Actual date: October 17th.

As I write this, I am on the plane on the way home.

The hotel offered to arrange a ride to Charles de Gaulle for 45€, and I took it. I was so tired, the idea of hauling my suitcases up the two flights of steps to the Métro, changing lines to get to the right line for the RER, hauling my suitcases on the RER -- I just didn't have the energy I did when I arrived to do all that. 45€ was about the exact amount of money I had left, and so, I splurged.

It was dumb. I probably would have done much better had I called for a taxi myself. I arranged for the cab to pick me up at 9:00am for a 1:30pm flight, as I had no idea how long it would take to get to the airport.

It took twenty minutes. Oh well.

Checking in was kind of a cluster. I was sent back and forth by various Delta personnel to different sections of their part of the terminal. I actually think I was simply too early, and if I had waited until 11:00 to check in, it all would have been fine. Two different people told me that the flight to Philadelphia was oversold, and would I like to fly back tomorrow, and as much as I would have liked to fly back tomorrow, the fact is that I was out of money and really, really tired. So I declined, but prepared myself for another full flight.

Tragedy struck at security: they pulled me out of the line to handsearch my carry-on, and then pulled out my knitting. Alas. The security guy told me I couldn't take the needles on the plane. I feebly told him that I was allowed to bring them on the flight over, and he was unswayed. I think the guy felt bad for me, though, as he called over a supervisor. The supervisor held the needles up to the first guy's nametag, checking their width or something, but then shook his head, and he also looked sympathetic. So I pulled my knitting off, handed the needles to the guy, and made my way to the bathroom, where I had a bit of self-pitying weep.

Obviously it was not merely the loss of a pair of $15 knitting needles; I'm sure it was exhaustion, and a little bit of frustration over airport security rules that are stupid and inconsistent. But also, sadness. I'm tired and out of money and it is time to go home, but I am lamenting all the things I didn't get to do, see, eat, experience. I will be back, I know this, but basketball pool wins don't happen every year, so I don't know yet when that will be.

Then, after the most convoluted boarding process I've ever seen, some good things happened, namely that no one sat in the middle seat. I was on the window and a very nice older woman with a daughter named Elizabeth sat on the aisle. I read some of my new books, I watched the plane fly over the ocean on the screen in the back of the seat in front of me, I napped, I read the complimentary USA Today to catch up on all the news I had not missed. (Balloon boy? WTF?)

I hated to leave, but I am also ready to be home. I'm ready to see my parents, I'm ready to talk to my friends, and I'm ready to start planning my next trip.

Soon.

Very soon.

Fin

[Link to photos on Flickr: http://bit.ly/ERparis2009]

Actual date: October 16th.

As I'm writing this, I'm sitting in a cafe in St. Germain, having a chocolat chaud and waiting to do pretty much the last thing I'm going to do on this trip, which is a river cruise up and down the Seine. A chocolat chaud is the French version of hot chocolate; they bring you a mug that has a coating of thick chocolate sauce inside, and a small pitcher of steamed milk, and you pour and mix it yourself, and it is delicious.

This morning, I got a bit of a late start, again. I wanted to finish the blog entry about Versailles so I didn't get too far behind, and I can't deny that I am, actually, quite tired.

(I did get downstairs in time for breakfast, though, and an older American couple asked if they could share my table. Once they were settled, I asked them where they were from, and they said: "Alexandria, Virginia." It is such a small world.)

Once I finished writing, I headed out around 11:15, buying a sandwich from the boulangerie next door on my way to the Métro. My first destination today was Père Lachaise, the famous cemetery. It was a little after noon by the time I reached the entrance gate, where there were, to my surprise, no printed maps available. (I had actually considered ripping the map out of my guidebook before I left, but I felt sure there would be maps!) There was, however, a very easy-to-read permanent map posted just inside the entrance, so I studiously made notes of the locations of all the tombs I especially wanted to see.

The cemetery is a series of stone paths that act as dividing lines between sections of plots. The crypts, tombs, and mausoleums are sometimes laid out in neat rows, but oftentimes it's clear that they've been wedged in wherever there was space, and you can't see every tomb from the paths, so it is sometimes necessary to climb past one tomb to see another. The sections are numbered and well-marked, so it is fairly easy to find at least the section you're looking for. Each individual grave is also numbered on the map, but those aren't posted in the cemetery itself.

