Day 1 – July 11th:

Made it into Paris around 10AM. Trip went pretty smooth. Had a small delay leaving Atlanta, but nothing that held us up that much. We couldn’t check in until around 2PM, so the delay was actually a good thing. It gave us that much more time to make it to the hotel at a point in the day where we could actually get into the room.

The cab driver was a little harsh. He didn’t speak any English. Before leaving I practiced my French and what “instructions” I would give him. That lesson didn’t seem to do anything as he just kept saying “Neuf” in response to everything I told him.

(in French)

“We would like to go to a hotel in Saint Germain de Pres. The hotel is the Hotel Lenox, Saint Germain. Do you know of this hotel?”

“Nine.”

I repeated me “lesson” only to get “Nine.” as a response again.

I gave up, let him drive, and planned on dealing with it when we got to wherever he was taking us. Amazingly, he took us right to the hotel. So we had that going for us, which was nice. What I was told would be a 95 Euro cab drive (by some other guy in the airport) didn’t turn out being as bad as I suspected either. It was only around 48 Euros. So, needless to say, that was good as well.

After checking in, unpacking, and resting for a bit we decided to venture out and check out some of the sights close to the hotel.

First stop, my corner bar – the first establishment I ever visited in Paris, and the first place I ever tried my best “let me have this and pay” in French. We had a couple of beers to loosen up and ventured on. . .

We walked a couple of blocks up to the Seine and crossed over it at Pont Du Carrousel. When we got to the other side I found something I was hoping would be there – La Grand Roue. This is literally “The Big Wheel.” It’s a ferris wheel. There is a lot of history surrounding the wheel – personal history, but history. Every time I’ve come to Paris, I’ve had the pleasure of having the wheel be there. It’s not always there. I think they only have it during the latter part of the summer. One year we came (I think it was 2000) and found it was nowhere to be seen. Bummer. . . We were very disappointed. The next day, after waking up, we found that it as well as an entire carnival had been put up overnight. All of this seemed to be erected in what seemed like the wee hours of the night as we never noticed anything going on in this location during the day. . . We always suspected carnival gnomes or something similar.

We walked around for a bit and came back to the hotel. We were getting tired and wanted to get something to eat. After cleaning up, we went down to the hotel bar. I had a gin and tonic, Meg some Pims and Champagne thing. We were both not sure what Pims was, but the drink wasn’t too bad. I tried to have the woman at the front desk make reservations at Le Totem (a killer restaurant that overlooks the Parc de Champs and the Eiffel Tower) for me, but she had the same experience as I had had in the room; all she could get by calling the number was some medical clinic. To make things easy, we just had he booked a reservation for a small restaurant I had visted with Lois before, L’Ioit Vache. This was a small “cow themed” restaurant on the Ile Saint Louis. So, reservations for the next night done and cocktails finished, we headed out again for some grub. I knew of a little bistro that I had eaten at before – Café le Cleres Aux Pres, or something like that. I had stopped there with Owen a few years earlier. It was close, but had good food and drink. Meg had champagne and I had a beer. Dinner – Meg a vegetarian salad, me, a hamburger and fries. This is more French than you think – the hamburger and fries that is. They love them more than we do.

At that point, the fatigue set it. Death was near; we could feel it. We managed to make our way back to the hotel, bumping into cars, poles, and walls on the narrow sidewalks. Between the jet-lag and the alcohol, things were getting rough. Of course, I had to stop at every window on Rue de l’Universite to window shop on the way back. Meg was making sure to case every place that sold something — anything. She needed to get the lay of the land shopping-wise. No problem – I make her stop every time I take a picture (which is a lot), so all the stopping for one another balances out.

We made it back to the hotel. It was 10:30PM. The sun had not set yet. It looked more like 4PM in the States. The sun doesn’t start to set until 9PM or so – and even then it takes hours to finally set. I’m not sure what’s up with that. It must have something to do with the Prime Meridian cutting right through Paris and/or France just having a strange way of declaring their time zone. Whatever the case, the days are long.

Back in the room. . . Our attic window faces West, so the sun was beaming in. The room had to be 90 degrees. We turned on our AC unit which must crank out about .1 BTUs because you need to run the thing the entire day with the window and drapes closed to have it make an appreciable difference in terms of making the room comfortable. We popped a movie into the DVD player (movies that we brought from the States to watch on the laptop). We were both asleep with the first 10 minutes of the movie.

Day 2 – July 12th:

Up with dawn. . . I got up at what I thought was 7:30. I took a shower, got dressed, went downstairs to the basement (that’s where breakfast is served in the Lenox) and got a coffee and orange juice. The woman down there kept wanting to feed me. I kept fending her off, waving my hand, and saying, “Non. Merci.” (. . . which, by the way, makes up most of my French lexicon). I took my coffee upstairs, which made everyone who worked in the hotel look at me like I was mad, grabbed the newspaper from the closed bar (more “Crazy American” looks) and sat down to have my coffee and read the paper. I read a bit – mostly about Zinedine Zidane, that French guy who was red carded in the final game of the World Cup for head butting some Italian guy. Supposedly he repeatedly said stuff about his mother and sister so the guys said he was obligated to take him down. I wanted to have a cigarette, so I left the paper inside and went outside for a smoke. When I came back in 5 minutes later, the paper I had been reading had been returned to the bar. I decided not to fight the system. I strolled downstairs (more weird looks) got another coffee, went upstairs and got my camera, and went outside to take some pictures. I got some decent shots with the morning light. I spent a hour or so out there and then decided it was time to wake Meg up and get the day going.

After she woke up, had her coffee and grub, and got everything together, we headed out. Today’s adventure – the Jardin de Luxembourg and then the Champs Elyees and the Arc de Triomphe.

Paris is a beautiful city! There are some amazing sights and they do keep things clean and tidy. They have some of the most beautiful greenery I’ve seen in any city. The trees are amazing. They line most every major road and are manicured to perfection. They must spend millions on keeping the city looking the way they do. They have all these guys that drive around in little green mini-trucks, flooding the gutters and sweeping everything into the sewers every morning. There is a constant swarm of city workers, doing everything from cleaning facades and statues to trimming trees to planting flowers in the city’s thousands of flowerbeds. They keep things tip-top, that’s for sure.

So, without too many details, we walked over to the Jardin de Luxembourg and checked out the gardens and the main building. It was beautiful. Looking at the building’s clock, I found out that my watch had been a whole hour ahead. So, I didn’t wake up at 7:30. I woke up at 6:30. Oh well. I set it to the proper time. The weather was gorgeous. I took pictures and then Meg and I just sat around on a bench and watched people for a while. On the way out I took pictures of some guys playing a game identical to Bocce ball – there is a French word for it but I can’t recall what it is. They have special, reserved “courts” just for this game, so it’s obviously popular.

From there, we walked to the church, Saint Sulpice. This is the church that it is in the “DaVinci Code” – the one where the crazy, killer albino breaks the floor to find the secret beneath. The old prime meridian runs directly through the center of the church. On the summer and winter equinox and solstices the sun does funky things in the church, lighting special places, the most important of which seemed to be a big brass disc in the center of the main pulpit.

By this time there had been a lot of walking already and we were getting hungry. We settled in to the Café Martin and had lunch – a ham and cheese sandwich (jambon et fromage), a beer, and an espresso to finish it all off. Man, do I love them ham and cheese sandwiches. . . good stuff.

Next stop, the Champs Elyees and the Arc. We walked another 100 miles over there. We paid the 16 Euros to walk all 246 stairs to the top of the Arc even though we bought a museum pass which would have gotten us in for free. We decided not to use the pass for the Arc as it is only for two days and needs to be used consecutively. We didn’t want to start the mad museum dash just yet, so we decided it would be best to just pay for this one. . . We wanted a couple more days of “adjustment” before we started trying to hit every major museum in and outside of Paris.

The top of the Arc was nice. . . but nothing too special. It was hot a hazy so not a great time to take pictures – even though it would be a great place to take some if the conditions were right. The view was nice, but the overhead sun and smelly people made for a quick visit.

We had walked for close to 6 hours now and were getting tired. We had dinner reservations for 9:30, so we b-lined to the hotel for a shower and some well deserved rest.

At 8PM we started our walk to L’Ile Saint Louis where the restaurant we made the reservation for the night before was located. Again, it looked more like 5PM than 8PM. The sun was still pretty high in the sky, but people were gathering around the Seine by the hundreds. Obviously the thing to do around Paris is to take a blanket, some grub, and some alcohol and head to the river and its banks for a picnic, chill session.

The light was beautiful though. It was prime picture taking time. And, considering you have hours of this light before the sun actually sets, it gives you plenty of time to take pictures – great pictures.

We followed the Seine the whole way to L’Ile Saint Louis, passing Notre Dame on the way. I was able to take a ton of pictures; a lot of Meg in the evening sun. Those came out great, I’m sure. I haven’t looked at them yet, but from what they looked like on the camera’s LCD, I’m assuming they’ll be pretty good. Again, the light was perfect. You couldn’t ask for better light. . . that with the fact that you have hours of it. It’s perfect for photography.

