Day 14- Paris (Day 2)

We were a little late leaving for Notre Dame, so I let Harley and Olivia get in line for the towers as I sat at a cafe next to the church and had hot chocolate and a croissant, which I ordered mostly in French! I’m learning! Also, it felt very Parisian, even though it was sitting next to one of the most iconic buildings in Paris, but it was fun watching all the tourists running around.

French cafe selfie

After breakfast, I went to the flower market and bought some lavender goodies and some souvenirs. The flower market is one of my favorite places that I’ve been in Paris, its filled with flowers and garden accessories and little trinkets and both times I have been there it hasn’t been filled with tourists, the ideal kind of place!

Once I finished stopping to smell the roses, I headed back to the Cathedral and waited in the long line to get in, but it moved quickly. I figured Olivia and Harley may be at the top by then, so I zoomed in with my camera to the bell tower area and behold! I saw Olivia and Harley! The zoom on my camera is awesome!

I spy Harley and Olivia!

I got in the church and took some photos. Notre Dame is truly magnificent, it never ceases to amaze me at how, even though it s filled with tourists taking selfies during the mass, it is still such a spiritual place. I was there at 12 so I decided to join the mass that was going on a even though I only sat down right before the gospel. I couldn't understand much of the French though, but I tried! Unfortunately, my camera didn't take photos of the whole of the giant rose windows as well as I would have hoped, but it took some wonderful close up shots of them! After the service ended I headed outside to find Olivia and Harley and meet up with my friend, Cerine. (Here comes the photos!)

I thought this looked really cool 

This is one of my favorite areas of the church, the windows are just gorgeous!

At about 1:25 Cerine arrived we headed off to lunch! We headed to Île Saint-Louis (the island behind Notre Dame) and found an Italian place for lunch, I ordered an appetizer and main combo featuring and eggplant ravioli, it was pretty good! We all then went to the Berthillon ice cream café, the real one, and saw the line out the door at the grab and go so we decided to sit inside in the parlor. I ordered chocolate and Yuzu yogurt flavors that came with the crunchy cookie thing dividing them, I also ordered an espresso because I was getting quite sleepy and I wanted to drink out of one of those tiny cups. The ice cream on this day was staggeringly better than the day before, definitely got the wrong flavor combination the day prior. The chocolate was extremely rich and delicious, and the Yuzu yogurt was almost like a lemon flavor and vey refreshing! We sat there for a long time before saying goodbye to Cerine and heading towards the shopping center Cerine suggested, the Galleries Lafayette.

After getting to the shopping center I realized I had been there last year to look for a purse with my friend. The shopping center was like a Macy's but crazier! Each floor had different items sold by very high-end brands like Chanel, Prada, Burberry, ect. The top floor was Paris souvenirs, so I decided to pick up a pretty silver snow globe that was pretty cheap. We then headed back toward the apartment to go to the cemetery across the street. When we got to the cemetery, we found out it was closed and decided to go back to the apartment and relax a while before finding dinner.

 

Where's Pascal 5: Pascal saw his name on a undertakers' coming back from the cemetery! He was a bit disturbed 

I looked at the Internet that said the 6th arrondissement had good food, so we took a train to that area but food was fairly scarce. We finally found a place that was cheap, had variety, and a lot of people so we sat down and ordered. The food was nothing spectacular and actually overall a very bad choice for dinner. What was worse was that the waiter wouldn't give Harley all of her change. What a jerk! You just don't assume you get a tip! That's never happened in any French restaurant to us before.

Building near where we ate dinner

To try to make up for the bad dinner, we decided to go somewhere and find a good dessert, but I got distracted and we missed our metro stop so I decided maybe we should just see what's at the stop there. The area we had landed in was kind of sketchy, but we found a Carrefour and picked up some crème brûlée and wine and headed back to the apartment for a night in. After opening the crème brûlée, we discovered that it was "torch it yourself," which is only good if you have a blow torch handy. After a brief search around the apartment for a blow torch, I looked up different ways to fry a crème brûlée. One idea was to heat a metal spoon on the stove and then touch it to the sugar, this worked in that it melted the sugar but it didn't get to be a dark, hard shell, but it was still tasty! Thus ended day 2 in Paris.

neat arch at the stop where we got our dessert

heating our spoons!

didn't get very toasty :(