Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Honeymoon journal entry #2:

Today we walked over to Crepes a Go Go and enjoyed crepes and coffee (for Eric) and tea (for me) for breakfast. It was a lovely way to start out our day...except for the crazy Parisian bees (2 were killed during our meal - one by Eric and one by the server).

After that, we bought 2-day passes for the metro (the subway system) and took it up to Montmartre and Sacre Coeur. We successfully evaded the street vendors who try to coerce tourists into spending money by tying a bracelet around a person's wrist and then forcing them to pay for it. Anyway, we avoided them and then took our time walking around outside and inside the church.


We snapped a few pics in front of the church and then wandered over to the artists' square in Montmartre. We looked at lots of different paintings and drawings and decided to buy an oil painting from an artists who was really nice. The painting is of a French cafe with the Arc de Triomph in the background. We told the artist that we were on our honeymoon, and he said we should come back in a few years with all our petits enfants! ha! He also complimented me on my French, so I really liked him - he was immediately my favorite Parisian.


After that, we took the Metro over near the Louvre and found a little Italian restaurant for lunch. We both had some pretty good pasta and bread to keep us full and prep us for the Louvre. Then, we spent several hours wandering around the Louvre, which was extremely busy - it's still high tourist season, I guess.

Lots of people + not a lot of air conditioning + a glass pyramid trapping in heat = very hot and thirsty Heidi and Eric. But we did enjoy the museum. There are so many old things, pieces d'art to take in. It's really impressive.

After the Louvre, we headed over to the Tuileries and sat to rest in the shade. Our rest didn't last long, though, because we saw like 5 rats running between the bushes near us! I think they like the tourists and all the food scraps they leave behind.

Next, we found a cute little place with several restaurants and a petit marche (mini mart). We decided to eat a smaller dinner that night, so we bought Camembert, grapes, ham and some bread -- and of course some vin! We just relaxed and ate our petit diner at our hotel while watching French MTV. Eric especially liked Punk'd (you can still hear the English being spoken, but the French is dubbed over it).