L’Ilot Vache, 35 Rue Saint-Louis en L’Ile. . . The restaurant was a nice, small, quaint place on the first corner you come to once walking onto the island. The island is located right in the middle of the Seine. It’s one of two islands that are smack, dab right in the middle of the Seine – Ile de la Cite and Ile Saint-Louis. Supposedly these islands were the beginning of Paris, way back in the day. Anyway, back to the restaurant. . . We both ordered filets, since this is what the restaurant is known for. I got escargot which Meg had never had, so she had he first taste of snails. Dinner was good. We drank our wine and got our grub on. I wanted to smoke, but they wouldn’t let me. Half way into the meal, a couple of tables over, some chick sparked a cig up. I motioned to the owner and he gestured that the people at the table next to us, which had now left, weren’t cool with the smoking, but that the ban had now been lifted. I asked for an ashtray. We finished our wine and meals, had an espresso, and a few cigs and debated on taking some night photos.
By this point, the meal was sitting heavy and the day’s walking had taken its toll. There would be no night photography this evening. It was already 11PM, my feet were killing me, my belly was full and we both longed for sleep. We took the time to head over to the Hotel de Ville to get our bearings on where that was and headed back to the hotel.

Wow! My feet hurt! I popped my blisters. We got into bed and within a matter of minutes we were asleep.

Day 3 – July 13th:

This day started the same as all the rest. I got up early (8AM), got my coffee, my smoke, and wrote a little in the journal. Meg didn’t wake up until close to 11AM, so needless to say, we got a late start. I wasn’t complaining, my feet were killing me. I’ve already had a pop two blisters, the second of which is not healing too well. It’s right below my big toe. I doubt it will heal at all since I keep on walking on it. I changed shoes – I’m wearing flip-flops now and they are much more comfortable for long walks. The blister will likely either turn into one big infection or callus over in the next couple of days. Then, I doubt I’ll feel anything in that area anymore. . . All the better.

When we did get started we decided to go to ‘La Sameritane’, some department store that Meg wanted to check out. I guess it’s not only a nice store, but also has a gorgeous view at the top. When we made it there we found out that it was closed indefinitely for some type of security something. Whatever. Who closes a store with a sign that says, “Well be back. . . sometime.”

Since it was closed, we decided to grab a bite to eat since it was now noon. We hit the Café du Pont Neuf, just down the street from the store. We got a table right out front so we could “people watch.” I had some problems getting an ashtray. First, the waiter wouldn’t bring me one, then he did, then some other guy came out and took it and motioned for me to just ash on the street. Again, whatever. Jesus. I ordered my regular – jambon et fromage – a ham and swiss sandwich on a baguette. I love those things. Meg ordered and variant of it that came on regular sliced bread, but it toasted with the cheese on top, broiled to a nice tasty looking crust. I didn’t have a bite of it, but it looked good. The carafe of water that I ordered was empty and while Meg was in the bathroom I told the waiter to bring us another one. He grabbed the empty and left. While he was gone I decided I wanted an espresso. So, when he got back with the full carafe, I told him I wanted “un espress.” I got the typical “shoulder” treatment along with a eye-roll this time since I made him go back and forth twice.

We finished up. I still left the guy a tip. I shouldn’t have now that I think about it, but whatever. Maybe it’s true that all good deeds don’t go unpunished. . .

We went over to Notre Dame after lunch; I was able to get some really nice pictures. The lighting wasn’t too bad considering it was the middle of the day. They had a local high school (or something) band playing at the park behind the church. They sounded great! The drum core had the killer beat kickin’.

Time was flying and it was getting close to 4PM now. We wanted to make it back to the hotel close to 5PM or so, get a cab and head up to Montmartre to visit Le Sacre Coeur. The dome at the church closed at 7PM; that was the part we wanted to see the most. You get some great panoramic views of Paris from the top of the dome.

Back at the hotel we got ready, packed our stuff up, including the tripod so that I could take night shots in Montmartre. We had the lady at the front desk call for a cab since it was quite a long walk. Everything would have been closed by the time we got there if we walked. The taxi was there in 5 minutes.

In Montmartre, I got a couple of shots of Paris from the bottom of the stairs in front of the church. We then climbed the stairs and found the entrance to where you could climb to the dome. We paid our 10 Euros to get in and started the climb. What a cool climb. You ended up going through the bowels of the church, up these tiny little staircases that would then lead you outside along the end of one of the rooflines, and then back into the church, up more spiral stairs, back outside, until you finally ended up at the covered ledge that surrounded the lower portion of the dome. The views from the dome were magnificent. You could walk all the way around it getting all the different perspectives of Paris. Needless to say, I think I got some nice pictures. The light sucked, which seems to be the case 80% of the time, but some should be good, regardless.

The church attendant came up and told us we had to leave as it was 7PM now and the church was closing. I fired off a couple of more pictures and we headed out. Leaving the church I wanted to take a load off, so I sat down one of the ledges outside the church, next to Meg. When I got up a felt a little resistance, like I was caught on something. I looked back and found a nice 5 foot string of gum coming from my ass. Great. Just what I needed – a big hunk of chewing gum stuck to my ass with a nice long string of it trailing down my shorts and onto my leg. This needed some immediate attention. . .

We went down the road to a local bar where I could get some paper towels to deal with the gum. The guy at the bar spoke no English, but I motioned to the gum and he was wise enough to walk around the back of the bar and grab me a nice long strip of paper towels. I tried my best to get the gum off – I got most of it. But, I won’t be wearing those shorts the rest of the trip. The bar happened to be an “English Pub” in Paris, so I felt it was as good a time as any to order a Guinness. I motioned to Meg, who was waiting for me outside. She came in. I told her I was getting a beer and suggested she do the same. She ordered a Heineken. We started to look at our maps as we were trying to find out where this place was that Meg found to have dinner. It was on Rue Lambert, however, every map we had made it appear that this road did not exist. We asked the bartender. He had no idea, so he said, “One moment,” and went outside to ask someone else – obviously a local to the area. Next thing we know, this seedy looking, smelly guy comes walking in speaking in a Scottish tongue asking us if we wanted to know where Rue Lambert was. We told him yes. He seemed overjoyed. There was this and that about how Lambert was a small street, outside the way of most tourists and how he could tell we were good travelers and didn’t care about hanging out in the touristy spots. He sat down, ordered a pint, told us where the street was. I tired giving him a 1 Euro coin and he exclaimed, “What do you think I am? What do I look like to you?!” I pulled the coin away. He got up and mumbled something about having to go somewhere quick, but that he’d be back; he wanted to join us and sit around and talk and drink with us for a while. I thought to myself, “Great. There goes my good sunlight and my evening photos.” Oh well. He seemed like a nice guy and it’s always nice to get some local flavor, so we obliged him. It didn’t hurt that he spoke English either. He disappeared for 15 minutes or so and then came stumbling back in.

One pint turned into two and Bob Dylan changing the world, Normandy, tears, the United States one vote away from speaking German, Greta the local bum who came and bummed a cig from me, Bush Sr., war machines, my having to guess his age based off of some riddle, and I’m a sketch artist later I was about ready to go. I could tell Meg was feeling the same way – in fact, she was probably ready long before me. The Guinness made it okay for me. The pint’s company made Tommy, the sketch artist, tolerable. There appeared to be 30 minutes or so of decent light left – enough to get a few shots, so we politely said we had dinner reservations and that we’d come back later. He said that he really wanted to sketch Meg, but that he never forced himself on people, demanding and insisting of them to pay for a sketch. We said we’d come back after dinner and get a sketch. Yeah, we knew we were lying, but it got us out of there.

We followed the directions he gave to us earlier. We ended up on Lamberk Street, not Lambert Street. So, we needed to ask for directions once again. I went into a local grocery store and started asking the guy in French where Rue Lambert was. He said, “You can just ask me where the street is,” making it clear that he spoke English and that I didn’t need butcher the French language any longer. After a short dialog and him stepping outside and pointing we knew where we had to go.

We made it to Lambert Street and found ‘Aux Negociants’, the restaurant that Meg had found in one of her guide books. The place was about as French as French gets. I mean, English wasn't part of the part in any way. In fact, now that I think of it, there wasn’t any English happening at this place at all. And, I mean language, food, or etiquette. I went up to the bar and mumbled some French about a table and was pointed to this tiny table for two in-between a couple of other couples. We wedged ourselves into the seat and waited for a menu. When I say wedge, I mean wedge. A nice yawn and I would have knocked the people to the sides of me straight off their chairs!

We’re only talking two feet between the couple on our right and the couple on our left. The “personal space” thing is incredibly different from America. Americans wouldn’t be having it, sitting on top of each other like they do at most all of the Parisian restaurants and cafes. The menu never came.

