Paris

The best way to describe my time in Paris is that I was planning to stay three days and ended up staying over a week. I arrived at the hostel, dropped off my bags, and immediately went out to explore the City of Lights. The weather was beautiful, just as Rocco had promised when he told me about Paris in the fall. I cut through the throngs of tourists at the base of Sacre Coeur to have a little picnic on the steps. I sat near a teenage French couple who were playing 90s songs on an acoustic guitar.

The next day I woke up very early because I had the naïve idea to spend the whole day in the Louvre Museum. I discovered after fours hours of crusing the ancient art, Italian and Spanish paintings (site of La Jaconda), and French royal portraiture, I could stomach no more. I was exhausted, so I hopped over the bridge to the Left Bank for lunch and a trip to Pierre Herme. Pierre Herme is a pastry –making legend, but I went for the colorful Parisian macarons. The award for strangest/best combination went to the Olive Oil and Vanilla macaron.

I ate them in the park in front of the Eiffel Tower. Before that I made a trip to the Shakespeare and Co bookstore to browse the many titles and get a copy of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything.

Wednesday was the day I went to the Centre George Pompidou, Paris’s Museum of Modern Art. My favorite museum thus far, it was full of Picasso, Matisse, Pollock, Rothko, Duchamp (shout-out to ReadyMade!) and Otto Dix, who painted an amazing portrait of journalist Slyvia von Harden. I left for lunch at an Indian place that Anna K told me about in her list of “can’t miss” Paris. Afterward, all that was left to do was spend the afternoon reading my book in the Jardin des Plantes.

That night I went on the Fat Tire bike tour. Tons of fun, but a story for another day.