Merci, petit bébé!

Paris, here we come! Slowly but surely we made our way down to the breakfast buffet once more to eat up to energize for a not-so-long day, but still super adventurous. Luey made up my plate with exactly what I wanted and it ended up with a hard boiled egg on it, and apparently I do not know the correct method to cracking and peeling it’s shell off… but Luey does, he could be called an ‘egg peeler pro.’ (This will relate sooner or later.) So, we scarved down all the sorts of goodies and we walked our needed path to get to the tall, red bus and it happened be directly in front of Mr. Eiffel, and while walking… there came this beautiful, symphonic sound… And of course at 10 a.m. there was a full band playing in one of the pavilions for listeners ears. So, we stopped and enjoyed this free concert being played for us… but we maybe didn’t enjoy it as much as this little boy dancing almost violently directly in front of them, but we were close I would say…

Making it to our bus, we loaded on and sat on the top where the breeze was quite chilly but we were able to see Paris in the morning. We made it to our first stop of the day, Musee D’Orsay, an old train station that was now refurbished to be filled with some of the most eccentric paintings from the Impressionist era. There was a line that exceeded the roped off path they normally create, and we stood in it to wait. We were slowly making our way close and closer to the front and eventually we made it up to the front where they would create the line for us with the stretched out blockers. You know the kind… the kind they have at movie theatres… Well, Luey makes a joke along the lines of “well, get on out here!” so, I turned around towards the elastic fabric and pretended to walk through it and it snapped and immediately and quickly zoomed back to its beginning pole where it came from. In the process I scared this Asian girl in front of me, and there were some adults sneering at how juvenile I was… and at the same time the line coordinator who worked for the museum was walking over and shouted in a joking way “what do you think you’re doing?” (In English of course, because I am obviously American) and I started laughing and then he started moving us to another line, almost thought I was being kicked out. So, we finally made it inside and nobody was buying tickets… why was nobody buying tickets you ask? Because, of course, on the first Sunday of every month there is free entrance. Yahoo!

We immediately went over to the area that is pointed ‘Van Gogh’ and immediately Luiz started to have childhood memories of his profound love of the artists’ pieces. We were able to see some of his most classic pieces including the self-portrait capturing the crazy man he was. I want to paint like him. I also want to know how to paint in general. So we walked down the whole aisle that was attributed to solely Van Gogh and then we skimmed through the rest of the impressive Impressionist that even included Monet, Manet, Gauguin, Renoir, Courbet, Cezanne…. Honestly, this place was full of extremely impressive pieces. After getting drained once again from focusing on these finely painted pieces of canvas, we hoped back onto the bus to continue on with our eventful day.

We stopped right in front of the Arc de Triomphe but saved that for last and turned the other way down the huge, main strip of town. This street holds many stores to shop in, including multiple “Spy” stores…. come on France… what do you have up your sleeve? So, we walked up a hunger and found an Italian restaurant that Luey would always eat at when he lived in Paris for 4 years. Bingo! Luey knew exactly what he wanted as soon as we sat down, carborna pasta, and it didn’t take long for me to choose either. When our food arrived, I had a pizza covered in vegetable that was the size of a large plate, and Luey’s had a egg cracked right on the top of it… cooked. We easily finished it all and the routine of dessert was fulfilled at the huge Haagen Dazs ice cream shop right next door. Let me tell you that it was extremely difficult to choose from all the selections, but I ended up with a combination that was extremely delicious. Being full and expecting to walk around outside through multiple stores was going to be a hard task to overcome.

We stopped in front of windows to gaze at all the treasures and we popped in and out of stores at random. Continuing our walk back towards the huge center piece (The Arc) we happened to spot a (no-big-deal) 4 story Louis Vuitton store that even had a rope to form a line for entrance. Say what?! We definitely stepped into the store that was set up in a museum like way with it’s strategic placing of items and it’s purposeful lights shining directly on them. After being semi-freaked out by price tags and the weird fascination with the brand, we walked out for some fresh oxygen to fill our lungs. Nothing came of interest except for noticing that there were two McDonalds and that pigeons were still in love with crumbs from people’s trays.

We eventually made it back to the underground tunnel that would take us right underneath the Arc de Triomphe and once again blown away. This was yet another piece attributed to the great Napoleon to show of his war victories and blows. It was so big. There were so many parts of sculptures with war names, figurines, and plenty of other shapes and curves put into it to make it epic. After absorbing as much of this arched cement as we could, we got back onto our trusty red bus that would take us back to the hotel where it once again time to rest our heads before heading back out for dindin.

This time when we headed back out, we knew that it had to be something too good for it was our last dinner in Paris. What’s too good in Paris you ask? Mr. Eiffel, that’s what. So, we headed to the Seine river to find a floating brasserie. Arriving in front of Le Bistro Parisiene, we had the perfect view from our table on the deck we were seated at of Mr. Eiffel. Soooo woahmantic! We each ordered and each meal ended up being the perfect choice for our slightly empty bellies. Good timing we must have, because towards the end of the meal, the ole' tower did it again... it twinkled! We filled the stomach up to full capacity and we were planning on getting ice cream, but there ended up being no room for it. So… we continued our walk under and around Mr. Eiffel before we called it a night…

M. Eiffel viennent au Texas?