The owner finally came up, expecting us to say something. We both just stared at him for a couple of seconds. I asked for a menu. He pointed to the walls which were covered with chalk boards with a bunch of French stuff all over them. He gave us the “shoulder” and walked away. The French couple to the right of me knew we were having a hard time deciding and offered some assistance in some severely broken English. It helped though. It was about that time that we noticed that the couple to my left were speaking English. They sounded American. They started helping us as well and then total chaos ensued. We had broken English from the right, English from the left, the owner came back to take our order. They were out of the chicken (all the French people, who got there after us, got all the chicken. I guess being French has its privileges in this place.) I wasn’t ready and neither was Meg. I did order a bottle of wine as we did decide on that, so I got that in while still listening to suggestions flying at me from the left and right. The wine came quick. We poured a couple of glasses. I continued to look up the chalk boards to see what they had remaining. Seems the place only had salads. This was not exactly my idea of dinner. I decided on the “beef salad.” A minute or two later, a ham salad came out in the owner’s hand. He threw it in front of Meg. Problem was, we never even ordered anything yet! I don’t know if the French people next to us ordered it, if the owner inferred one of us wanted it, or if it was one of the only things left in the kitchen. But, we were stuck with it now. Meg said, “I didn’t order this.” So, I took one for the team and took her plate and made it my own. Dried ham, salad, baby tomatoes, and cantaloupe – just what I would never order and something that was going to be far from quenching my now ravenous appetite. Oh well. The owner came back, Meg ordered the “Salade de ‘Beef’.” The French lady to my right corrected her and said, “boeuf.” By now I was engaged in conversation with the English speaking, Canadian people to my left. They seemed very pleased to find out that we spoke English, as were we. At least we had some dinner company.

Meg’s tasty beef salad came out – it was the best thing going in that restaurant and it wasn’t mine. I would have suggested trading with Meg had I not eaten half of the grenade I jumped on for Meg. Meg and I then engage in completely separate conversations with the Canadians. I spoke with the guy, Frank, and Meg spoke with the woman, Arnette. We turned our chairs a bit to get a better “talking angle.” I’m not sure how the French couple to my left took this, but I reached over and patted the older French man on the back and, in French, thanked him for his assistance in ordering. They explained that they lived in Montmartre, loved this placed, and came here all the time. I nodded in appreciation, turned my head, and continued my conversation with Frank while picking away at my wonderful ham & fruit salad. After 20 minutes or so, the French couple got up and left. They stopped on their way out. There were a bunch of “goodbyes” and “nice meeting you” things said – in both French and English – and a lot of other stuff that both Meg and I didn’t understand and with that, they departed.

Meg and I continued talking to the Canadian couple for the next couple of hours during which we polished off our bottle of wine. We were both a little drunk. The couple was extremely nice though and the conversation was good. I learned a lot of things about Canada that I never knew. The French Canadians sound very similar to the rest of the world’s impression of the France French. Seems the French, in general, no matter where they come from, just like doing their own thing — when everyone does one thing, they like doing the complete opposite. In fact, I’m not sure how France ever joined the EU and accepted the Euro in lieu of the Franc. Someone negotiated well, obviously.

We all knew it was getting late and about time to head on so Frank and I attempted to get our bills paid so we could split. The happy time, let’s take pictures of each other time came, so I got my camera out. Frank had taken a picture of Meg, Arnette, and myself. I felt bad that he wasn’t included so I asked some French guy standing outside talking to the owner’s wife to take my camera and take a photo of the lot of us. He obliged. We all huddled together for a shot, the French guy mumbled something and then he ripped off two pictures in quick succession. Frank liked this idea. He wanted some group shots of his own. After all, I had already broken the ice with the French guy, not to mention the conversation he was having with the owner’s wife, so Frank went up to him and handed him his camera. The French guy popped another couple of pictures with Frank’s camera and was about ready to go back to his conversation. Now a table of 8 or so French decided that they would also like to get a group picture, so one of their representatives came out and handed his camera to the French guy. By this time, the French guy, the owner’s wife, and the owner himself were all appearing to not be enjoying this as much as everyone else. I held my camera up and was going to take a picture of the group of French people when Meg suggested that I shouldn’t and that the owner was looking like he was getting pissed. I put my camera away. Meg went to the bathroom. She had already traded email addresses and phone numbers with Arnette; I suggested we get together for a cocktail the next day. I gave them the phone number to the Lenox and tried to get theirs. They didn’t know it so they just wrote down the name of the hotel. I told them I’d look it up on Google. We both agreed to call and arrange a place to meet somewhere near Saint-Germain. We did the customary hug thing and headed our separate directions.

I still wanted my night shots even though it was 12AM. First I got held up by Tommy the sketch artist and then dinner with the Canuks took 3 hours. Time was running out. I was getting tired and grumpy. Meg and I walked back up to Sacre Coeur. I figured I could get some nice night shots of the city from the bottom of the stairs.

When we got there we found hundreds of drunk people, singing, playing guitar, and shooting off fireworks. Oh joy! There wasn’t one single place where I would have felt comfortable setting up the tripod. Meg and leaned against the railing while I debated what I wanted to do and looked out over Parisian night sky. By this point I was too tired and drunk to even care to try and find one of the streets I wanted to take pictures at – Rue Saint-Rustique – but I was thinking of what other shots I might take. Then, next thing we know there are two young Parisian guys who are just hammered, drunk that come up and start “close talking” Meg. You can tell one still has some common sense. The other was out of his mind. I allowed him to close talk to Meg knowing that she can handle herself. Meg, being a little drunk, mumbled a bunch of nonsense, made-up, French sounding crap that did nothing more than egg on the hormone raging drunk one. He leaned in to kiss her and I pushed him away, glancing at his friend, letting him know that this was about all that I was going to take. The common sense one grabbed his friend at the point and they walked away. That was that – not. A minute later they were both back. The drunk guy continued his pathetic attempts at leaning in and trying to kiss Meg. Next thing I know, the guy has reached around and cupped Meg’s ass. That was it! I forcefully pushed the drunk one away and gave both of them a look that let them know that I was about to drop one of them. The common sense one looked at me, saw the rage, and gave me the “Pas de problem.” I was like, “Non. Probleme!,” and looked at common sense with an obvious, “I’m a second away from killing your friend!” look and with that common sense grabbed his friend and we both headed separate directions, away from each other.

I was already drunk and grumpy. Now I was flat out pissed! I was angry I didn’t get my pictures. I was angry that my dinner sucked. I was angry that Meg made a stupid situation worse. I was angry with all the noise and people. I was just plain, old angry.

Not saying a word, we walked out of Montmartre, hailed a cab, went back to the hotel, got in bed, and fell asleep.

Day 4 – July 14th:

I got up at the customary 8AM and went down and got my coffee. I spent a couple of hours walking around and then another couple typing “Day 3.” It’s 12:55 and Meg is still in bed. I’m feeling tired myself and I think I might join her. It’s Bastille Day today, yet I could give a shit about the military parade, the mini air-show, or any of the other madness. I think a crowd right now might just send me over the edge. Plus, my feet could use a well deserved break. That’s it, I’m going to have a smoke, take a nap for an hour, and then go get some lunch.

Okay, took the nap. . . for two hours. It felt great, but I was a little groggy afterwards. In doing so, I made Meg sleep for two more hours as well, so she’s slept in now until 3PM! We got up, she got her shower, we got moving quick and made it out the door in record time – one hour (yeah, we don’t move to fast).

We headed down Rue de l’Universite, hung a right down Saint-Peres and made it to one of my favorite cafes, one I hit repeatedly every time I come to Paris, La Rouquet. I had my traditional ham and cheese and finished up with an espresso. Meg had the same.

After lunch we walked down Saint Germain Blvd. towards the Siene. The intention was to go to the Marais. The streets were packed! — seems that everyone decided to come outside for Bastille Day. We ended up back at Notre Dame so I stopped to take pictures again. It was so late in the day by this point we decided to abandon any plans to visit places in the Marais and just hang out at Notre Dame and the surrounding areas, take pictures, and head back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.

We took the back way to the hotel. What I mean by this is that we stayed on the other side of the rive-gauche and followed the Seine until we got to some point where we could cross and make it back to the hotel without going too far out of the way. This was a good idea and we ended up seeing a lot of good things. It started down at Notre Dame with the Hotel de Ville, now the city’s ‘City Hall’, then we passed ‘La Samaritaine’, a huge department store that Meg wanted to visit, but couldn’t. We continued following Quai Francois Mitterrand, passing a lot of different garden/flower shops and little shops that sold dogs and cats. This area, which encompassed four or five city blocks, seemed to get the place where you got all of your gardening supplies and plants (especially the varieties that you see in all of the window boxes around Paris) and while you were there you could pick up a dog or cat for the mere price of 400 Euros. What?!? Yeah, I went in to these places. The dogs and cats were really young and cute and everything – they didn’t look to be on any high quality breeds or anything — but damn! Don’t you think that’s a little bit expensive for a cat?! Probably better to head out to the country and steal yourself one.

