We go from our hotel near Ecole Militaire on line 8 to the Louvre, switching to line 1 at , like we did on Monday. We get to the Louvre, and my mom says, "I don't know how to get to Notre Dame from here!" So we get back on the Metro, ride down to Châtelet, where we get onto line 1 (we were supposed to stay on until Châtelet anyway) and - finally - manage to get to line 4, which drops us off close enough to Notre Dame that we can walk without getting more lost. There's this big fat fountain I've never heard of, but it's supposed to be some bible scene or something. We ask directions from this guy in face paint (who's supposed to be a junior version of Marcel Marceau or something) and he points us in the right direction. We take some pictures, and Mom wants to climb the tower, but there's a huge line out and around the building so we figure we can wait or come back. We wait in line to go in, though (since we made it to the cathedral and all...) and that's a good half hour. I didn't mind waiting, but it got pretty hot in the sun, and I was sweating bullets by the end. We make it in, Mom barrels to a pew (or whatever it's called...bench...they're not really pews, but whatever) and sits for a good 10 minutes before we make it around to look at all the stuff inside. There are a bunch of piètas and shrines to saints, which I didn't take pictures of because I didn't know if we were allowed to, and I didn't really feel like getting yelled at in French. I did, however, get a picture of the outside:
After that, Mom was really not in the mood to walk up the tower, so we headed back onto the Metro to see the Sacré Coeur. I don't know why she felt the need to make this church visit day, but she did. We rode up and down line 4, because she thought that's the line we needed to take.
But we really needed to be on the 6, because the Sacré Coeur is really much closer to Pigalle than to Gare du Nord. But Mom insisted. We got out, and around Gare du Nord, there were a bunch of guys selling cigarettes and merchandise. I'm pretty sure it was not kosher. I don't know if the black market exists in Paris, but if it does, that's kinda what it looked like! There were CDs and electrical equipment, DEOR and LOUIS VITAN bags, you know...change one letter and it's $500 cheaper. One of them whistled at me and I got kind of freaked out. I wanted to get back on the Metro or ask someone, because I had a feeling Mom didn't really know where she was going, but we kept walking. You can see the Sacré Coeur on the hillside, and so we tried following it, but the longer we walked, the more I figured we were walking in circles because we never went upwards in elevation, we just went around.
Finally, Mom decided to ask. We went into this semi-cute coffee shop and had cappuchinos. I asked the waitress (in French) how to get up to the Sacré Coeur and she told me (in English) we had to go around a park, find a series of stone steps and then we'd be right there. So, we do that, and voilà! There it is. At this point, it's 3:30, and we haven't had lunch. I'm dripping again and I feel really gross and touristy. Mom is in a bad mood because her feet hurt, so we take a break, take some pictures, buy sandwiches of this guy with a cart and head back down. On the way down, we run into the line 6 (isn't that always the way?) and head straight back to the hotel. Here's a snapshot of the church I got while we ate our sandwiches:
After a nap, Mom wanted to go out to dinner at a really fancy restaurant. So, we get dressed up and take the Metro out to the Champs-Elyseés (line 6, now that we know that's how to get to the Arc de Triomphe) and look around for a restaurant. That was perhaps not our brightest idea, because we had no idea what we would find, and we didn't make reservations (mainly because neither of us wanted to talk on the phone in French) but that's what we did. All the restaurants on the Champs-Elyseés are super-showy, but Mom wanted something French and "authentic" so we took a side street and found this wine bar/restaurant called Rue Balzac. It was super expensive, but delicious. I had river trout with asparagus and cream sauce, and Mom (who definitely learned from her mistake) had coq au vin. The waiter said they had just opened and didn't have a lot on their menu. I was sort of confused, until I remembered that my French professor said almost all businesses close in August in France. I guess that's what the waiter meant. They had enough for us to eat well, though. Mom wasn't exactly thrilled at the prices, which I can't really blame her for, but I think it was worth it. They had a huge wine list, too, and we had white wine, though it didn't go well with Mom's meal. I ended up having her glass, which I kind of regretted when we had to get back on the Metro, because I thought if I was incapacitated, Mom would surely get us lost. But we got back safe and sound.
Love, Annabel
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