Israeli restaurant ever. They had gay looking scarves over the lights. It was neat though. We were seated right next to these two gay guys. They were speaking Spanish to each other and French to the waiter. They were so worldly. We ordered one thing of “frites” and two falafels. The waiter forgot our pita and when we finally got his attention and indicated to him we didn’t have our pita he nodded and then the gay guys offered us there last pita. One of the guys said “the girls just want their pita” in perfect English. It was funny. The waiter never did bring us pita, maybe he thought that the gay guys last pita was sufficient. No tip for you! (imagine Seinfeld and the soup)
After our fine dinning experience we walked around gay Paris some more. We got “petite cornetta’s”. They were sooo delicious. So rich and creamy. After eating our ice cream in the rain under an awning we went into Les Mots a la Bouche, the oldest gay bookstore in Paris. It was pretty neat, and yes, it was sooo gay.
We went back to the hotel to regroup a little bit and found out where 3W was, a lesbian bar meaning women for women. At first we were very skeptical of the place and thought it was just going to be full of the older ladies but it was actually nice. They greet you and find you a table. Along the walls were pictures of boobs. (It was really artsy though, like black and white and tasteful) There was a TV screen near the bar that looped scenes from Queer as Folk, the L word, and Coyote Ugly. Haha so gay. I’m glad this was my first gay bar. My expectations are set pretty high now.
On the metro on the way back to the hotel there were 3 guys standing towards the side and one of them had a “free hugs” sign. There was a group of young people close to us too and they asked what it was about and one of the guys said that it’s what you do for bachelor parties. Haha. It is very different from strip clubs huh.
We got back to our room (#42, room #3) and we pretty much crashed…
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