I made my way into the cemetery, but stopped at a bench to finish my daily e-mail to my parents, which I had forgotten to do before I left, and I liked them having something to read when they got up each morning. While I was sitting there, a group of four older men wandered by, all carrying maps. I asked them in French if they bought them somewhere, and one of them answered me in broken English that they had picked them up at an office on the other side of the cemetery, but it had just closed.

So, I headed in with my list. One of the ones I had been most excited to see also happened to be one of the closest to the entrance, so it was first: Héloïse and Abélard. (The map at the front gave a short description of all of the more famous inhabitants: "composer," "politician," etc. For Héloïse and Abélard, it said amours legendaires, or legendary lovers. If you're not familiar with their story, go look it up, it's quite extraordinary.)

Theirs is one that isn't visible from the path, so it's rather impressive to see once you do come upon it. The crypt is large, with a stone canopy over the graves, and quite beautiful, although it happened to be covered in scaffolding. (A tiny bit disappointed, but by this time, I was accustomed to the minor disappointments that I had come to realize were a part of any kind of travel.) I was still able to get some good photos, and given the torrid and tragic story of their relationship, there is something very satisfying about seeing their two statues, lying together side by side for all eternity.

I made my way back to the path, and the same group of four gentlemen passed me going the other way. When they did, the man who had spoken to me stopped, smiled, and offered me his map, gesturing to indicate that he could share with one of his friends from then on.

I really don't know from where the French get a reputation for rudeness.

So now I could sit down with the map and plan the best route for the gravesites I really wanted to see, which included Jim Morrison, Chopin, Molière, Edith Piaf, and Oscar Wilde. (Obviously, the cemetery is not just for the famous; there are a number of family crypts there, dating back to the 1800's, when the cemetery first opened.)

While on my journey through the sites, a Frenchman straight out of central casting, with long curly hair, skinny pants, a beret, and carrying an assortment of books and journals, flew up to me and asked me if I was looking for Chopin, which I did happen to be at the time. He encouraged me to follow him, but took off at a much quicker pace than I care to walk, so I followed him, but at my own speed. He looked back at me a couple of times but didn't stop; when he was about to turn a corner, he pointed to make sure I saw where he was going, then disappeared. When I caught up to him, at Chopin, he was talking to some other people who were already there. He asked us if we wanted to see Marcel Marceau, saying that he was new to the cemetery and wasn't on the map. The other people looked as bewildered as I felt. The cemetery didn't appear to have any official guides, so maybe he was just someone who wandered around offering to show people graves, even as he was carrying papers like he was on his way somewhere.

One of my last stops was Oscar Wilde, who had a large tomb right on one of the main pathways toward the back of the cemetery. When I reached it, there was the obligatory disaffected and probably gay youth sitting against a tree in front of it, writing in a journal and eating his lunch. The tombstone is quite tall and covered in lipstick kisses, a tradition that is probably frowned upon by whoever's job it is to maintain the tomb. I made my mark on behalf of a friend who loves him, took a picture of it, and went on my way, out the back entrance of the cemetery and on toward the Métro.

My next stop was meant to be the Centre Georges Pompidou, which is, among other things, one of the largest modern art galleries in Europe. The building itself is also a work of art, with exterior ventilation and plumbing systems denoted by bright primary colors on the pipes. However, I got on the Métro going the wrong way, and given the time (I had spent almost three hours in the cemetery), I didn't feel like turning around. So I quickly looked at the map and found another museum I wanted to see, the Musée des Arts et Métiers, which houses relics of industry and science: early weights and measuring systems, astronomical instruments, the first clocks, Pascal's calculator, and Foucault's pendulum.

I waved my Museum Pass at the entrance and soon found myself behind a tour guide who looked a bit like Gerard Butler, or possibly Clive Owen, and spoke the fastest French I had ever heard. His tour group appeared to consist of a man and his son, and that was it, so I trailed along behind them for a while. I didn't understand a word he was saying, seriously not one word, but he was nice to look at, and I liked pretending that I knew what he was talking about.

I spent a little over an hour there, then made my way toward one of the last things I really wanted to cross off my list: a visit to Shakespeare and Company, the most well-known English bookstore in Paris.

