Paris, France Day 2: City Tours

Saturday morning we woke up bright and early in order to catch a free tour through Paris. We had made friends with one of our German hostel-mates Robert, (we were in a 10-bed dorm), and he joined us for the first half of the day.

We grabbed a quick breakfast at the hostel's restaurant (yes, there was a restaurant in our hostel), before taking the Metro to Saint-Michel Square to meet up with the tour group. The tour covered TONS of different places all over Paris and was 3.5 hours long. We saw Le Fontaine de Saint-Michel, the Latin Quarter, Le Cathedrale de Notre-Dame, the French Courts of Justice, French Parliament, Le Seine, the "Lock Bridge", Le Louvre, Le Champs-Elysee, L'Obelisque, Le Tour Eiffel, L'Arc de Triomphe, La Grande Palais, et La Petite Palais. (Sorry for jumping from French to English) It was intense, but also very informative.

My favorite place on the tour was definitely the "lock bridge" (I can't remember its official name) because of the story behind it. Basically, there is a bridge over the Seine that has walls/railings made out of a material similar to chain-link. All over the fence there are locks hanging. Apparently, in Paris it is traditional for a group of friends to buy wine at the grocery store and sit next to the Seine on warm evenings instead of going to bars (there isn't an open-container law in Paris - you can carry alcohol anywhere!). So, sometimes couples do this as well. The tradition of the locks on the bridge stems off of this wine-drinking tradition. Basically, if you are a couple and are in love, you can go to the store and buy a lock and a bottle of wine. Then, you sit on the bridge, share the wine, and confess your love for one another. You write a small note on the lock (usually "Je t'aime", which translates to "I love you"), lock it on the bridge, and throw the key into the river, thus "locking" your love in Paris. HOW ROMANTIC! I am determined to do this some day...

After the tour, we grabbed lunch at a pub, and then Robert had to leave us to register for the Paris Marathon (side note: the Paris Marathon was taking place Sunday, which was a cool thing to experience. Wee!), so Alex and I decided to re-visit Le Cathedrale de Notre-Dame so that we could go inside. I was especially excited about this, because when I took AP French in high school, we did an entire unit on La Cathedrale de Notre-Dame and Notre-Dame de Paris (a novel and musical based on the cathedral). The interior was every bit as beautiful as it had been potrayed, and the stained glass windows were simply amazing. We were able to walk around the inside, however, the upstairs was closed when we went. This meant that I wasn't able to get up-close-and-personal with the gargoyles, however, I did get to see them from a few stories down.

After Notre-Dame, we headed to Paris' Red Light District for another tour. This tour brought us all around the Montmarte area in Paris. The first stop on our tour was the Moulin Rouge, which was not quite as ritzy and glamorous as it was portrayed in the movie. It was, however, still a cabaret house, and was also ridiculously expensive. We then were able to see La Moulin de la Galette (the last remaining windmill in Paris), the only vineyard in Paris, a cabaret/restaurant where Pablo Picasso used to frequent (and pay for his meals with his paintings rather than with money), the Red Light District, and Le Sacre-Coeur. The view from Le Sacre-Coeur was absolutely stunning, as it is located at the highest natural point of Paris (second highest only to the Eiffel Tower). Something interesting about the building as well is that parts of it were stark-white, while others were so dirty they were black. Our tour guide informed us that this is because of the stone used to build Le Sacre-Coeur. It is a self-cleansing stone because whenever it rains, calcium is released, thus producing a white color. Since the rain does not reach certain areas of the building, these areas are contrasted with the black color, which gives the building a sort of unreal depth which I found to be very pretty.

We ended up leaving the tour early and missing the last few stops because the sun was beginning to set, and we wanted to have time to change into nice clothes and go out to dinner. After returning to the hostel and changing, we ended up going out to a restaurant called Le Jaures for dinner. A woman at our hostel recommended it if we wanted some good traditional French cuisine. We split a casque of Merlot, an appetizer of escargots, and then I had scallops Provencale and Alex had a steak. The food was fabulous and also not too expensive, which was nice.

After dinner, we caught the Metro to the Eiffel Tower so that we could hopefully ride to the top, but unfortunately by that time the elevators had already closed. Instead, we found a cute park that was situated next to the Eiffel Tower, and sat there for awhile until the light show. (There is a light show on the Eiffel Tower every hour on the hour after dark.) The light show was pretty overrated, as they just had a crazy amount of white lightbulbs flashing at an unnecessarily fast speed for ten minutes (it was an epileptic seizure waiting to happen), but it was still nice to be able to see, especially since it was so nice out.

Since it had taken us so long to get to the Eiffel Tower (much of Paris' metro requires you needing to take very round-about routes in order to get places), it was 1:00am by the time we saw the light show. So, after hanging out for a little while afterwards, we had to run the the metro, and after getting lost, didn't get there until about 1:30am. Since our trip required two line changes, we ended up not making it home because the Metro closed at 2:00am. Therefore, we were stuck trying to flag down a Taxi outside the giant traffic circle surrounding L'Arc de Triomphe. After about 40-minutes of trying to hail a taxi, we were finally successful. Unfortunately, our cab driver was not the nicest Parisian that we encountered (to say the least), and he ended up doing everything in his power to make us feel uncomfortable/to charge us as much as possible for the ride. In the end, the fare ended up being an arm and a leg, but we made it home safely after a long and exhausting day.