Day 13- Paris (Day 1)

My trip to Paris was a success! I saw a lot that I wanted to see, revisited things I wanted to revisit, and still have more to see whenever I return again! Alas, I did miss out on a few things that I wish I could've seen on this trip, but it was a great trip anyway.

I slept most of the way on the train to Paris due to a short night of sleep. There was some confusion as I tried to navigate us through all of the train stations, the signs were sometimes deceiving, but we eventually got where we were going. Our first stop was the Sacré-Cœur. It was lovely, especially the mosaics on the ceiling that were colorful mixed with gold tiles. Although the sign said, “no photos” people were still taking them so I decided to as well.

Notre Dame from the Sacre Couer

Afterwards, we went to the Place de Tertre, a small square not fat from Sacré-Cœur where artists sell their paintings. Only 298 artists are allowed to propose their services to the tourists on Place du Tertre and you have to be talented to be able to sell here. There were some lovely paintings! Some were nice but I could probably do them myself. The first artist I saw as I approached had these almost impressionist yet 3D flowers and landscapes and I was just stunned at how beautiful they were, but very expensive. We walked around and saw all of the artists and they had many different styles and mediums of painting (watercolor, oils, impressionist, modern, 3D, stretch with water color, ect) a lot of the paintings were of the Eiffel Tower, Sacré-Cœur, or Moulin Rouge, as much as I like the Paris monuments, I didn't want a painting of the most Parisy things in the world. I hate tourist traps and anyone could own a painting of the Eiffel Tower. Harley bought a cute painting of a cat looking out a window at the Eiffel Tower, her family loves cats and that was almost all the person drew. I walked around a few times and saw one impression image that was, I think, meant to be flowers that I very much considered buying, but I kept going back to that one woman with the flowers. Eventually I gave in and bought a smallish French landscape of hers for €100 that I thought was stunning since I saw it. She was a very sweet woman and loved her art. She told me not to open the painting for 3 weeks to give it the proper time to dry. (After a search on the internet, I found the woman who sold me her painting: E. Ruo, check this website to see a bit about her and her work, I think she is super talented! http://paintersofmontmartre.com/11.0.html?&L=1)

We then headed off to lunch at La Nemeurs, a place Angelia Jolie ate in the film "The Tourist." The service was iffy and I think I had worn out Olivia and Harley so the overall experience wasn’t A+. There was also a screaming baby nearby that bothered me and probably others in the restaurant. I ordered a sandwich that had "raw ham" on it which I thought was just normal ham, it ended up being thinly sliced raw pork, ew! After finishing the first half of the sandwich I took the ham off the second, I don't trust uncooked pork. I also ordered a coke with lemon because it's very tasty!

Sidewalk art near the Lourve

We decided to part ways after lunch as I wanted to go to a park and the others wanted to go to the Louvre since we were almost right next to it. The park at Monceau was lovely! It had a roman theme with some old looking columns and statues and a little pond with little ducklings swimming around. You could smell the roses in the air. It's very peaceful and definitely worth the trip and a nice escape from the world, my "Quiet Paris" book was right! There's also a lot of joggers, Melissa would like this park.

I do love ducklings

Where's Pascal? 4: Pascal is enjoying some time in the shade at Monceau Park in Paris

Next , I hoped on the metro to go take pictures at Laplace of their menu so I could try to convince Harley and Olivia to go with me to dinner there. Laplace was the restaurant I went to on my last night in Paris last year, it was my favorite, and they had good snails! After walking off my subpar lunch I started to get hungry again and headed to get myself some of the famous Berthillon ice cream. I suppose I didn't know exactly where the original ice cream shop was because there are so many shops selling the ice cream that I just picked one and got a cone of passion fruit sorbet and mint chocolate chip ice cream. The passion fruit was really tart and almost lemony. After the tartness of the passion fruit my taste buds were too numb to taste the mint chocolate chip. I had some more time to kill so I went to the Shakespeare and Company bookstore, which was a very old building with both old and new books. After that, I still had some time on my hands so I walked across the street and sat on a bench in a park.  I few minutes later, a guy sat next to me on the bench in a park and was eating his sandwich and talked to me saying he likes Americans and the country but not the government and capitalism, he was hard to understand too, I just wanted peace and quiet. I told him my name was Louise because I don't want to tell a stranger on a bench my name. Thankfully, after he finished his sandwich he left and a quiet person took his place, ahhh.

The mint chocolate chip

A quick walk past Notre Dame 

The little garden

On the way back to the Louvre I missed my stop and had to either get off and go the other direction or find a new way back, so I was sweating when I finally met up with Harley and Olivia. It was now time to pick up the key to our weekend lodging. When we got to the apartment building, someone else was going in so they let us in the front door, as I was just about to contact our host, she walked in the door as well. Anne Chloé and her boyfriend live in a tiny but quaint apartment. There was no wifi, and no curtains up in the bedroom so we were a bit unsure of the place. I managed to buy wifi for the weekend from a local network and shared it with Olivia and Harley, which made the apartment a bit more bearable. 

We decided to go to dinner at Laplace, which was exciting for me to go back. The food was as good as I remembered! We ordered a plate of escargot to share, which the girls were iffy about trying but actually enjoyed after eating it. Olivia and I ordered a tasty Chardonnay with our meals. For the main course, I ordered pork with the most heavenly mashed potatoes ever. After dinner we headed back to the station and got our bags before heading back to the apartment for a night in after a long day.

Our finished escargot shells!

My tasty food and wine!