The Great European Adventure, Day 16: Parisfeatured

Mom has had some pretty awesome birthdays over the past eleven years. She’s always somewhere on her birthday. One year, we were in Disneyland. Another year, we were in the Bahamas. Last year, we were in St. Lucia on her birthday. She laughs it off, usually posting some (unintentional) humble brag on Facebook about having a lovely birthday in [local du jour] with her girls and how beautiful it is wherever we are. We woke up to a beautiful Paris morning on this birthday. I’m not sure it gets much better than that.

Stephanie and I were up first. We put a card and a gift on her bedside table…and then we promptly woke her up. Birthday or not, it was a new day in a new city, and we had some exploring to do. And the first item on that agenda was finding a café for breakfast.

We strolled the streets around Madeleine, quiet and still for a Friday morning in a big city, until we settled on Café Madeleine for a quick breakfast.

I’d done a little bit of research on French customs and culture before we left, and everything I read mentioned to always greet your server in French. After a friendly bonjour monsieur to our server, he carried on in English. The café offered a petit dejeuner with choice of a bread or pastry with butter and jam, orange juice and any coffee beverage, but we ordered our breakfasts a la carte…basically the same items.

We settled in with our French breakfasts and French cappuccinos to partake in the unofficial French pastime: people watching. Just about every café in Paris has rows of tables and chairs lining their patios, facing out to the street. In this, the sidewalks become runways of the latest styles and the hustle and bustle of the street become a plot line.

We lingered over our breakfast, taking our time in savoring our meals and plotting out our day while the streets of Madeleine woke up in front of our table. When it came time to settle the check, our server mentioned that he wasn’t sure whether he should tell us when we were ordering that the petit dejeuner would have been less expensive and that he ultimately decided not to. I thought it odd that he would lay it out there like that with a chuckle, but I chalked it up to a Parisian thing and we headed back into the streets.

We came across a farmer’s market and took some time to peruse the fresh goods. They had everything – fresh cheeses, seafood plucked right from the sea, baguettes and vegetables and freshly-cut flowers.

We contemplated grabbing the makings for a picnic for later on, but unsure of our plans and how everything would keep, we passed through towards the L’Open Tour booth.

I love Hop On Hop Off buses, especially in cities I’m not familiar with. There is no better way to acquaint yourself with the layout of an unfamiliar city than to ride through it. And, we could see many of the major sites without shelling out for cabs or trying to navigate public transit. A one day pass would run €32, but like many Hop On Hop Off buses, there were heavy discounts for multi-day passes. A two-day pass would only be €4 more, and with that breaking down to only €18 a day for access to four lines that would take us all over the city and bring us back to within two blocks of our hotel, it was a no-brainer. So we hopped on the first bus that came, grabbed some seats on the open upper deck, plugged in our headphones and took in the city passing in front of us.

We saw it all. The Academie Nationale de Musique. The Louvre. The Moulin Rouge (which is much smaller than I thought it would be!). The Arc de Triomphe. The Champs Elysses. Notre Dame and the Grand Palais and the Opera Concorde. Hours passed by like minutes as we traversed the city, marveling at the beauty of the ornate facades and manicured lawns and noting the places we wanted to explore in greater depth.

Did you know that on many of the buildings, you can see not only the architect, but the year the building was designed in? Pretty cool.

We hopped off the bus at the Champs Elysses to get up close with the Arc de Triomphe, a monument memorializing those who fought in the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars.

But something else caught my eye on the Champs Elysses – the flagship Louis Vuitton store. I had told myself up until we arrived that I would not buy another LV bag on this trip. And I walked away a little weaker in my resolve.

We hopped back on the HOHO and headed towards the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel Tower isn’t the oldest structure we saw on this trip, nor the most historic, but it’s an icon – you can’t go to France without standing underneath and just marveling at it.

I’m a lingerer. I like to take things in. I like to sit and observe and admire. Every time I’m in San Francisco, I spend hours (literally…hours) sitting in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. I reflect and I ponder, but I mostly just admire the beauty in front of me. And there was no better time or place to reflect not only on our day in Paris, but on our time in Europe, than at the Eiffel Tower. So we grabbed a crepe to split from a street vendor, headed across the street and parked ourselves on an empty bench at the Palais de Chaillot.

Unfortunately, when it came time to leave the Eiffel Tower, finding the pickup location for the HOHO wasn’t as easy. We were turned upside down and around, and we got lost more than once trying to follow the map. But in getting lost, we got to explore the Trocadéro area a bit and we found a nice little café to pick up an afternoon coffee.

We finished the loop on the bus, taking in more of the city and enjoying being outside on such a beautiful day.

We hopped off when we passed by La Cure Gourmand, the sweet shop we discovered in Saint Paul de Vence, to pick up some more of their delicious cookies and grab some sweets to bring back to our coworkers at home.

With a fresh tin of their delicious cookies in hand, we hopped back on the bus only to hop off at the Seine to wander around there. The sidewalks are lined with vendors hocking everything from cheap keychains to vintage books and art prints.

Shopping wasn’t our primary reason for hopping off at the Seine, though: I was intent on seeing the love locks before they took them down. For decades, people have been leaving locks at the Ponte de Artes and throwing the key in the river. The week after our visit, they were going to take down all of the locks, so seeing the bridge with the locks on was important to me. Parisians thought it to be an eyesore when they decided to take them down. To me? The bridge was a visual manifestation of love, each lock representing a unique story.

Evening was approaching and we were starving for dinner, so we wandered around a bit until we found Café du Pont Neuf, a small café along the Seine, across from the Il de la Cite. The menu was large enough to have something that appealed to everyone and an even larger wine list.

Poulet Roti

Quiche Lorraine

Salade Du Berger

Worst salad ever. By worst, I mean best. Seriously so good.

Profiteroles

We got into a bit of a…disagreement…after dinner. Mom wanted to find the bus stop and see if it was still running to get back to the hotel. Stephanie wanted to take a cab. I wanted to walk. We were finally getting a feel for the city. It was a beautiful (if not slightly chilly) evening. And we were in Paris! We were barely a mile and a half from the hotel and the city girl in me can’t take a cab for distances less than two miles. So we started to walk. They complained. We walked more, through Notre Dame and the Louvre back into Madeleine.

By the time we got back to the hotel, I had one thing on my mind: a long soak in that marble tub. I couldn’t shake the little voice in my head telling me I shouldn’t leave Paris without a little token. A little token with LV monograms. So as I relaxed in bed that night, I did a little research. Within a couple of minutes, I read all I needed to know: if I did opt to make a purchase, I’d save quite a bit. I am a girl who loves a deal, after all. And with that, our plans for the next day were set.