Paris Days 4 & 5

It’s been a busy past two days in Paris...

On Friday morning I went for a run/walk through the Parc Montsouris, a lovely park about 7 minutes away from where I live. I was one of many morning joggers looping around the park, which includes a central lake (complete with white and black swans!), a secluded, romantic spot with a series of small waterfalls, a play park for kids, various sculptures, and a café.

I stayed home most of Friday afternoon, but not because of the “heat” – it reached 90 degrees here on Friday, and my roommate said she could barely breathe when she was outside! I started laughing; in this dry climate, 90 degrees feels like 78. Even with no breeze coming through the window and sun streaming in, my room stayed at a very comfortable temperature.

I experienced my first French dinner party on Friday night; Dany had her cousin, sister, brother-in-law, and two nephews over. The nephews are about 5 years younger than I am, and one is in law school here, but he was stressed about taking an exam the following morning and wasn’t particularly conversational with me. Other than that, it was a wonderful evening; the adults were charming, warm, and very funny. Although they all speak English, I asked them to continue speaking French so that I could practice, and I was reassured to find that I understood 95% of what they were saying. I wish that I could have taken notes throughout to dinner to remind myself of things that we discussed; it was the sort of thing where a play-by-play here would have been very interesting. We talked about travel, life in the United States (the other nephew had just spent a semester at Harvard and was floored by the extent of grade inflation compared to what occurs in France), the cost of higher education (Dany’s cousin, upon hearing how much American law schools cost, promptly whipped out a 50 euro bill and threw it at me – of course I didn’t keep it!), American tv shows (Dany’s sister and I share a love for Mad Men, and she asked me to recount the most recent season for her, best summarized in French as “tous se couchent” – “everyone sleeps together!”), and American vs. French actors (they asserted that George Clooney could become president of the United States; I confessed my crush on a French actor named Grégory Fitoussi, whose picture is well worth Googling). We laughed a ton, and I felt very welcomed indeed!

You may be wondering what sorts of delicious French foods we ate during this dinner. Our starters included tomatoes stuffed with tuna, shot glasses of something that involved liver (I’m honestly not sure what else was in there – but liver was a subtle rather than dominant taste), and a celery salad. We then had beef cubes stewed in wine (which smelled incredible on the stove and did not disappoint on my plate) with pasta and finished with a medley of fruits, including grapes from the cousin’s own garden.

Yesterday I decided it was time for me to wander around on my own. I essentially did a huge loop around the Seine, along the path indicated in red below:

I started by taking the metro to the Place de la Concorde, which is a central tourist location because of its proximity to the Jardin des Tuileries, the Orangérie (where Monet’s huge water lily paintings are), the Louvre, and the Champs Elysées (this is the end opposite the Arc de Triomphe). It’s also a great view of the Eiffel Tower!

I decided to start here because I wanted to connect a number of familiar areas on the right bank, and I absolutely loved the Jardin des Tuileries when I came here last summer. You can easily see why: it’s a lovely spot, despite being filled with tourists:

I could sit around that pond for hours with a good book. There are also many benches underneath the trees and lots of these mini gardens like the one pictured above. 

At the opposite end of the Tuileries is the entrance to the Louvre (with the pyramid). I didn't go quite that far down but instead turned right to walk along the Seine, which is just alongside. I emerged across from the Musée d'Orsay and walked down to the pathway next to the river.

I kept walking this way for a while, until I got to the Pont des Arts - the bridge with all the locks! The idea is that couples put a lock on the bridge to symbolize their love for each other and then throw the key into the Seine. And there are a LOT of locks - many have been locked onto another lock rather than the bridge itself, and there's a copycat bridge further down the river that looks the same!

So literally all of the gold that you can see on the sides of the bridge is from the locks! It's amazing! Sex & the City fans should also note that I think this is the bridge where Carrie and Big finally ended up together - though I think that must have been filmed after one of the clean-ups of the bridge (apparently the government periodically removes all the locks!). 