Shakespeare and Company has a rich history. It was opened in 1919 by an expat American woman named Sylvia Beach, and quickly became a haven for the likes of Hemingway, Joyce, and Fitzgerald. She allowed struggling writers to sleep among the stacks in exchange for working in the store. It was closed by the Germans in 1941, and reopened in the 1950's by a man who received Beach's permission to use the name. (The current owner, a daughter of the man who reopened it, still allows students to stay for short periods.)

Every book sold at Shakespeare and Company gets a special stamp inked on its front page. I was hoping to buy a copy of a translation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which is my favorite French novel, but the only coipes they had were Penguin, which felt a little too ordinary. I decided on a book of Fitzgerald short stories instead, got it stamped, and headed back across town to the Eiffel Tower, for my last night in the city.

After my chocolat chaud, I decided to take my first and only trip on a city bus to the Eiffel Tower. I can barely figure out the bus system in DC, so I relied on the kindness of strangers -- namely, a woman standing at the stop, and the bus driver -- to tell me how much to pay and where to get off. I was the last person on the bus by the time it reached the Ecole Militaire, and even though I thought it would eventually end up right at the tower, I got off there, just in case, and walked back through the Champs de Mars.

Quite a few river cruises begin and end from a dock right next to the tower. We boarded just before 9:00, and departed just as the tower was lighting up. It was gorgeous, as were all the buildings along the Seine. The boat cruised up the river, circled around the two islands in the middle, and returned to the dock about an hour later. It was, to be honest, a really cold trip, but worth it to see all of that history lit so beautifully.

I followed the crowd to a Métro station and went back to my hotel, completely exhausted, half ready to go home, half ready to stay forever.

I think that must be the case, that Americans came back from France and declared them rude because of bumping into them, because I have found not one single rude Parisian so far, except for the people at the bistro where I would have ordered lamb, and they were more amused than rude, really. The people at my hotel, the servers in the bistros I have actually eaten at, the people in museum ticket offices, the people I stop on the street and ask to point out where we are on my map have all been polite and helpful and smiled at me. I know it helps that I am able to say "Je cherche la rue Whatever" ("I am looking for Whatever street"), but even if you can't, as long as you are not rude to them first, I don't think they are going to be rude to you.

2. If you are one of those people who dissolves into a fit of pique every time you are within ten yards of a wisp of cigarette smoke, then Paris is not the city for you, because you won't be able to walk ten yards without passing someone with a cigarette. I don't happen to mind it, at least not this time; cigarette smoke in cold air makes me nostalgic for college. I think about a year ago, they banned smoking inside restaurants, but almost every place to eat has outdoor seating, and almost every table has an ashtray on it, and almost everyone sitting at those tables is smoking. I have also seen so far two people smoking in the Métro tunnels, where it is (supposedly) "interdit." It's pretty much Mad Men over here, at least outside, and no one seems to care that much.

3. There are many restaurant traditions here that I would like to see in the U.S., including, as I mentioned before, this quarter-carafe and half-carafe wine ordering system, as well as being given an entire carafe of water on request, the prices on the menu being exactly the same as the prices on the bill (tax and 15% service are factored in), the basket of sliced baguette that comes with every meal, and being allowed to sit at the table for as long as you want having ordered only a single cup of coffee.

The one thing I do not want to import is the preference for beverages at lukewarm temperatures and the related aversion to ice. I have probably drunk more real Coke this week than I have in the whole of the previous year, because although they do have Coke Zero everywhere, warm Coke Zero is terrible, but warm regular Coke is at least palatable. At lunch I actually asked for ice when I ordered my drink, and when the waiter brought me the glass, it had two ice cubes in it. TWO.

I should also mention that the aforementioned lukewarm soda is ridiculously expensive. The 16-ounce bottle that would cost us about $1.25 is at a minimum 2€ here, or just about $3, and in restaurants it can cost you up to 5€.

I might be on board with the fact that the wine is cheaper than the soda, though.

4. There are dogs and snacks allowed on the Métro here. Full-grown non-service dogs, wandering around on a leash. And not only are snacks allowed, but there are drink and snack vending machines on every platform. I think this is awesome. There is also very little litter, so they're obviously doing something right as far as the privileges of civic responsibility.

On a related note, I have not yet seen a sign on any of the bridges telling you not to sit on the side walls, nor are there wrought-iron spikes or anything else to deter you from sitting up there, and yet, I haven't seen one person sitting up there. If you decide to climb up there and subsequently fall into the Seine, it's your own damn fault. It's a refreshing reminder of what life in a non-litigious society is like. I bet no one here ever sued McDo's because their coffee was too hot.

