The photos are wonderful and we’re transported back a whole 10 days to our magical wedding. Beth has captured everything so well and all the important moments are there. The music accompanying the album is frankly making us teary. Yay Beth the wedding photographer!
Finally we set off. Alas, no striped shirts and berets. Instead, we’re in our usual travel clothes: shorts, hats, sunglasses, jackets packed in our ever-present orange shoulder bag. The orange bag with is filled with our travel necessities: water bottle, Paris maps, Paris tourist book, Pinky the camera, change purse of worthless Euro coins, a baggie of nuts that we never seem to eat, and fruit for snacks.
Our neighborhood is “the Marais”, once the heart of Jewish Paris (before the Paris cops rounded them all up for the Nazis – look it up if you don’t believe me) but now a funky & very gay neighborhood. It’s full of art galleries, restaurants, and gay guys. We headed northeast, towards a part of the ‘hood we haven’t seen before. We want to see the Place de Voges in the daylight, and then head over to the Bastille monument.
KG in the Place de Voges
It wasn’t long after the leaving the Place before we ran into a huge labor rally on the main avenue. There were thousands of people carrying signs & banners, mixed in with loudspeaker trucks and food carts. Most of the marchers had stickers stuck on their clothes. It seemed like a street festival on wheels. We finally found someone who knew enough English to explain to us what was going on. They were Federal employees, marching to protest new pension rules. What kind of country is this, where you get to miss a day of your 35-hour work week to protest not getting a good enough pension when you retire? Amazing.
The Bastille monument was in the middle of a rotary that was in the middle of the march, so we gave it a quick glance and kept moving. We marched to the nearby canal to look for a place on the water to spend some idle time reading and writing postcards. Because Paris is great, we didn’t have to look too far! Katie sipped champagne as she read THE FALLS. Jordan tried a local beer as he dove into Barak Obama’s book that we bought in Antibes.
KG be chillin at la table
After a while we felt guilty sitting at the table for so long, so we headed off again.
Jordan’s dream is to walk on the stone quays on the banks of the Seine, so we walked up the canal to where it meets the big river. Along the way we saw this wonderful graffiti:
We walked up the north bank of the river, in the general direction of our hotel. Sunbathers were laying out on the quay. To our horror, several of the Frenchmen thought they’d look smashing in little Speedo banana hammocks. We counted 7 in a matter of minutes. Marble bag heaven – if you’re into that sort of thing. Katie thought that meant it was a gay pick-up quay. Jordan opined that it was merely Frenchmen being Frenchmen.
Walking along the river is really nice, but if you walk on the wrong part, it gets really hard to get back to the world around you! The Seine isn’t at the same height as the city around it. It’s 30 feet below street level. So there’s the water, then a quay, then a highway, then a huge wall with stair ramps leading back up to the street. Somehow we managed to get ourselves stuck on a quay that ended with no safe way back to the street. Traffic was rushing by really fast (I couldn’t possibly guess how fast, because they were all driving in kilometers per hour!) and walking back would take forever. Katie’s not big on crossing streets without a crosswalk, so it was looking like we might be stuck on that quay forever. Once we ate the bag of nuts, it would only be a matter of time before we died! Maybe when our bodies were found, they’d look at the pictures on Pinky and learn who we were… but we still had places to go & things to see, so eventually we got our courage up and made a dash across the highway to safety. PHEW!
Now that Jordan’s dream had been accomplished, it was time for Katie’s. We had decided against a dinnertime cruise on the Seine because they were incredibly expensive (and the food looked pretty snobby) so Katie wanted to cruise up the river during the day. Lucky for us, the city of Paris operates a boat line that has stop up & down the Seine! It’s the “batobus” – a clever combination of the French word for “boat” and the English word for “bus”. We got tickets at the stop near Notre Dame.
The boat wasn’t due for another 30 minutes. So we went up to the street and looked for a place to buy chocolate-covered strawberries. A sullen bartender gave us directions to a chocolatier’s shop across the river.
our Batobus ticket
The boat wasn’t due for another 30 minutes. So we went up to the street and looked for a place to buy chocolate-covered strawberries. A sullen bartender gave us directions to a chocolatier’s shop across the river.
Isn’t Paris the city of romance? Then why don’t any Parisian stores sell chocolate-covered strawbs? It was like not being able to find chocolate mousse in J-le-P. It just does not make any sense. It’s an anti-romance, anti-chocolate conspiracy! The best the chocolatier could do was chocolates shaped like strawberries. NOT GOOD ENOUGH, FRENCHIE! Instead we got a box of chocolates (insert your Forrest Gump impression here) and ran back to the boat.
Side note: a bunch of high school kids from England got on at the same stop. They were probably the equivalent of 9th graders. Also boarding was a tourist family from Holland and the daughter was dressed like a total whore. I don’t why. I’m not drawing any conclusions because generally, the Dutch are nice people.
Here we are on the BatoBus water tour. Eating chocolates like champs. Everyone else was jealous.
Two hours later, we’ve cruised up and down the river and we’re damn hungry. We spotted a Mexican place near our hotel a few days ago, and Jordan’s still upset about last night’s cocktail cafe not having chips & salsa, so where to go for dinner just became a no-brainer. Katie likes to take pictures of food. She says, “Trips are always about the next meal, so why not have a picture of what you got?”
We were still remembering our magical first night in the city, the one where we didn’t have a camera, so we decided to try to recapture that evening. We got dressed up at the hotel and set out a-walkin’. We tried to time it to the sunset. Here we are on one of the bridges:
I’d like to say that this night was as magical as the first, but we were actually pretty tired from walking around in the sun all day and being traumatized by the French highway, so we went home soon after. We passed scenes like the picture below several times on the way to the hotel – people crowded outside of bars trying to glimpse the soccer game on TV.
Try as we might, we couldn’t muster up the energy to care about soccer, so we went home. Sorry Europe. I think the Celtics are busy winning the NBA championships at home… I guess things would be different if that was on the TV.
Try as we might, we couldn’t muster up the energy to care about soccer, so we went home. Sorry Europe. I think the Celtics are busy winning the NBA championships at home… I guess things would be different if that was on the TV.
Speaking of home… we are starting to feel things draw to an end. We’re heading home in 2 days. We miss the kitty, we miss our bed, we miss our home and our things and having a cell phone. Soon this magic three weeks will be done and we will have to return to our normal lives. A break like this helps you remember what life is for.
Back at the hotel, we flipped channels and got… soccer. Soccer. And, soccer. And the French version of THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN, which was neat because there was Ron Pearlman, and when we get home, Jordan will start editing his dailies on SONS OF ANARCHY. So, it’s an early look at what will surely become a familiar face. But, it’s in French, and not a great movie, so we’ve still got nothing to watch. Then a classic Jordan brainstorm – we can buy a movie on iTunes, and watch it on the laptop! We decided on THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL and started downloading. D’oh! Our connection is so bad that won’t be done downloading until 11:00 tomorrow morning! Maybe we’ll watch it on the plane home. Tomorrow’s another day. Our goal is the Musée D’Orsay, recommended to us by everyone who heard we were going to Paris. Now if only the idiots outside honking car horns to celebrate tonight’s soccer victories would just shut up! At least they’re yelling a different language than the idiots who yelled last night. So we got that going for us. Which is nice.