We continued down the Seine. I stopped and got a lemon slushy thing and took a smoke break at Pont Neuf. It was hot – real hot. We hadn’t done that much walking today, but my feet were killing me. That blister I inflicted upon myself the second day was still throbbing and making itself known. After sucking a bit of my lemon whip down and talking with Meg about what would happen if I dumped part of my drink onto the highway running below (hoping that I would hit a car’s windshield), we continued on West.

At Pont des Arts we crossed the street and went into the Cour Carree. This is a large courtyard on the back-side of the Louvre. It’s a beautiful place in itself. It’s just a courtyard, but its cobblestone paved courtyard is surrounded by this beautiful architecture on all sides. Stopping here reminded again me of why Paris is just so amazing. The West side has an arch that leads into a courtyard which holds the ‘Pyramide Du Louvre’. We passed through that hung out around the ponds that surround the pyramid for a while. You get a great view of La Grand Roue from here. It’s framed perfectly by the impeccably groomed shrubby and the building’s of the Louvre itself.

By now it was already pushing 7PM, so we high-tailed back to the hotel to change and go to dinner. The hotel was only a short distance from where we were now. We crossed the Seine at Pont Royal. Once getting to the rive-gauche we noticed a great little bistro on the corner of Quai Voltaire and Rue du Bac, Le Fregate. It looked liked a nice little place, had a good menu, and was a perfect “people watching” spot. We decided that we would have dinner there after we cleaned up a bit.

We got back to the hotel, showered, got stuff ready – I wanted to take night shots of the fireworks from the Jardin des Tuileries – and headed back out. It was now about 10 minutes till 9.

We made it back to Le Fregate at 9, grabbed a perfect table right in front, and sat down for dinner. What a great and perfect place this was! We were in Paris, the sun was setting, we had a view of the Louvre, the Seine, and Quai Voltaire – which was packed with traffic considering that it was Bastille Day evening. I think that everyone was headed to the Eiffel Tower and Champs de Mars to watch the fireworks. The street was bumper to bumper traffic. I ordered the Steak au Poivre and Meg had the Tuna Steak (I don’t remember what it was called en Francais). The food was very good; I tore through mine in record time, ordered an espresso and kicked back to people watch. About that same time a car came flying across a couple of lanes of traffic (note, however, there are no lanes, just traffic six cars across with cars flying in and out and around each other) and nailed the back end of another one. The radiator of the aggressing car blew and white smoke started to billow from the hood. The people involved had a quick discussion, rubbed their bumpers, and decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to go any further with the formalities. The car that was hit went on its way. The smoking car made it off of Quai Voltaire, crossing two more “lanes” and darted down Rue du Bac. Meg and I had a laugh about the differences between the States and France in regards to auto accidents and proceeded to finish our meals.

It was getting windy and there was a chill in the air now that the sun had set. It was a little after 10. I wanted to go back to the hotel and get a long sleeved tee-shirt before heading to the Jardin des Tuileriers to watch the fireworks. From the entrance to the garden, you had a nice view of the Eiffel Tower, so it looked as good as place as any to hang out. And, there would definitely not be as many people to have to deal with.

We got all this done in perfect time, as about the time we made it to where we needed to be, the fireworks started going off. I grabbed the tripod from my bag, set it up, and started firing off some long exposures. I got a couple of good ones before the fireworks ended – which seemed like 5 minutes. It wasn’t quite the show I thought it would be considering it was Paris and all. Portage Country Club in Akron had a better fireworks show that Paris did. What’s up with that?!?

With the fireworks display done, we decided to go and ride La Grande Roue, since we were right there. The carnival was right next to the Jardin. The line for that was amazingly small so we bought a ticket and were onboard in minutes. You have a great view of the city from the top of the wheel. Each of the cars spins, so as before with my sister, I started spinning it. Meg seemed to enjoy this about as much as my sister did – which happened to be very little. Nonetheless, I spun and spun and spun. I knew I would only have one shot at it. When Meg gave the nauseous look I decided to stop. The ride seemed fairly short, but we enjoyed it. Afterwards we perused the rest of the carnival. They had the normal carnival stuff – the shooting games, the merry-go-round, the ball through the thing games. I debated playing the “shoot the string” and win a Playstation Portable or X-Box game, but Meg reminded me of odds. I watched some German guy play it instead. He hit the string 6 times and it didn’t break. Even though I had played it earlier in the week, never hitting the string mind you, I was now convinced that it was next to impossible to win and just a waste of money. I asked one of the guys running the game, in my broken French, how many people had won that day. Eight. This just reinforced the fact that no one was going to win too often, even as easy as it might have looked. There were around 30 people that played this game for the 20-30 minutes we stood there and watched. No one ever won a thing.

Even though we’d only eaten an hour or two earlier, I was already hungry again. There was a place selling ‘Grec Kababs’, which were just baguettes with gyro meat in them. But, they smelled mighty tasty, so I bought one and washed it down with a beer. That reminded me – the French seem to eat almost everything with a baguette. It’s a staple part of their diet. There isn’t more than 10 minutes that go by without you seeing one – in a bakery (which they have tons of), on a table, clamped to a bike, in someone’s hand as they walk down the street – everywhere.

It was almost 1AM at this point. I’m not quite sure what happens at night here, but the hours seem to fly by at record pace once 5PM comes. I was nearing exhaustion after the gyro torpedo; Meg was tired as well, so we decided to head back to the hotel and call it an evening. We had a nice leisurely stroll back, passing the Louvre and its pyramids, stopping on the Pont Royal bridge to stare down the Seine, and then on down Rue du Bac, hanging a left on Rue de l’Universite back to the Lenox.

When we got back, we did the usual foot soak to relieve the day’s abuse, got in bed, and passed out.

(I’m writing much more than I thought I would. . . this journal is taking up a lot of my time. I wrote the above part on Day 6.)

Day 5 – July 15th:

Again, I got up early. Meg slept in. I wrote a few emails and put off writing in the journal completely. We messed around in the room until noon or so and decided to visit the Le Rouquet again. I had my traditional ham and cheese. Meg got the same but with lettuce and tomato. We ate quick and got the day started. . .

The plan for the day was to head to the Marais, an area in the Northeast of Paris. It supposedly a really nice area filled with old streets, shops, one of the city’s oldest squares, and, of course, the Picasso museum.

Rather than taking the long walk down there – which we had already taken the twice over the past 4 days, I decided that a cab ride was probably a better idea. I’d already taken pictures of everything on the way to the Marais twice. Three times probably would have been a little overkill.

We did walk down Saint Peres to take some pictures of l’Hotel Saint Peres where Tracy and her boyfriend Brady stayed one year when we came. I can’t remember which year – they all blur. I also took a picture of the apartment where we stayed. Some Italian guy that Tracy met, Luca, owned the place. Not sure if he’s still there or not. But, I got pictures anyway.

From there we walked up to the Taxi stand on Saint Germain Blvd. We grabbed a taxi immediately and headed to the Picasso museum.

When the taxi dropped us off – which was right in front of the museum – we decided that we needed some water first. It was extremely hot out. So, instead of going in, we walked down the street, hung a left, and found some small grocery store at the end of the road. There was a park to the left.

We went in. I bought some Evian – a big bottle of it. Meg bought some citrus Fanta thing. She was looking at all the drinks, trying to make up her mind, so I headed out to the park across the street and told her to meet me there. The park was small, but nice. On the far end of it was a water feature that dumped water into some small moat. Kids were playing in the water. One was completely sitting in it. On the other side, two others were splashing around playing with their ‘petite poisson’ – small fish. My feet, or my right foot I should say, was throbbing from the blister on the bottom of it, so I decided to do what I saw some others doing – dangle their legs in the moat. I took my flip-flops off and got ready. Meg met me about this same time. She took her flip-flops off too and we both entered the moat, sitting on a ledge on the far side, dangling our legs in the water. The water was super cold which felt great considering the heat outside and the state of my foot. We hung out for 15 minutes or so, drank water, soaked our feet, and took pictures.

Not wanting to kill the day, we exited the “moat,” put our flip-flops on and headed over to the Picasso museum.

The museum was nice. There were all kinds of Picassos – drawings, paintings, sculptures, and other “art” I’m not sure how to describe. The nice thing was that they allowed you to take cameras into the museum. This allowed you to take pictures of all the paintings. In many cases there wasn’t much glare on them, so I got perfect pictures that, once getting back home, I can easily make into nice prints. There was a study in hands that Picasso did. I got nice pictures of this entire series.

We ran through the rest of the museum pretty quickly. Meg stopped by the book store on her way out. She didn’t buy anything. After that, we head out into the streets of the Marais to check out the rest of the arondissment.

