As we continue to play catch-up on back logged posts, I will
now reminisce about the weekend of October 19th, when I flew to Paris to meet
up with my childhood friends Allison and Allison. They came to Europe for the week, and after
their 24-hour stay in London, it was time for their 48 hours in Paris. Lucky for me Paris is a short and cheap
flight away, so I could easily join them for a nice Parisian weekend.
We met at our hotel Friday night after my flight and their Eurostar
train from London arrived. We headed out
for a late dinner in the touristy area, where the first photo Allison B took
was of a cat licking itself. That is the
only photo of Paris (outside our hotel room) taken on their first night in
Paris. Classy.
The next morning we had plans to take the train out of the
city to visit the Palace of Versailles.
Unfortunately, the normal train was shut
down, so after an hour+ of unsuccessfully trying to locate the backup route, we
decided to move on. Otherwise our
memories of Paris 2013 would have been of wandering through metro and train
stations.
Instead we decide to head to the classic tourist spot of
Paris that I know isn’t ‘shut down’ for the weekend – the Eiffel Tower.
The next stop – the Weiss Chocolate store. We had some guests gift us some Weiss maracons
and chocolate from their store in Strasbourg. I had looked up their Paris
location, and was determined to buy some more treats from them. We follow Google maps, find the store, and
then see the sign on the door saying they have closed. WTF? Additionally,
the Allisons had only heard of the coconut-based macaroon cookies… not the
French colorful maracon cookies. I was
hoping to introduce them to the Weiss versions, but clearly that was off the
table.
We remembered there was a bakery right next to
our hotel, and we had seen macarons in the window. Plus they mentioned ‘gluten free’ on the door
– which one Allison requires. Side note
– turns out all French macarons are gluten free – made with almond flour. Who knew?
Anyways, we make our way back to the hotel/macaron store, and luckily
find it open. Since they had never
eaten macarons before, I suggested we just share one box so they can taste
it. Then if they like it, we can return
the next day (Sunday) to buy more for our trip home, because, you know, their website says they
are open Sundays. The macarons are a hit
(and this place makes good ones), and we figure we should check to ensure the
store is really open Sundays since we have had such bad luck in Paris with
things being closed. Good thing we asked
– they would have been closed! So
instead we all stock up on the colorful treats and leave them in our hotel room. Thanks PapyBioAtelier!
Next up – walking off some of that sugar on the Champs-Élysées to do some window-shopping and see the Arc de Triomphe. Well, it wasn’t just window-shopping for all
three of us – Allison G found a nice Louis Vuitton purse from the flagship
store. Side note: I had to Google Louis Vuitton
to see how to spell it – hence I passed on the opportunity to buy one.
After a sushi dinner (for Allison B and I) and a Hard Rock
Café dinner (for Allison G), we went to see the Eiffel Tower lit up at
night. As this is a tourist hot spot,
there are many people trying to sell things or run scams – who really
knows. But one thing that helped us out was
my knowledge of German. Whenever people
came up to us asking if we spoke English, I would say, ‘Nein. Deutsch.’ That night a group of young men bothering
us with this rouse clearly had no idea what I was talking about. They started laughing and asking, 'What is that? Dutch?' and trying to figure
out what I was saying. Finally, in my
pure American accented English, I said, ‘I speak German.’ Clearly, German was not one of their languages,
and my perfect English didn’t tip me off that we could communicate in English, so they continued on to the next
group of tourists.
Sunday morning we met up with an old college buddy of mine
from the Campus Computer Store, Rohan, and his lovely girlfriend, Ashley. They just happened to arrive in Paris the day
before for a French vacation/work stuff, and the timing worked out so we
could all meet up. After a simple
breakfast of pain au chocolat, or, ‘Chocolate Pain’ as Noah and I like to call
it, we headed over to Notre Dame.
Along the way we ran across one of many, many bridges in
Europe covered in locks. We all stopped
to take pictures and try to locate our names, but I seemed to be the only one
with luck. I guess the fact that Julie
is a French name doesn’t hurt, and I don’t think Rohan would ever have an easy
time finding his name on a lock (though he did find it on a street). I took many pictures to show Noah all my new
French boyfriends, and one J&N that I could pretend that I did for us. Oh, and the M&M lock was pretty romantic.
Next up was Notre Dame, where the line to get in was
monstrous. I guess the fact that it was
Sunday morning didn’t help. But we did
get to hear the bells ringing. And take
a few more pictures. Sadly it was time
for us to say au revoir to Rohan
and Ashley. But as we are averaging
seeing Rohan 1x a year in Europe, I hope we can continue the tradition.
Allisons and I were down to our last few hours in Paris, and
what better place to spend them than in Chipotle. Right?
What can I say, I love burritos, and they still have yet to open a
Chipotle (or more preferably, a Qdoba), anywhere near Munich.
We followed Chipotle up with a Crêperie for the Allisons (I was
too stuffed full of burritos to join in) for a more authentic French ending to
the trip. This was followed by a rather
long wait at the airport due to storms, but lucky for Allison B she could
replenish her depleted macarons stash before leaving the country. Soon enough we were all back at the apartment
in Munich, where we would leave the Allisons to enjoy the city of Munich on Monday, and
then take them down to the fairy tale castle of
Neuschwanstein on Tuesday. But I’ll
save that for another blog (and another blog writer).
No comments:
Post a Comment