5. I know there is a book out there about how French women stay thin. I think it is because you can't go anywhere in this city without constantly encountering stairs. My preliminary assessment of there being up escalators on the Métro was inaccurate. There are hardly any escalators anywhere. And, two different train lines never share the same track, so if you need to change lines, you walk to a different platform somewhere, often through a maze of stairs going up and stairs going down and long-ass hallways in which there are many giant movie posters and sometimes, dogs.

I can't believe that I have been here four full days already, and I can't believe I only have two days left. It feels like a long time and a very short time all at once. The two days seem especially short, as my leisurely pace feels like it has caught up with me, and I suddenly have a thousand things that I want to do and I know full well I am not going to get to do them.

I've had a bit of a mantra going since yesterday. La prochaine fois, I keep saying to myself. Next time. Next time, I will do all these things I am not getting to do now. And I know next time is inevitable. I will be back here, someday, soon, of this I am certain, so I take a deep breath and stop myself from getting too sad about the things I am missing. La prochaine fois.

Nevertheless, when I try to formulate a plan for the last two days, I get instantly overwhelmed. I have learned so much about myself as a traveler this week, and one of those is that I can't be a planner. I'd be fine on a package tour, I'm sure, with someone else making all the decisions about where we go and when, but I can't do it myself. Somehow trying to plan a whole day makes me immediately stressed out, and I am so much more comfortable going through the day without ever needing to look at my watch. I felt like the best thing to do was pick a place to start each day, and then decide where to go from there, because even if what I wanted to do next was across town, getting there was new and interesting and adventerous, so it was all okay.

So today, Thursday, I knew I wanted to start with Notre Dame. It is so gorgeous from the outside, and it has such a prominent place in the city's layout that I had passed it at least once a day since I had been here, and I had heard that the views from the top were some of the best.

First, I took a short Métro ride to the Anvers stop in Montmartre. There's a Tourism office just outside the stop where I could pick up a Paris Museum Pass. You can buy these for two, four, or six days, and they get you into a great many museums throughout the city. Even if the pass wouldn't end up paying for itself (which it did), there's a perk which I could not pass up -- with it, you can skip the lines.

Well, at most places. Of course, not at Notre Dame, alas, but it is one of a very few you can't skip. I got there just after noon, and there was a reasonably short line to climb the tower. They let people in 20 or so at a time every 15 minutes, so no one section of the tower gets too crowded.

While I was getting used to the innumerable steps in and out of the Metro, this was the farthest I had yet to go up, and I can't tell a lie, I thought I was going to die. All the stairs going anywhere are small and circular, and there are rarely places where you can stop and rest without holding up everyone behind you. I made it to the second level, where you can walk entirely around the perimeter right next to the gargoyles, and the map made it look like it was at least as far again to get to the top section, so I soaked in the view from where I was, which was, of course, beautiful. I took one shot of a building (the Hotel de Ville, i.e. City Hall) which was undergoing some renovation, and they had painted the scaffolding sheets with a trompe l'oeil to look like the outside of the building. Only in Paris, oui?

After descending (always way more fun than going up), I went inside the cathedral itself. I really wish I was some kind of photographer and knew how to take photos of things like stained glass, or anything else inside in low light, because so much of it was as beautiful as you would expect. It is still an active Catholic church, with several masses a day, and many of the transepts were cordoned off or had signs indicating that they were only for prayer, and not a tourist attraction. It is quiet and solemn inside, with many candle-lighting stations, and several hundred pew seats. It has one of the earliest and now most complex organs in the world, as well as a five rather famous bells. They all have names, and one of them, Emmanuel, is only rung on high holy days and to mark extraordinary occasions; it was this bell that rang out to announce the liberation of Paris in 1944.

*   *   *

Before I left DC, I had bought a two-day pass on one of those hop-on, hop-off, double-decker sightseeing buses. It has stops at a dozen or so major attractions, including Notre Dame. I hadn't looked very carefully at exactly where it went, so I just hopped on, as I was supposed to do, and figured I would see where it took me.

Almost immediately we reached the Musée D'Orsay, which came highly recommended, so I, well, hopped off, and went happily to the special Museum Pass entrance, allowing me to skip the line. Of course, the line had no more than about 20 people in it, but still, I had a special entrance pass, I was by God going to use it!

