Paris Deux

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PARIS Day 6

This morning I met a fellow Canadian named Patrick from Oakville who wanted to tag along with me for the day as his travel partner wasn’t arriving in Paris until tomorrow. I informed him that he was welcome to walk around the city with me but I had no real plan so I would just be walking around to where ever I felt at the moment. He was fine with that so we headed off towards the Eiffel Tower.

On our way past the Louvre, we encountered one of the typical Roma/Gypsy scams that the tourist books mention. As we walked a man bent down in front of us picking up something he stands with a ‘gold’ ring in his hand pretending he just found it on the ground and proceeds to try to sell it to us. I laughed and said “well it must be your lucky day, aren’t you special” and went on my way.

We finally made it to the Eiffel Tower and did the touristy picture thing around it. We decided against spending the crap load of money to go to the top as it was a cloudy day and there are better places to get a view. We headed towards Tower Montparnasse, which is one of the only sky scrapers to be found in Paris. Apparently, after they built it they decided they did not want any tall buildings and banned the making of any more. Luckily for us, it is only 4.50Euro to go to the top and take pics. It was still cloudy but it was still a decent view and you can still see more of Paris than you would from the Eiffel Tower on a good day.

From the tower we could see a cemetery below and Patrick had wanted to visit it to see the grave of some tyrannical Mexican President who he did a school project on back in grade school. So we went down to the cemetery and I found the best grave stone on the planet. The grave marker was for a guy named Rodrigo whose friend decided to have a giant cat mosaic made to be his head stone. It stuck out like a sore thumb among all the other grave stones but I couldn't help but smile at seeing it there. It was definitely way better than the crazy Mexican’s head stone.

We headed back to the hostel to relax until we ventured back out in search of dinner. Patrick had a list of fairly priced restaurants that was given to him by a TA he had in university. We headed to the closest one, which happened to be in Pigalle, the red light district of Paris, behind the Moulin Rouge. Yes people, I said the Moulin Rouge. So obviously we went first to see the Moulin Rouge and then headed back over for a delicious dinner at L’annexe on Rue des trios frères. I had the Confit du Canard and Crème Brulee for dessert. The duck was heaven with the meat falling off of the bone and of course the crème brulee was equally smooth. It was really interesting to sit down in what seemed to be a locals’ restaurant. Everyone that came in knew the two guys that ran it and the dog that lived up stairs but came down to greet everyone. It was a very comfortable place to be.

We headed again to the hostel but this time very full of a very good dinner. I spent the rest of the night singing “la la la… la la… la la la… la la” because there was a little boy walking in front of us on the street who sang that over and over again for 4 blocks.

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