This morning we decided to sleep in. Properly. This was mostly because we’d decided to go on a walking tour late morning and doing anything beforehand would have meant 6am something starts. So, sleep it was, until 9am! The morning became a bit complicated when the lock I was using on my ‘box’ under the bed decided it didn’t like my combination anymore. After a trip to reception the maintenance man was used a hand saw to cut the lock off and all was well again! Time for the lock to go in the bin.
The lock issue didn’t delay us too much and we were in the square on time, ready to start the Sandemans New Europe walking tour in Paris. We’d been feeling a little too ‘touristy’, like we were only scratching the surface of the city, so we were keen to get some stories and history behind us. Our guide was an American named Amanda and she was just as good as the guide we got in Prague. We walked past Notre Dame, the Louvre, strolled through gardens, over bridges and learnt about kings, revolutions and other nifty random facts. The tour went for three and a half hours and we really enjoyed walking around in the sunshine (it lasted for the duration of the tour and then disappeared again).
After the tour finished (around 3pm, the day went quickly!) we had the option to head to a cafe with the tour leader which we took. This ended up being quite far away and took up a good couple hours of our day… we enjoyed talking to a couple of the other tour people though and I ate both frog legs and snails! Neither of them are actually as dramatic as that sounds – the frogs legs tasted like a mix of chicken and fish and were completely full of bones (hardly any meat at all actually). The snail I ate was a little chewy but mostly just…garlicy. I’m up for eating more snails in the future!
At around 5pm we made it back to Notre Dame, which we still hadn’t seen inside. We realised at this point that we were going to have no time to see the Louvre. Oops. It feels really odd to have come here and not seen it, although I did see the museum that I really wanted to see. Next time!! We did get to go through Notre Dame though and I really liked it. It’s different to most other churches I’ve seen, very gothic and dramatic with beautiful stained glass windows – its easy to imagine a hunchback running around there!
After the cathedral we headed to a church around the corner – Saint Chappelle, which is apparently one of the prettiest churches in Paris. Unfortunately we got there just too late, they closed the line two people before us. Another thing to add to the next time list! Instead we headed to the Arc de Triumphe to say we’ve seen it (it’s a big arc, the one in Laos was bigger!) and then down Champs Elysees to buy some amazing macarons (I had Vanilla, Lemon and Strawberry and Poppy). After this Julie headed back to the hostel and I addressed my shoe situation. My ballet flats were finally at the point of no return – not only were the outer soles half ripped off, both inner soles had completely come out and the inside was disintegrating bit by bit. This meant new shoes had to be purchased. Not having a lot of options I picked up some thongs and some bright white sneakers (we’ll see exactly how long they stay white for!).
Then, back to the hostel to meet up with Julie again… it was around 8.30pm at this point so we headed around the corner to a recommended place to grab dinner. The whole menu was in French so Julie did her best to translate for me… I ended up ordering veal with normady sauce. I have no idea what was in that sauce apart from chives, cream and mushrooms but it was one of the best meals I’ve had here so far. Authentically french too!
The evening after that was spent blogging and sorting through photos… we have an early start tomorrow for our day trip and got to bed nice and early at 11.30pm!
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