The Musée D'Orsay was a train station the early part of the 20th century, and became museum in the mid-1980's. I really know very little about art in general, but on the whole, I do like impressionist painting more than any other styles,and this is mostly what can be found in the D'Orsay. So many of the most recognizable works of Manet, Monet, Renoir, and Degas are here. I saw Van Gogh's self-portrait, the Starry Night over the Rhone (not the Starry Night of mugs and mousepads, a different one -- one I think I like better!). And Whistler's Mother, which is not impressionist, but I recognized it, so it's exciting to see.

After a while I headed back out to pick up the bus, and decided to stay on it for the duration and see where all it went. I climbed up to the top of the double-decker with maybe three other people who were braving the weather, which, by that point, was actually quite cold, but it was sunny and clear, so the views were terrific.

Everyone says that the bus tour is one of the first things you should do in a new city, and I admit, I do wish I would have taken it earlier. I went through so many different areas that I hadn't yet been to; the Place de la Concorde, the Grande and Petit Palais, the Jardin des Tuileries, the Hotel des Invalides, all of these places that I so wanted to see. (I muttered "la prochaine fois" to myself a LOT this afternoon.) I took as many pictures as I could, though at this point my camera battery started to die, so I was trying to be judicious about it. We did go through the Place de Vendome, which is where the Ritz hotel is located. I thought it was a bit tacky that the pre-recorded guide pointed out that this was the hotel Diana left the night she died, but then, I took a picture of it, so there you go.

While stuck in traffic on the Champs-Elysées, I finally did get too cold, and went down to the lower portion of the bus. I disembarked when we reached the stop for the Louvre, which was the last stop before Notre Dame, where I had started. At this point it was almost 5:00, and I hadn't had lunch. I did want to see the Louvre, but I was also hungry, and there was a restaurant on the Ile Saint Louis recommended by my friends J. and D. that I really wanted to try.

I meandered my way across the Ile de la Cité and over to the Ile Saint Louis, arriving just before 6:00. Unfortunately the restaurant didn't open until 6:30, and I was starting to feel a bit unwell. I bought a demi baguette from a bakery on the street to tide me over and sat on the steps of an old church, and watched either a movie or a television show being filmed at an intersection up the street, which was kind of exciting. I might have seen someone very famous! Although to be honest, everyone who was standing around looked like they were just standing around because PAs with headsets were telling them they had to stop walking for a minute, not because they were looking at the French Brad Pitt, whoever he may be.

Around 6:15 I wandered back up toward the restaurant and looked at the menu. I sort of screwed myself up, because now, after the baguette, I wasn't quite as immediately hungry, and the prix-fixe dinner at the Taverne de Sergent Recruteur, while looking delicious, also started to look like too much food. I was disappointed in myself, as I didn't think I would be able to come back on my final night there, and I had really been looking forward to trying it.

I continued down the main center street on the Ile Saint Louis, peering in windows of bistros and restaurants, trying to find a place that felt suitable. Eventually I found Le Flore en L'Ile, which had both onion soup, which I had not yet eaten, and poulet frites, which was chicken with... well, frites, which, okay, yes, I'm now having for a third day in a row, but whatever, it all sounded very good to me.

While I was sitting there, awaiting my soup, sipping my wine, studying my map to try to decide how to spend my last day, a man who seemed to be in his mid-50's came and sat down at a booth across the aisle from me. He is, in my mind, so wonderfully, stereotypically French; he has longish graying curly hair and is wearing a fisherman's sweater and well-worn corduroys. He settles his messenger bag in next to him and pulls a folded newspaper out from under his arm. He might be a regular, as without ordering, the waiter brings him a mug of coffee, a mug of whipped cream (called "chantilly" over here, which I think is delightful), a metal container of hot water, and a small juice glass of regular water. He pulls a paper-wrapped pastry out of his coat pocket, unwraps it, and places it on the saucer next to his coffee. He pours a bit of the hot water into his coffee mug and stirs it. He lays the paper out in front of him and proceeds to eat his pastry by cutting a bite off with his spoon, eating that bite, then taking a spoonful of whipped cream, separately, to his mouth.

I have no idea if he spoke any English, but I have a feeling I would have very much enjoyed talking to this man.

*   *   *

While I have been here, I have been happy to follow the local custom and take a lazier approach to meals, but I was now, unfortunately, in a rush.