Walking around the Marais, we found a jewelry shop that sold old, large, glass jewelry – just the kind that Meg’s grandmother loves. She wanted us to buy her a pin while we were in Paris. Well, this was the perfect shop for it. Meg looked around for a second and pointed to a shelf that had all kinds of pins, every single one which would have appealed to her ‘grandmere’. The beautiful thing – everything pin on the shelf was on sale. We “this one and that one’d” for a while and finally picked two and bought them. They wrapped them up nice. So, we’re good for two gift giving occasions — for Meg’s grandma, at least. Sweet!

We exited the shop and started making our way to “the most filmed” street in Paris. Meg had found this in one of her guide books. Supposedly it was this nice, shop lined, cobble-stoned avenue that closed at dark.

The Marais was a nice area. There were parks every other block. The streets were small and lined with old buildings. We passed one building where we heard some Opera singing. Investigating we found what sounded like a woman to be a man, singing for money under one of the tunneled entrances. I think the “tunnel” made the acoustics better for him. He sounded good, obviously, considering all of the people huddled together listening to him.

We continued on. Further down the road we came across a professional photo shoot. There was some woman, dressed in what looked to be 30’s era clothing, looking in a shop window. There were two photographers, one with a tripod and telephoto lens (across the street) and one, obviously the main man as he was directing the model’s movements and positioning, with some high-end digital SLR and monster zoom lens. It seemed the perfect occasion for me to take photos as well so I started shooting. The main guy positioned the model, gave her some instructions, and then proceeded to lay down in the gutter across the street to get a good vantage point of her. The model went through her actions and the main man snaps off a few shots. He got up to give the model new instructions and noticed me taking pictures. Not wanting to mess up my shoot, he stopped outside my frame and motioned for me to continue. I was amazed by this. Most places in Paris, you have a hard time getting Parisians to even look and respond to you much less give you allowances. I threw out the broken French, “Your job. It’s okay!” He smiled and nodded and then walked back up to the model to give her more instructions. I got a couple of shots. I didn’t want to wear out the welcome, so we ventured on to find this “street.”

Twenty minutes or so later we finally found the street – Rue Cour Damoye. The street was beautiful. It was more of an alley than a street, but. . . I can see why it’s the most photographed and filmed street in Paris. I took pictures for 40 minutes or so. The street was buffered from the horrendous noise of the Place de la Bastille, which was only right outside the back exit. When exiting is was like going some a place of perfect peace to hell on Earth. The alley was noiseless and cool. Outside it, the noise was overpowering and heat, well. . . hot!

My foot was killing me and didn’t feel like walking all the miles back to Saint Germain so we headed across the circle to the taxi stand. We had to wait for 15 minutes or so, but a taxi finally came. We got in, threw out the, “Neuf, Rue de l’Universite,” and got back “L’Hotel Lenox.”

“Oui.” And, we were on our way to the hotel. Back at the hotel, we took an hour or so to decompress. We ordered up a couple of Cokes and a couple of beers, 1664’s. I laid down on the bed for a second and was out like a light. I slept for 20 minutes, telling Meg to wake me up before I hit REM sleep and was lost for the evening.

We decided to have dinner at Le Fregate again. The first time was good, so we felt we couldn’t go wrong with dinner there one more time. I ordered the same as the night before, the Steak au Poivre. Meg changed it up and order the backside of Salmon.

Both meals were great. I got my steak rare this time since it was a little well done the night before. I think when you say “Medium-Rare” and you’re American that they over-cook it. They don’t want nutty Americans tripping out when their steak comes back bleeding. When the French mean rare, they mean rare – like hardly cooked at all. Well, this time the steak came back that way – almost cold in the middle. I’m cool with that though, so I ate away. It would, obviously, be difficult to find that perfect medium cook I was looking for, or at least, hard to convey it.

As we were eating, we heard some ruckus across the street. There was some yelling and such. I turned around to watch a guy, in his fifties or so, looking more than a bit disheveled, albeit wearing a suit, walking across the street with a child, a crying and yelling child. Just before they made it to the other side of the street, the guy grabbed the kid, flipped him (I thought it was a her, but Meg said otherwise) around, and kicked him in the butt so hard the kid flew to the ground, chest slamming into asphalt. The kid slid a couple of feet across the pavement and just lay there for a couple of seconds. My body was starting to go into ‘Emergency Mode’. The kid then sprung up, started crying harder. Someone from behind me yelled, “Monsieur!!” Everyone sitting outside the restaurant had their jaws on the ground and their eyeballs half popping out of their sockets. I think we were all in shock. No doubt this was the most disturbing and trippy thing I’ve seen in quite some time. The guy yelled something at the kid and they continued on, down Quai Voltaire. Wow. Nuttiness.

We finished dinner and went across the river again. I took some night shots at Place Du Carrousel. I was getting thirsty. The night before I had gotten a lemon slushy at the carnival and we were right there, so we went in and got one. We sipped our drinks and watched a bunch of small kids attached to giant rubber bands bounce on trampolines below them. Because of the rubber bands and the trampolines, some of these kids were getting 30 feet of air beneath them. I was about to try it myself it looked so fun. But, having just had dinner and a lemon slushy, I decided against it. I had to piss, so I weaved my way through all the people perusing the different carnival stands to find the bathroom. I finally had to ask one of the vendors. Getting to the bathroom I found you needed to pay 40 cents (Euros) in order to use it. Meg had all the change. All I had were 50 Euro notes – just a tad excessive considering I only needed 40 cents. I dug through my pockets and found 30 cents. I laid it on the counter and motioned to the guy to take it. The guy was already in an argument with some woman who had around twenty one cent pieces all spread out on the counter in front of her, said something I didn’t understand but interpreted to be, “This is 30. I need 40!” I motioned that my pockets were empty, pulled out my wallet, and opened it. I showed him that I only had two 50 Euro notes. He grabbed the 30 cents and waved me through. After getting done with my business, I came out of the restroom to find the woman still there except this time with her husband in a full on war with the bathroom dude. I agree, it’s nuts to have to pay to use the bathroom, but it’s even crazier to get in an argument about it. This was obviously a night full of trippy, anger-filled incidents.

We were thinking of going to the Eiffel Tower to take some night pictures, but it was already getting close to 12AM, so we ditched that idea and settled on night photos of the Louvre, the Seine, and the surrounding area. I’m glad we did as I took some of the best night shots I’ve ever taken in my life. The subject material made it pretty easy though. We both were taking pictures — me with the Nikon and Chupp’s tripod, Meg with her Canon. We took pictures for the next couple of hours.
It was close to 2AM at this point – definitely time to go home and go to bed. We headed back across the Seine, took some more pictures, and made it back to Saint Germain. We were heading for the hotel, walking down Rue de Beaune to Rue de l’Universite. Rue de Beaune turned into a side-street, Rue Saint Bottin. The narrow street looked like it might make for some nice pictures. Meg ventured down the street, looking at the store fronts. She found some shop that sold “Skull Fashion.” She wanted to go back to get something at some point. Me, I set up the camera and took some manual, 30 second long, exposures of a building that was barely visible. The photos of this came out surreal.

We didn’t waste too much more time. I took three pictures. Meg checked out all the shops on the street and we headed for the Lenox. Back in the room we did our nightly foot soak/wash routine and got in bed. Sleep came in seconds.

Day 6 – July 16th:

I wanted to get up at 8AM. I did – at least I awoke and noticed that it was 8. I just couldn’t do it today. We had stayed up until 2AM the previous two nights and I was just too tired. I went back to sleep making a mental note to get up at 9. By the time I woke up it was 9:45. I felt this was enough sleep, so I got out of bed, got my shower, and went downstairs. I sucked down the usual glass of orange juice and got my couple of cups of coffee and returned to the room to update this journal. I don’t even think any of the staff had time to see me and make fun of me this morning. I was quick about it.

I checked the email. Nothing. I had written a few mails the day before and expected that I’d have some responses, but found none. This was a good thing as it allowed me to dump the prior day’s pictures onto the laptop and start updating the journal. I began to do so immediately upon returning to the room. Meg was still sleeping. She slept for another 30 minutes or so and woke up at 10:30. I decided to keep writing in the journal as I didn’t feel much like starting the day yet. I needed more coffee and wanted to give the aching feet a little more time before I started putting pavement underneath them.

While Meg was in the shower, I went back downstairs to get a coffee refill. When I got back to the 5th floor I noticed that all the doors to the rooms upstairs were opened. They were being cleaned, but the maids were nowhere to be seen. This was a perfect opportunity to explore the rest of the top floor and all five rooms on the 5th. I went into every one of them. Some were similar to ours, some worse, but 54 and 55 – now those are some cool rooms! The bathrooms were downstairs adjacent to a sitting room. There was a private balcony located off the sitting room. Stairs took you up to a loft where a queen sized bed was located. You had a desk upstairs here as well. The desk looked down to the sitting room and the French doors that opened out onto the balconies. It was time for action.

