oops, apparently blogging during the summer is NOT my forte. sorry!
back to the paris...
Saturday night - we ended up deciding on Le Relais Odeon for dinner in a must see alleyway near Rue de Buci (cour du commerce st. andre) and sat outside under the colored party lights. At first I thought the waiter was super rude and almost made michael leave because when i asked him if he spoke english he said "i'm busy but will come back" and seemed offended i interrupted or asked him about english. after much grumbling, mz finally came up with the thought that maybe that's exactly what he said in french and was just repeating himself in english as i requested. ha, oops, yep, that's what it was! silly me! dinner was delicious (gazpacho, veal and amazing bernaise) and the waiter ended up being FANTASTIC. right after our appetizers were cleared there was a huge crack of thunder and then the rain began. before we even had a chance to get rained on, the waiter whisked us (and at least 50 other diners) inside as if that's where we were sitting all along. this place was CROWDED, i thought for certain dinner would be interrupted and we were going to be waiting a long time for others to finish their meals...but nope, miraculously there was a row of tables open! there wasn't any delay whatsoever in getting our food, no mix ups...so professionally handled, really awesome service. after dessert we walked back in the rain and were in bed by 12:30...so parisian to be out to dinner so late! :)
Sunday - time to bandaid up my feet so i wouldn't have to wear touristy flip-flops again. after breakfast at a rip off tourist trap across from Le Conciergerie we went to Saint Chappelle. It was beautiful as ever but unfortunately there weren't many tours on Sunday so we had to make up our own stories. From there we took the metro to Pigalle (Pig Alley - pretty much the red light district). Could not believe how raunchy it was even in the middle of the day!! We saw the outside of Moulin Rouge and i could NOT imagine coming back here at night for a show, ick. Even though it was a million degrees and pure humidity we walked up the hill and stairs to Montmartre & Sacre Coeur...as the funicular passed us by. The basilica was very colorful, not sure if i had ever been in there before. We also explored the crypt (boring, skip it) and the top of the dome (another 300 crazy tiny steps, but the view was well worth it!).
Afterwards we headed back to 'our' neighborhood for a quick pitstop, lunch and maybe some ice cream?! we grabbed lunch from one of the many gyro shops behind our hotel - hot salty gyro with fries in them, hit the spot! On Ile St.Louis it seemed like EVERYONE had the same idea...everywhere we turned there was a new window opening up to sell Berthillon ice cream and the line for the main store was around the block. I got chocolate noir (basically like melting fudge, amazing) and rhubarb sorbet. mz had the tiniest scoop of vanilla imaginable, so silly and so expensive but i couldn't resist.
Once the ice cream was gone and we ran out of places to window shop on Ile St.Louis, we ran out of ideas and headed back to the hotel. Watched Due Date on the iPad (had rented some movies on iTunes beforehand - great idea since netflix, hulu and many other video sites were inaccessible in france)...uhm, i thought that movie was downright hysterical, let me know your thoughts!
For dinner we went to a seedy little place in the Latin Quarter called Le Grand Bistro...but the prices were good and they had a lot of cheese! We both got the Raclette and laughed a lot since we basically were heating up chunks of cheese under what reminded me of a nail dryer at a salon!! There was no doubt it was aimed at tourists, and we were pretty okay with that for a night...lots of english radio playing and Frank Sinatra's "my way" even came on during dinner. made me think of papa of course! when we left dinner crazy lightning was starting and by the time we got our out-of-this-world crepes (from the "crepe ninja" street stand at Boulangerie de Papa) the rain began. We hustled back to our hotel and made it just before an intense downpour killed the street life for the evening. Anyone want to make me a crepe right now please?!?!
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