It was 7:50, and Berthillon closes at 8.

Berthillon is one of Paris's most famous glaciers: that is, they make ice cream. In addition to the main shop where I was headed (which, in typical laissez-faire fashion, is closed for six weeks in the summer), Berthillon has a number of locations throughout the city, and many of the bistros and cafes proudly announce that they serve Berthillon ice cream. I had been too late when I was on the Ile Saint Louis earlier in the week, and I did not want to miss it this time.

I was, in fact, their last customer tonight. I ordered one boule of salted butter caramel and one boule of what they called "cacao extra bitter."

It was definitely some of the best ice cream I've ever had, and that is saying something. I am a huge fan of the sweet/salty combination, and the salted butter caramel was such a fantastic flavor. The chocolate was equally amazing, as close to the line of bitter as you can get without going beyond it, and as thick as fudge.

I had decided during dinner that tonight I was going to walk up the Champs-Elysées a little and go to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, and so, savoring my ice cream, I walked back over the bridge to the Right Bank and took the Métro to the Georges V stop, one stop before the Arc.

*   *   *

I know I didn't do the Champs-Elysées justice, walking barely half a mile of it between where I emerged from the Métro and the Arc, but I was having a hard time getting excited about it. It is obviously an incredibly storied boulevard, but there's also a Mcdonald's and a Sephora, so it can be a little difficult to absorb the historical significance. It is mostly known for its haute couture stores, which, while I'm sure I would have ooh-ed and aah-ed if I had looked in the windows, did not interest me very much. The part I did pass tonight was mostly commercial stores I have at home and restaurants, but it was all still busy and active and full of life, and that makes it entertaining.

The Arc is grand and beautiful, in the center of a cacophony of an unregulated traffic circle feeding 12 different avenues. I think almost everything in Paris is even more impressive at night, and the Arc is no exception. It was commissioned by Napoleon in the early 19th century to celebrate his victories (up to that point, anyway), and it took almost 20 years to finally get finished. I don't know why I was so surprised by how big it was -- maybe because the only one I've seen before is the one in Washington Square Park in New York, which is less than half the size, but it seemed enormous to me.

And it felt enormous, frankly, walking up the 284 stairs. Fortunately there was no one behind me, so I just kind of ducked my head and took a slow and steady pace, trying to resist the urge to peer up through the center of the spiral to figure out how much longer I had.

I will say, though, that the view from the top is worth every single step. It was by far my favorite nighttime view in Paris. You can see for miles in every direction, toward all parts of the city. You can clearly see the complete insanity that is the traffic circle. I got two shots of the Champs-Elysées before the battery on my camera died for good, and had no problem staying up there for the half-hour or so it took for the Eiffel Tower to do its thing at the top of the hour.

It was a clear, cold, perfect night, and it was here that I started to get my first real twinges of melancholy about going home.

I have never been a tourist like this before: on my own, in a brand new place, with this much time to plan and spend. I knew that some of my irritation at Versailles was because I was tired, and I didn't want to spend the rest of my trip like that.

So I decided to have a bit of a light day. I would start with the Sainte Chappelle and the Conciergerie (which are right next to each other on the Ile de la Cité), go on a bit of a covert mission (more on that later), take a rest at my hotel, and spend the evening in Montmartre at the Sacre Coeur.

The Sainte Chappelle was built in the mid 13th-century to house relics of the Passion of Christ (including the crown of thorns) that Louis IX bought from an emperor in Constantinople who needed the cash. The chapel has stunning multi-story stained glass windows, depicting over 1100 scenes from the Bible, in order from right to left around three of the four sides of the building. Mais oui, the sections at the center, containing the depictions of the crucifixion and resurrection, were under renovation and therefore covered by tarps. They helpfully put up a big poster photo of what the windows underneath looked like, though, which was gracious of them.

The chapel is lined with chairs, encouraging people to sit and take some time looking at the windows. I tried to take photos of ones that were getting some sunlight at the time, but photos, especially mine, really cannot do it justice. Like so much of Paris, it's just like nothing you've ever seen before, and it is breathtaking with its detail and the effort that must have been involved to create it.

