Day 4 – Parisian Safari, Le Sequel

After flaking out early on Sunday I awake before Dennis to look out at an impressionist dawn. The fiery glow of the sunrise peaks through breaks of clouds soaked in impending rain. I watch the Eifel Tower below this remarkable sky and Paris as it is coming alive. Lightening cracks the sky and thunder rumbles. I love it!

The rain and lightening begins behind the tower and the clouds advance toward us. In a few minutes the tower disappears in the deluge and the drops start to hit us. I have not seen the tower be hit, but surely she is a magnet for this hungry energy. We are all in this together now. As the storm rolls over, Dennis wakes and we enjoy it together.

Dennis warms the breakfast tartes he bought last night. Mine is cheese and onion and fabulous! He is equally pleased with his four cheeses variety. I fear, eating over here is going to spoil everything that comes after. I completely understand Julia Child now…well, at least as she was portrayed by Meryl Streep in Julia and Julia…”I just want to eat,” became the reason for her learning to cook.

Today will be part two of the bus Safari. It all begins as before and we are now familiar with one of the routes that takes us to a changeover point. The tour turns sharp corners down crowded streets and one of the more congested areas is around the Gare du Nord where taxis and cars double park to pick up people and with bicycles, buses, scooters and pedestrians added it is it is general chaos. As we round the second-to-last corner we hear a noise very similar to walking over an empty one litre plastic pop bottle: that crunchy crumpling noise. It took just a moment to realize that this wasn’t a bottle, but the side of a relatively new van that had been, shall I say, “condensed”, by the back half of the articulated bus in front of us. And, the bus just continued around the corner. As if to say, “It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me!” our driver let a few beats go by before he followed in the slug-fast traffic. Half a block up we hear the “wee-you” of the siren and an unmarked car inches around the other traffic and cuts off the articulated bus’s limping escape. Needless to say, we were held up by the impasse, but able to watch the work of the current gendarmes. Well, let me tell you these undercover police working the Gare du Nord are pretty hot! The male looks like Gerrard Butler and the woman … well, let’s just say she is strong, and hot and there is cleavage. Whoa, not the usual uniform!

We take the “Blue tour,” which goes by modern redevelopments. At one point we pass Palais Omnisport de Paris Bercy that is HUGE and covered in 45° angles of grass on the outside! (So that’s where the grass goes—it’s used as wall covering!) Anyway, the commentary says that the roof on this building opens and it has hosted events including rock concerts, hockey games and skiing! (Google the photo links using the name above…this is an amazing building!)

Across the street is a HUGE, modern building on the right bank of the Seine complete with heliport, boat dock, restaurants, and stores. That this is the new Ministry of Finance building…well you get the joke.

We leave the Blue tour at Notre Dame and walk across the bridge behind it to Ile St Louis and wander narrow streets filled with shops and restaurants. We settle on Le Sarrasin et Le Froment Creperie and I enjoy the most amazing Crepe with house made Roquefort cheese that melts over it like butter. Dennis tries the onion soup and an omelette that is as thin as a crepe yet still fluffy. Yum.

We decide to try the water side of our transit passes and take a Batobus down the Seine and disembark at the Eiffel Tower. I’m sure that virtually everyone has the same reaction we do… the tower is just so much bigger than we had imagined. It is spectacular and we pinch ourselves to be here. It is not even conceivable to join the line to ascend today, so we lie on the grass of the Champs de Mars and look up her skirt as so many do. I am astounded by her beauty and strength. I love watching the little M&M coloured elevators float up and down as if in her veins. We will come back another day after making a reservation online.

We jump back on the boat and head to the Louvre stop. It is too late to enter the museum, but we want to find Rodin’s statues of The Thinker and The Kiss, which our guidebook tells us are in the labyrinth to the left of the front entrance. We had gone to the right last time. Well, if they are there, they are hiding well – we search everywhere and finally abandon the hunt.

So here we are, at the Louvre again, needing to pee. The good news is, it is before the 8:00 pm lock up the washroom time, so we know right where to go in the Carousel shops below. Well, I know there are public partnerships that provide revenue for struggling bureaucracies, but we arrive at the bathroom to be greeted by a well-dressed woman at what can only be described as a concierge desk in a very nice hotel, who demands one euro each to use the toilet. The “art” on the wall is multi-coloured toilet paper rolls – seriously, jewel tones no less – and perfectly lit with recessed bulbs; and toilet seats mounted like pictures in leopard and zebra patterns, among others – then our “hostess” directs us back to halls that have more doors and I wait until she invites me to pick one. Mine is decorated like a posh boutique hotel. As I relieve myself, I face a poster with pictures of what I assume are the “looks” of the toilets behind the doors I did not choose. Is it just me or is this way over the top?

Heading home on the Metro, Dennis watches a female pickpocket team hand off a freshly picked something without realizing until later what he had witnessed. We are settling in nicely!