Day 12 - Paris, the Musee d'Orsay and enormous bookshops

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Day 12 was our last full day in Paris as we are heading out on a train to Strasbourg early tomorrow morning.

We started the day a bit later as the Musee d'Orsay was our first stop of the day, and it doesn't open until 10. Unfortunately this meant that the breakfast area was almost completely full and we gave up trying to get in and get breakfast and just went to Maccas to see how it tastes in France. It was okay, but definitely not great! While they do have actual bacon instead of chicken bacon, it is very thin for some reason and incredibly salty.

We then got on the Metro and made our way to the Musee d'Orsay to do Danny's favourite thing: join a huge line. I'm pretty sure the lines are much better than they would be in peak season, but we are still two very impatient people, so 20 minutes in a line seems like eternity to us!
Once we got inside we found out we weren't allowed to take any photos in the Museum, so thats why there are hardly any on this blog. It was pretty disappointing because the building in particular was incredibly beautiful. I would have loved to share photos with you, but I am too much of a wimp to risk breaking the rules, so I was a good girl and resisted the urge.
The building the museum is in used to be a train station, and I was expecting it to be quite run down and look like, well, a train station. It was so well maintained though, spotless, new walls and stairs designed to fit really well with the old style of the building, and the biggest clock I have ever seen. It was so cool. We spent ages wandering around there, not knowing much about the art we were looking at since we don't speak French, but picking up on the names of the artists we recognised (Van Gogh, Monet, a few others), picking out the paintings, etc. that we really liked, and making up stories about what we thought they were about.
We had a great time inside, despite being shocked by one painting in particular.

After this it was lunch time, so we caught a train back to Pigalle and hunted around for some more of those hot dog things we loved from yesterday.
We then snuck them back into our hostel room (we aren't meant to eat in here) and ate them while chilling out for a little while.
We packed things into our new suitcase from our old suitcase, and put dirty clothes into the old suitcase, as it should be able to at least handle that weight.

We had only really come back to the hostel to get on the internet and find the address of the Shakespeare and Co bookshop since I really wanted to visit it - so a few hours later (we got distracted watching Chuck) we headed out again and went back to the area near the Notre Dame to go shopping for books.
I loved the Shakespeare and Co bookshop - it was a mixture of new books and second hand and it had books on shelves right up to the ceiling with one of those cool ladders that slides along so you can get to them all. It was a funny shaped store, and a little bit old, which just made hunting for books even more fun!
I managed to find three Agatha Christie books that I have never been able to find, so I was very pleased. And I bought a copy of Romeo and Juliet, since I somehow don't have one, and it seemed fitting.

We then went back a few streets to where we had seen a huge bookshop - it was 6 storeys high, and after we went inside we found out that it was only one of 8 that were on that street and the two across the street from it. Each of the eight had a different type of book in it - travel, literature, scholar, food... it was really cool.
We had a look for AC books there, but no luck, I had them all.

We stayed around that area for a little while after that as it had lots of smaller streets filled with shops and restaurants, I bought some pretty dresses, and then we went looking for dinner. We found a street full of Italian restaurants and went into one of them. It turned out to be a brilliant choice - I thought I was going to die from too much joy from such delicious food. We did a kind of unintentional swap - I ordered Calzone and Danny ordered Carbonara. I was so jealous when his arrived and was wishing that I had ordered it too, until my Calzone arrived and I tasted the tomato sauce they use. It is amazing. Oh my gosh. I think I could just eat that for the rest of my life and not eat anything else. Yet another thing to make me look forward to our time in Italy in a few weeks. Half way through our meal we swapped over and tried to finish off each other's meals, but we didn't get far. We sat there for ages afterwards just feeling fat and happy. Such a good last dinner in Paris!

We headed back to the hostel and intended to finish packing - I got distracted by writing this so I haven't actually done much, but I'll justify that I did most of the packing this afternoon and I'll put it off until the morning.
We leave nice and early in the morning to catch a train to Strasbourg, so we should hopefully be back on here tomorrow night in another city with some more stories to share.

Manford will travel in one of our pockets again, but this time we will make sure he is actually on us, not packed away in our luggage.




Headed back to pack, which we have pretty much not done.

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Comments

[dad]

to wimp or not to wimp
So I have a question. You did not take photos in the museum because you are a wimp and don't break rules and then 2 paragraphs later you are smuggling illicit substances into your hotel room in the red light district of Paris. Does anyone else see the incongruity of this?