After Sainte Chappelle, I went next door to the Conciergerie, about which I really knew nothing but they offered a price break if you bought tickets to both, so I did. It was, however, a bit of a disappointment. They were in the middle of renovating it as well, including a large section in the middle which they were preparing for a new exhibit, and otherwise there was very little to see. It has an interesting history, starting out as the royal residence for the first king of France in the 6th century, and eventually becoming a prison during the French Revolution. (Marie Antoinette stayed there while awaiting the guillotine.) Only the lower level is open to the public, though; apparently much of the building's space is still used by the French court system, the main building for which is located on the same grounds.

After that, I wandered back across a bridge to the Right Bank and stopped at a cafe for lunch. I had quiche lorraine, which came with frites (an interesting side dish for quiche). I also ordered a bottle of Coca-Cola and actually asked for it avec glacé, which means "with ice", and the waiter brought me a glass with two ice cubes in it. (TWO. Le sigh.) But the quiche was delicious, certainly better than any quiche I have had aux Etats-Unis, and let's face it, frites are a fine accompaniment to just about any meal.

I hadn't yet been by the Louvre, so I decided to walk up the Seine toward the entrance with the infamous I.M. Pei pyramid, as it also happened to be on the way to something I was trying to track down. (We're getting to that, I promise.)

Along that part of the street are the famous bookinistes, people who sell old books, magazines, and records out of permanent stalls built into the walls overlooking the Seine. There were perhaps a dozen of them open that day, sitting on nearby benches or on a folding chair, reading or smoking or chatting with their neighbors. Some also sold tourist souvenirs, postcards and artwork and ashtrays, and definitely represented the cheapest shopping I had yet to come across.

Just past the bookinistes was a set of stairs leading down to the banks of the Seine, and so I went down, figuring I would walk a few blocks right along the water. There were a number of people sitting on benches, on steps, with their backs against a sloping wall, eating or reading or making out (no kidding). I decided to join them and sat down for a while on top of one of the walls. I wrote, soaked up the sun, waved at people on the river boats, watched an art class settle in to sketch the bridges.

This is what I had come here to do, really. Like I said before, I rarely looked at my watch throughout the entire trip. I wasn't on a schedule. A set of stairs presented themselves, and I took them. I hadn't planned on spending an hour sitting on the river bank, but I did, and it was a perfect hour.

*   *   *

But, as I alluded to earlier, I was also on a mission today.

You may have heard me mention once or eleven times about how much I am loving the Stieg Larsson books. I listened to the first two, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Girl Who Played with Fire, and thought that I had read that the third one was coming out this month, but I was wrong, it's not coming out until June. Back in September I wrote something about that on Twitter, where someone replied saying something along the lines of "Yes, it's already been published in Europe, but it's not coming to the US until June."

Suddenly, I had a flash of inspiration, and checked Amazon's UK website to find that yes, indeed, it has already been published there. Which meant that if I could find an English-language bookstore in Paris, I might just be able to find the third book.

I found a list of bookstores on the magical interwebs and decided to spend the afternoon tracking the book down. I first tried a Brentano's on the Rue de L'Opéra, a street which begins by the Louvre and ends at the Opéra Garnier, which is something I wanted to see anyway. So after wandering by the Louvre entrance (and taking the previously posted "wish you were here" photo), I started up the Rue de L'Opéra.

When I came across the Brentano's, though, it was closed, permanently. There was a sign in the window thanking the customers for many years of patronage and an article from a French newspaper noting the fact that it had gone out of business. But all was not lost, as I did want to see the Opéra anyway, in which now no opera is actually performed, just ballet.

I decided to try the other bookstore from the list that I thought had the best chance, an "Anglo-American" bookstore called the Village Voice, back in the St. Germain area on the Left Bank, which has already become one of my favorite parts of the city. It's on a short, narrow street called rue Princesse, and when I found the shop, it was right there in the window: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Fantastique!

Very excited about my purchase, and, admittedly, eager to actually read some of it, I headed toward the closest Métro that was on the line for my hotel. (While the Métro system is very easy to use, changing lines can actually mean a fairly long walk inside the station, and I realized that it's a lot more interesting to walk outside than inside.) On my way, I stopped to have my first crepe. While I was sorely tempted by the Grand Marnier, I went with straight Nutella, and I have to be honest, it was a bit too sweet for me.

Back to the hotel for some rest, and a chapter or two of the new book.