At this point I stayed above the river and walked a little further before turning left to go towards Les Halles, which is a famous market area. There's a mall underground (which I did not see), and the outdoor portion is entirely under construction now, so there's nothing to see except a big pit and lots of machines. From what I could tell from the signs, they're completely redesigning the space so that it's a nice park. 

I continued moving east and was soon back in the area on Rue de Rivoli, which is where the department store I liked the other day is located. I popped back in there for a while, spending the most time in the shoe and perfume areas. All I will say is that it's rough living in Paris while being dependent on student loans...

After BHV I entered the Marais (the Jewish neighborhood) again and deliberately took some different streets so that I could see more of it. I once again ended up in the Place des Vosges, where I sat under the trees to look through my new Plan de Paris, which is an indispensable (their wording, but also mine) booklet with maps of each arrondisement as well as the routes for each bus and metro line. It has an index to look up particular streets and also a map showing the location of all the Velib stations - Paris, like many other big cities now, has a bike rental system. Here's the Place des Vosges (another place I could happily spend hours in):

I continued on from the Place des Vosges to Bastille. (On the way I encountered an amusing establishment, a "Cantina 1000% Mexicana" whose menu I found less than enticing. Mexican food is not limited to tacos and tequila.) The Bastille prison that the French revolutionaries so famously stormed on July 14, 1789 no longer exists, but there's a big square with a monument to commemorate the event along with a plaque on a wall:

A bit anticlimactic, eh? From here I continued down the quiet Boulevard Henri IV until I got back to the Seine, near the eastern edge of Île Saint-Louis. (There are two islands in the Seine. Île Saint-Louis is the smaller and quieter one; Île de la Cité is home to Nôtre Dame.) I walked down by the river for most of the length of Île Saint-Louis before crossing over. 

Here you can see on the left the western edge of Île Saint-Louis with the towers of Nôtre Dame in the center:

I spent a little time on that corner of Île Saint-Louis before crossing over to Île de la Cité, where I continued along (and above) the river. It seems that you can walk right next to the Seine for most of its length, but occasionally there's something like this that would force you to go back up: 

I went back down to the riverside at the western tip of the island, which is where I made some new friends and had a lovely picnic happy hour last summer. Here is a view of the left bank from the island:

From this view, I continued straight until I reached the next bridge, which leads across to the left bank and the St. Michel area, which is home to many cafes and crêperies. I sat on the fountain under the statute of St. Michel (there's a church as well) and soon found myself receiving the phone number of a Greek guy who sat down next to me. He seemed nice enough, but I did not give him my number in return! At that point my friend Garry arrived, and we sat down to enjoy a delicious crêpe au Nutella and some cider. Apparently, you're supposed to drink cider with crêpes. I thought this sounded strange since I've always thought of cider as a British thing, but Garry corrected me and said it originated in Brittany (France). Regardless, the cider was a nice complement to the crêpe. 

After this Garry and I ended up walking all the way back to the middle of Île Saint-Louis in a thwarted attempt to get ice cream from a very good place, which turned out to be closed. We turned around and came back where we'd come from, this time going even further to get the famous, award-winning chocolate macarons of Ladurée. I preferred the caramel macaron, but the chocolate was very good too!

From there we walked back toward St. Michel, crossed the river to the right bank, passed the Hotel de Ville, and ended up at another Mexican place to meet Garry's friend who got an LLM at my law school last year. This place did have an impressive selection of tequila (though not Milagro, which is my favorite), and they made Garry a strong margarita, but I stuck with beer... it seemed too much to get a margarita on my fifth day in Paris! The five of us (another former LLM student came with her husband, making us a group representing the US, France, Ireland, and Brazil) had a very merry evening together, eventually having dinner at a place called Alcazar near Odeon (a bit further than where we'd had macarons). By the time I got home around 12:30, I'd walked just over 26,000 steps that day, which translates to 11.5 miles! 

I took a few pictures in the early evening on our way to dinner. Paris is perhaps even more gorgeous at night:

Today I'm going to be lazy, in large part due to the cold and rainy weather. It's 55 degrees here now!