When Meg got out of the shower I grabbed her, bathrobe and all, to show her the rest of the rooms. She agreed that 54 and 55 were beautiful rooms and better than the room we had – not to say that our room is too shabby or anything, but a balcony vs. a window. It’s was an easy choice. I sent her downstairs to see if she could manage to have our room switched to one of the other two. No joy. I knew it wasn’t going to happen, but whatever. . . You get nothing if you don’t at least try.

It was noon by now and I still wanted the opportunity to get the journal up to date. Meg wanted to do some window shopping – which I didn’t — so I suggested that she go do that now giving me until 1PM to write and chill in the room.

I let the maid in to change the towels and clean the bathroom while I typed. I looked up some French sayings on the Web so I could let her know that I didn’t want the bed changed or the room cleaned, just the towels replaced and the bathroom cleaned. The maid was a nice black lady. She was sweating like mad. Beads of sweat dripped down her forehead as she ran back and forth. She was quick about things though. She sprinted back and forth from her cart to the bathroom and was done in about 10 minutes.

Meg returned at 1:20. We discussed what we’d do for the remainder of the day. We hadn’t visited Café Flore yet, so we decided to go there for lunch. Le Rouquet was closed anyway, so we couldn’t have gone there even if we had wanted.

I spent another hour or so typing while Meg looked at other things to do in her guidebooks. We came up with a plan – go to Café Flore for lunch, walk around Saint-Germain des Pres for a while to soak up some time, and then head to the Eiffel Tower around 5:30 so we could go up the tower, take some pictures, and have a chance to get back down before sunset. I wanted to make sure that we were set up in a good location for me to take pictures of the tower once they lit it and while the sun set – while there was some good ambient evening sky behind it.

By now it was around 3:30. It’s amazing how much time you can waste just hanging out in the room trying to get a plan together. This journal doesn’t help however. Instead of just typing quick little notes I seem to ramble on for paragraphs. What seems like minutes turns into hours quickly.

I wrapped up typing for the day and we got ready for the evening. We were going to dress and take everything we needed to spend the entire evening out. It was pointless to eat and then come back to the room. We’d already let most of the day pass anyway.

We walked up to Café Flore and got a table on the far side, out of the sun. Incredibly, a waiter came over immediately. I ordered a coke and a carafe of water. Meg got a double espresso since she hadn’t had any coffee yet, since she stayed in bed until noon or so. The waiter brought us our drinks within five minutes. He then let us know that it was the end of his shift so we had to settle the current bill with him and then he would send over another waiter to take our food order. We settled and then he walked around the corner and started yelling, “Alan! Alan!” He then disappeared. Meanwhile, a Parisian guy had sat down next to us five minutes or so earlier and not one waiter had even glanced at him, much less took an order. You could tell he was starting to get a little pissed. He made some conversation with another Parisian next to him. You could tell it was about the service or lack thereof. Meg and I waited for Alan for the next five minutes. Alan never came. The guy next to us had finally had enough so he got up and left, bolting out of there at light speed. A waiter walked around the corner. I assumed it was Alan, but he passed right by us and went on to some tables further down the side of the building. We waited for another five minutes before we Meg motioned to him to come over. He came over explaining that this was not his section, but that he would take our order and then turn it over to the proper waiter, wherever he was. Meg ordered a club sandwich and I had my usual, a jambon et fromage – or mixte as they call it here. I never knew about the “mixte” until this visit. You learn something new every time you visit. The waiter returned a couple of minutes later to set the table. He moved everything off the table, putting it on the table next to ours, and then put a nice paper “tablecloth” on the little circular table. The paper had a nice drawing on it. It was a busy Parisian street life scene with the Flore at the center of it. On top of that he set out the napkins and silverware, moved everything back for the other table, and with that, disappeared. We got our food a few minutes later. My sandwich was not that good. The sandwiches at the Le Rouquet were much better. Meg’s sandwich, on the other hand, looked great! It was a nicely toasted white bread club, packed with tomato, sliced egg, lettuce, and all the other things you associate with a “club sandwich.” Meg suggested that she’d actually have liked to have the paper table cloth. I concurred. It was a nice picture. I told Meg to try and not get water and other stuff all over it and that when we were done, we’d snag it.

We finished our meal. I ordered an espresso to finish up. We sat there for another half hour or so. I had my feet propped up on a small stool on the opposite side of our table. One of the head waiters came up, looked at me, looked at my feet, and shook his head. That was all the hint I needed for me to take my feet off the surface where his customer’s sit. I removed my feet and smiled at the head waiter. He smiled back. A Parisian woman, who had come earlier, filling the vacant spot where the guy that had left had been, leaned over to us and said in broken English that if she had had a stool, she would have done the same thing. But, even so, that this is Café Flore, one of the most respected Cafes and institutions in Paris, so resting your feet on the stools was not looked at in high regard. We laughed about it.

We paid the second waiter. It was time to leave and also time to steal the “tablecloth.” I wanted to do it, but I didn’t want to seem like a gigantic, idiot tourist, so I did my best to slip it out from underneath everything that was on the table and not have anyone see me. I got it out of there and quickly rolled it up. I don’t think anyone even caught it.

We left the Flore and walked around Saint-Germain for a while. We had an hour or so to kill before heading to the Eiffel Tower. Meg stopped by a postcard shop and started looking through all of the different cards they had. I didn’t want to carry this rolled up tablecloth with me the rest of the evening, so I suggested she look at the postcards, buy which ones she wanted, and that I would give her time as I was going to walk back to the Lenox to drop the tablecloth off in the room.

I walked back to the Lenox, dropped it off, and returned to the postcard store, assuming that Meg would have been done. I was not so lucky. She was still debating which ones to buy. She asked for a few suggestions. I gave some. I reminded her that we had sent update emails to everyone, so why would we be sending postcards? She half-heartedly agreed, but let me know that there was her Grandma and a few other people that would like to get postcard. I nodded and let her do her thing. She took another twenty minutes and wrapped up.

We then headed down to the Tabac – the tobacco shop – to try and find a pack of Nat Sherman’s, some special smokes that we get in Savannah from a specialty tobacco shop. We weren't so lucky. We settled on a pack of Dunhill’s.

From here we walked back down the street to the Taxi stand to catch a taxi to the Eiffel Tower. My foot was killing me still so I didn’t need to put anymore miles on it than were absolutely necessary. There was a taxi waiting. We hopped in. I threw out my best “Tour Eiffel,” the guy nodded and we were on our way. This was one crazy taxi driver. He was obviously middle Eastern. On the way out of the taxi stand, he almost nailed so guy on a scooter, then he punched it, hitting warp speed 5 within seconds. He was talking to us in French the whole time. I couldn’t understand a thing he said. Meg was doing better at interpreting than I was. He mentioned something about the beach and California and was saying something else as we approached a red light. I was wondering when he was going to take his eyes off the rear-view mirror, which he was using to talk to us, and look back at the road, noting the red light and the fact that he needed to stop. He finally did all of this within 30 feet of the light. He slammed on the brakes and the car came to a stop – a very, very abrupt one. Meg and I were almost in the front seat now. I could see that Meg was not enjoying the taxi ride too much. We made it to the Eiffel Tower in 5 minutes or so. I was about a quarter after six.

We got in the line for the ‘Pilier Nord’ – the North Pillar. The line wasn’t too long, but long enough for me to already roll my eyes. I asked Meg earlier why she wanted to go up in the tower. We had both been before – Meg only to the second level, me to the third (the top). She suggested that as a tourist you have to go up in the Tower. She changed her mind about this after the hour it took to get in, being jammed into an elevator with a bunch of sweaty, smelly people, and just the shear chaos of the place. Everyone was trying to make it to the third level as soon as possible. Because of this, there was a line wrapped around the entire second stage. We had purchased tickets to go to the top, but we both quickly agreed that the third stage would not be in our future. It was now nearing nine, so we started thinking about heading down. We both thought that the stairs would actually be more pleasant than that elevator so we walked down the South pillar stairs. It beat the elevator, hands down.

From there we headed over to the Champ de Mars and up the stairs to see and find out what happened to Le Totem. We had called earlier in the week and found nothing but a clinic. It was a great restaurant on the Champs de Mars that has a great view of the Tower. We got to the top of the stairs and saw umbrellas, tables, and people eating so there was definitely so restaurant there. We walked around to the front side and entered. I walked down the hallway that takes you through the Maritime Museum; the restaurant is located on the backside of the Museum. There was a new restaurant, Café de l’Homme. I talked to the doorman and asked him what happened to Le Totem. He said that it had been gone for over a year and half now. He didn’t seem to want to elaborate any more than that. He highly recommended reservations for the new restaurant. I told him that we would make some. I went inside and grabbed a card quick. On the way out, the doorman said, “See you again soon.” I replied, “Yeah, see you in a couple of days,” waving.

Now that we had solved that mystery we needed to make it back to the other side of the Eiffel Tower for night shots – before the sun set. We had plenty of time so we wandered slowly through the crowds in the Champs de Mars, watching street performers and guys going off ten foot drops with their bikes – bikes, mind you, that had no seats on them. We finally made it back to Avenue Gustave Eiffel. We crossed the hurried street and walked to a location of the park located on the far end of the Champs de Mars. We found a perfect place in the lawn, dead center in front of the tower. I set up the tripod and framed a perfect shot of the Tower. It was just prior to sunset.

The first shots I took were of the sunset where with the tower in silhouette. As the sun went further down, the sky got progressively darker. At quarter till ten they turned the lights on on the tower. At this point it was still fairly light outside. I kept taking pictures of the same scene for another hour and a half. Meg and I sat in the park, relaxed, and let the time slip away. I would get up every 15 minutes or so to take pictures. The best pictures were when the sky was just dark enough that the tower was no longer in silhouette – when you could make out that it was lit – the sky went from dark, dark blue at the top, and graduated down to this white, pink color close to the horizon. At 11:15 or so we packed up and headed on. I snapped a couple of other pictures at different locations as we walked on, away from the tower.

We planned on walking back to the hotel since Rue de l’Universite ran all the way from the hotel to the tower and, of course, visa versa. Walking back we both decided that we were hungry so we stopped at Café Le Dome for a bite before hitting the sack.
A waiter came out immediately and gave us a couple of menus. He stuck his head out the door a few minutes later and asked us to move to a table closer to the door. Our guess was that this would make it easier for him to keep and eye on us, and also for him to not have to walk as far to provide us service. We moved. I order a beer. So did Meg. We drank our beers and looked over the menu trying to decide what to get to eat. We finally settled on hamburgers. When the waiter returned we ordered them. Meg ordered one kind. I order another kind – with a fried egg on the top. The French have some crazy food variants in contrast to the States. Looking inside the café, they had this giant plasma widescreen above the bar. They were playing some MTV type channel. 50 Cent and a few other music videos came on. While talking to Meg I would stare up at from time to time. At one point I looked up at it and there was some rapper video on, the guy was sitting on the “Hurricane Tree” from Harbour Island. I told Meg to turn around and check out the TV. She saw the tree. The entire video was obviously filmed on Harbour. There were all kinds of scenes shown that we were familiar with. We laughed about the coincidence. We couldn’t figure out who the rapper was though. I think he was some European rapper. Fifteen minutes later the waiter returned with our hamburgers. There were fries on one side of the plate, on the other, a hamburger patty with no bun. We both had similar variants that consistent of spaghetti sauce, chopped onions, and cheese thrown on top of the patty. Of course, on top of all this, on mine was a fried egg. As strange as it sounds, it was good. We dug in. We were both starving.

A few minutes later this drunk guy, carrying a boom box playing some 80’s song (loudly) and a bottle of wine with a straw sticking out of it walked up to the restaurant, pulled out a chair, propped his foot up on it and pointed to the boom box towards all the people sitting there eating. I’m not sure what he was doing, but it reminded me of that scene in ‘Say Anything’ where John Cusack holds that boom box up trying to woo his woman. Weird. About this time, our waiter came flying out of the café. He had some works with the drunk guy. Drunk guy didn’t seem to respond. The waiter pointed towards the drunk’s foot on the chair and the motioned his finger across the crowd of people sitting there eating, including us. Next thing you know, the waiter pushes the drunk so hard the drunk flew ten feet backwards. I don’t know how he didn’t fall as the push was something between a push and a punch. The drunk came back up and got in the waiter’s face. There was loud yelling, in French, at this point. Wham. The waiter pushed his again. The drunk somehow magically managed to maintain his balanced again, boom box in hand and all! The waiter now had his tray turned sideways, cocked and ready. It looked like at any point he was going to tray this guy right across the face. I was, in a sadistic way, wanting to see it. The waiter looked like some guy out of ‘Fight Club’. He was a very handsome guy with a close cut haircut, yet had a scar running down his entire right cheek. You could tell he’d seen some “action” in the day. I wouldn’t have messed with him. I think the drunk knew at this point that he was about to be seriously injured. He grabbed all his belongings and headed on his way, turning back from time to time to yell at the waiter. The waiter watched him for a hit, making sure he got what you knew he considered a safe distance away from the café. Wow. . . Weird. This was yet another strange incident to add to the list. . . They always seem to happen while we’re eating.

We consulted our trusty little pocket map, which by this point had seen better days. It was all torn in the areas where it was folded, but it was still the best map we had, even in comparison to the maps in the books, and even in it present condition. We looked for the best route home. We knew that Rue de l’Universite would take us back, but we were a couple of streets off so we looked if there was something that ran parallel that we could take, There was, Rue Saint Dominique. I got up, went inside the café, bought a pack of cigarettes. I had run out the Camels I brought with so I had to start buying cigarettes in France. I went with the world’s staple cig – Marlboro – Reds. The waiter came back over shortly after I got back outside. We settled up with him. I congratulated him on the way he handled the bum. I made a pushing gesture and smiled at him. He spoke English well. He said something about the guy putting his nasty shoes on their chairs (Note, don’t put your street shoes on the café chairs. This is the second time now that it’s been made known to me that they DON’T like it.) and something about playing music loudly, directed towards their patrons. I concurred that it was something that had to be dealt with and told him he handled it perfectly. He smiled.

Went got up and headed down Rue Saint Dominique. We walked this for a while. At some point we were kind of lost, but not really. Instead of even looking at any map I just headed in the general direction of Saint Germain Blvd. We ended up running right into Rue de Pres aux Clercs! Talk about luck – or, should I say, my excellent sense of direction. Rue de Pres Clercs is a small side street that runs directly behind our hotel. The street connects Rue de l’Universite to both Saint Germain Blvd. and Rue Saint Peres. We followed the street to the bottom and made a right, straight into the Lenox. At the front desk, we asked for the key, went upstairs and went directly to bed.

Day 7 – July 17th:

(I’m writing this on the 20th. I’ve started to get days behind with the journal as I write too much. It’s make it too hard to keep up. . . especially when you’ve been staying up late.)

The usual patterns of events occurred. . . I got up at around 9:30, went down, got coffee, checked email, wrote a few, and then started updating the journal. Meg stayed in bed until 11:45 or so.

After getting up and getting our plan together we headed out. We went down the to Le Rouquet and had lunch. I think we both had a ham a cheese sandwich, but I’m not sure.

My foot was acting up – the blistered part of the right foot, that is. I decided that action was necessary. Meg had read in her book that one of the best pharmacies in town was just right down the street on Rue du Four. After lunch we headed that direction to pay them a visit. I needed to get a blister pad (or a few of them) and Meg wanted to get some of her miscellaneous “woman” items. It was about a 10 minute walk. The pharmacy was a good one though. It was packed. They had two floor at this joint and about everything that you could ever want in regards to healthcare and beauty. I picked up a pack of ‘Compeeds’, these goo-filled blister patches. It was just what I was looking for. I also picked up a pair of in-soles for my boots as they’re what started the blister in the first place. I’ve worn a hole in the bottom of them from walking around the lake at work. I need to fill it with rubber cement when I get home. I’m sure trying to find that here would be next to impossible. How do you even say “rubber cement” in French?

After leaving the ‘Pharmacie’, we headed down the street to Saint Sulpice – since it was so close. There was a nice café – Café de la Mairie – that we had visited a few days before when we went to Saint Sulpice. We grabbed a bench in the park across the street first, in the shade. It was over 90 degrees out and just roasting. I wanted to clean my foot off and get my blister patch put on before doing anything else. I used some of Meg’s Purel to clean my foot, let it dry, and put my patch on. Ahhh. . . much better.

We headed over to the café and got a table inside. We needed some water. I order a carafe of water and a couple of espressos so we could wake up a bit. We hung out there for 30 minutes and put a plan together. The chick the wrote ‘Paris by the Numbers’ mentioned all of the oldest streets in each of the arondissments. The one in Saint-Germain was relatively close, so we paid the bill, and headed in that direction. My foot was feeling much better now. There was still some pain, but the blister patch did help sooth it a bit.

About 15 minutes later we got to the oldest street in Saint-Germain, Rue Serpente. It was hardly anything to write home about. There was absolutely nothing of any interest on this street at all. Okay, so it was old. That was about all it had going for it. We walked down the opposing street, past an elementary school, that had a sign in the window – “School will be back in session on September 1st.” At the end of this street there was a private courtyard. It was really nice. They had all kinds of window boxes and the courtyard itself had been landscaped beautifully. I took some pictures and we headed on.

We were both tired, had no good plan, so we decided to go back to the room. I had discovered at the Eiffel Tower that I could no longer use my bank card to get money. The transactions were always refused. When we got close to the hotel I tired the card again at La Poste, right around the corner from the hotel. Again, refusal. I was pretty pissed at this point. We used Meg’s card to get 250 Euros out. It worked fine. Once getting back to the room I was going to get on the Internet and the phone and figure out what the hell was going on with Bank of America. I had gotten 400 Euro at the airport with my ATM card and everything worked fine, so they obviously did something to stop me from being able to get cash.

Back in the room, I got on the Internet and found the collect phone number for Bank of America, for use when you’re abroad internationally. I called the International Operator and had them try to connect me to this number. All it was was some automated system; some operators connected me, others came back and told me that there was no one to accept the collect charges. Whatever. . . I was getting more pissed by the minute. I finally got one of the operators to connect me, I got my account number typed in, the music on hold came on, and the waiting began. Twenty minutes later I got a dial tone. I was now super pissed. I gave up and just used my credit card to make the call. After 3 attempts – getting hung up on at different points during the call, I finally got a representative. She told me she was a California rep and that I needed Georgia. I had to be transferred. She explained that this would take a couple of minutes. Great. . . meanwhile, I’m paying like $6 for each 5 minutes that goes by. After a couple of minutes, the Georgia guy picks up. He’s like, “So, how is River Street?” WHAT? I explained that I was in Paris and that I couldn’t get any cash that that this was a HUGE crisis (even though it really wasn’t since we were able to get cash with Meg’s card). I told him to check things out and remove a block if they had put one on the account. He played around for a minute or two and confirmed that they had indeed locked the account. Obviously, getting money in Paris is enough to warrant a fraud lock. Whatever! He explained that I should tell the bank every time I travel. Great. . . another thing to have to deal with before going on vacation! He said that he couldn’t remove the lock, apologized about the inconvenience, and said he would transfer me to the dept. that could remove the lock. He tried to be polite and transferred me. . . Dial tone. At this point, I gave up. It just wasn’t worth it. I’d probably spent close to $40 trying to get this block removed.

I took Meg’s ATM card and head down to the La Poste ATM as quick as I could – before Bank of America could put a lock on her as well and got out another 300 Euro – as much as the machine would let me take. I’d reserved myself to the fact that the only way I was going to resolve this was back in the States when I had the time and when calling them wasn’t such a pain in the ass. Bank of America is obviously only a good back in AMERICA. They need to work on their international service, that’s for sure!

I was pretty pissed at this point, but just tried to put it in the back of my mind. We had made reservations at the Black Calvados, or BC as they call it. This was some new joint that Chris Cornell and some partner had opened recently. I think it’s only been open for 4-5 months. We had tried to make reservations earlier in the day – for 6PM – but they didn’t have anything but an answering machine until 6PM. After 6, Meg went downstairs while I was doing the Bank of America stuff and made reservations for 10PM, later that evening.

We got cleaned up and decided to head out at 8:30, walking up to Saint-Germain Blvd. to have a few beers before going to dinner. I needed them to calm down after having dealt with Bank of America, spent a bunch of cake, and gotten nowhere. The worst part is, the best plan would have been to simply ignore the block and deal with it when I got back. We had gotten money with Meg’s card. I think this is what upset me the most. I screwed myself – even having known that the best thing to do would have been to wait until we returned to the States.

We went to some “tavern” on Saint-Germain, next to the Lipp. I ordered at 1664. Of course, I asked the waiter, “Avez-vous seize cent soixante quatre?” He just gave me this, “Non,” and rolled his eyes. I assumed this meant that you are at a tavern in Paris and you’re asking me if we have that beer?!? – which is totally French! I could have dealt without the sarcasm at this point. The waiter then asked me what size I would like. I told him I wanted a 50cl. Meg ordered a Kir Royal. He brought the drinks within 5 minutes. Meanwhile, I had started to cuss the French, Bank of America, and most of the free world. France took the most heat. I had said I wasn’t going to even speak French anymore. It didn’t seem that it helped by trying, and that I was about to knock that next Parisian that walked past me out into the street and stomp on his face. The beer helped calm me down. I ordered another one as soon as I was done with the first.

About 15 till 10PM, we walked the 20 feet to the taxi stand and got a ride to BC. The ride took about 10 minutes. The driver knew exactly where it was. It had been called the ‘Calvados’ prior to the ‘Black Calvados’. Cornell and friend wanted to keep the old name in the new name.

We went up the stairs and told the guy at the top we had reservations for “Wolf.” He nodded, asked if I would like for me to stash my backpack, which I did, and then led us to the head waiter. The head waiter guided us to our table – a nice table for two in the corner of the main dining room. The entire restaurant was painted in black lacquer. I’m not sure who’s idea this was but it looked like shit if you asked me. If they did this just to get “Black” in the name and have the restaurant’s initials, “BC,” which stood for Cornell’s business partner and Cornell, himself, be representative of the two of them, it was a bad call. I’m not restauranteur, but I know that a entire restaurant, covered in black, shiny paint with dim light bulbs, in a row, lining the walls isn’t exactly what I’d call “stylish.”

We order a couple of drinks. Me, a Heineken, Meg some kind of cherry martini thing. When she got her drink, they had a bunch of tiny cherries hanging off the side of it. It looked good, but didn’t make the drink easy to drink, nor the cherries (if that’s what they even were) easy to eat. The head waiter, a nice woman in her late thirties it seemed, brought us menus.

The menus showed us that the place did have some decent grub though. You could tell they catered to Americans as everything was in French and English.

We talked to the matridee for a while and had a pretty good rapport going on. She invited us to the private club downstairs — so we must have showed her our "fresh" style or something. (haha) We were personally escorted by one of the waiters downstairs, passing the big burly guy that originally blocked us and pointed us to the restaurant in that way to say, "There's no way you're getting in this club in your T-Shirt kickin' that backpack!"

The club was small, and I mean like small… maybe 12×30 ft. But, it was cozy. Meg and I plopped down in a booth and started talking to all the model types and their boyfriends. Everyone was very nice. You could sense the "exclusivity" of the place, but we worked around that, no problem.

I'm now around eight Heinekens into it… Meg's had seven or so strawberry sour martinis… Meg ended up asking one of the guys to dance. Next thing you know, girl on girl dancing began and the place and activities got down right NUTTY! All 15 or so of us were feeling no pain and having a good 'ole time. Time flew.

It wasn't soon before 5AM rolled around. I vaguely remember grabbin' a cab after paying my tab, which turned out being beaucoup d'argent (for those of you that don't know French, that means a whole F'in lot), and making it back to the hotel. The guy watching the front door couldn't have been happy. We had to wake him up to let us into the hotel. We squeezed into the elevator, pressed 5, got to our floor, and then bumped up against the walls, back and forth, all the way to our room. Clothes flew around for a second or two, and…

ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz.

Day 8 – July 18th:

Noon. Pain. Stayed in room. Watched movie. 4PM. Went to the Rouquet for some grub. Walked everywhere. Went right on Saint Germain and followed that all the way to the Eiffel. We went out for night shots of tower, ¾ view, and then to Champ Elysses for shots. Took random shots on the way home, Place du Concorde, Seine with tower, etc. Meg was tired and silent. I knew it was time to head home, so we did. Went to sleep at 1AM. These late nights are catching up to me…

Day 9 – July 19th:

Got up at 10. Meg at 12. Got ready. Went straight to the D’Orsay. Stayed there until 3:20 or so. Went to the ‘Café Deux Musees’ across the street. We both had the Croque Monseiur. I like the mixte – the jambon et fromage better. It was definitely more substantial than the Croque and the baguette was definitely more tasty than a couple of pieces of white bread.

Went to the Rodin Museum.

Back to the room.

Meg crashed. I typed and transferred her pics. I left while she got ready and went to the Pont Des Arts to take pictures of the sunset. I asked Meg to meet me there. We were going to head down towards Notre-Dame, eating somewhere on the way.

Ate at some Italian Joint. Meg had a pizza. I had a Calzone.

At close to 12AM we left the restaurant and headed to Notre-Dame. I took a few pictures and then the rain came. It didn’t seem to be raining that hard, but it was as we were soaked by the time we got back to the hotel.

Meg and I decided to stay up until 3AM for whatever reason… Probably because we wanted to be fresh for a full day of adventure the next day. REAL good planning there.

Day 10 – July 20th:

Woke at 10:30. Meg at 11:30. She left at 12:30. I told her I’d meet her at 1:30 at the Mairie café. We’re going to the l’Orangerie today. The museum has been closed for a year or two, being renovated. I’ve never been and the new improved version is supposed to be wonderful, so we’re going to get something out of our passes and visit it today.

___________________________________________

And this is where my typing energy ran out… Pretty much all my energy ran out. I needed a vacation from my vacation (as cliché as that sounds). You undoubtedly noticed the progression in the journal as day 8 rolled around. Each daily entry got shorter and more terse. But, hey, I made an effort. Ain't that the half of it?! I had planned to fill the details in later on the flight. That never happened. But, I did sleep well on the journey.

Re-reading this thing recently made me realize how much I actually forgot over the last 10 months!

(By the way, I didn't proof-read any of this, so spelling, grammar and all that you'll need to give me a break on!)