*   *   *

A couple of nights before, when I unknowingly ate Chateaubriand, I had considered going up to the Sacre Coeur, but I wasn't familiar enough with distances on my map to decide how far away it really was. On my way out tonight, I asked the front desk clerk if I could walk there, and she said yes, it would take maybe 20 to 25 minutes. I asked if the stairs would kill me ("Est-ce que je vais mourir des escaliers?") and she laughed and said no, I'd be approaching it from the back, and it was uphill from where we were but there weren't any stairs.

So I started in that direction. It actually only took about 15 minutes, and what was strange about it was that you couldn't really see anything until you turned up the last street, and then suddenly there it was, all lit up and beautiful.

I made my way around to the front, and although the Basilica itself is of course gorgeous, the view of the city from its front steps is out of this world. It was night, of course, and you're high enough up  to be able to see so much but not so high that you can't see details of what you're looking at. You can't see the Eiffel Tower from the steps, but that's just a short walk up a pathway, and it provided my first view of the Tower at night.

It was about 8:20 at this point, and I wanted to see the Tower do its sparkly thing, which it does for five minutes at the top of every hour after dark. So I walked up just past the Basilica to the closest area of Montmartre, the Place du Tertre, which was just three or four blocks of nothing but tourist trappiness, but it was somehow still quite charming. There were several outdoor cafes serving very simple meals, some ice cream shops, a few little stores that sold jewelry, scarves, and handbags, a strolling accordionist, a guy selling roses, a guy offering to sketch you. The whole vibe was friendly and high-spirited, and a little bit like a movie set, and what isn't fun about that?

I was hungry, but I didn't want to sit and have a full meal, so I stopped in a small cafe for a croque monsieur pour emporter -- to go. I got back to the walkway with the view of the Eiffel Tower just in time to see it sparkle, which is of course lovely. I walked back over to the steps of the Sacre Coeur to eat my sandwich and look at the city and listen to the noise around me, which included a guy with a guitar singing "Mrs. Robinson" and a lot of kids drinking beer and tourists speaking half a dozen languages.

I don't know why it didn't occur to me to actually go in to the Basilica, which I could have done at that point, but it just didn't. Despite my goal of taking it easy today, I was still tired; I walked back to the hotel, grateful that this particular stroll was entirely downhill.

Today's note: Thank you to @ParisBuFF and @ParisGetaways for the plugs on Twitter. I'm glad you're enjoying my little journal!

Tuesday was the only day I had pre-planned as far as what I was going to be doing. Versailles is closed on Mondays, so I had decided a long time ago to go to Versailles on Tuesday, picking the day more or less at random. It gave me something to say when people asked if I had any day trips planned. "Yes, as a matter of fact I do, I'm going to Versailles on Tuesday."

I had read all of the stuff about bad lines and crowds and what have you, so I had planned to set out fairly early Tuesday morning and try to get to Versailles by about 9:00 (it's maybe a half-hour on the RER, a suburban train line, from the Métro station where I was going to connect to it.) I should have guessed that my habit of getting awake at 7:00 was not going to continue. I didn't bother setting an alarm, so when I woke up just before 9, I was instantly annoyed, and things didn't really get any better.

I had breakfast and got dressed and out the door as quickly as I could. In addition to reading about how bad the crowds were going to be, I had also read that in order to avoid drastically overpaying for food at the palace, you should bring a picnic lunch to eat on the grounds. So I stopped at the boulangerie next to my hotel and got a "formule sandwich", a sort of lunch special that includes a sandwich, pastry, and drink for a discounted price. So, one ham and cheese baguette, one chocolate croissant, and one bottle of water went into my little knitted picnic bag, and off I went on the Métro.

For reasons that are far too ridiculously complicated to try to explain, I ended up using my RER ticket to ride the Métro only, because the station at which I thought I was going to transfer was not, in fact, a transfer station, it was just nearby the entirely separate RER station. So then I was annoyed about using my 2.95€ RER-C ticket to ride the Métro instead of one of my 1.16€ Métro tickets, and therefore had to buy another 2.95€ RER-C ticket. Feh.

Fortunately, the train to Versailles was not terribly crowded. One of my guidebooks said that when you get off the train, just follow the crowd, and "like pornogrophy, you'll know it when you see it." Which is completely true. You pass a McDonalds and Starbucks and a couple of other tourist shops, take a left, and then yo, there's a palace!

And, yo, there's another line. After yesterday's line at the Eiffel Tower, though, anything less than an hour seems like a good line, and this one seemed to be moving kind of quickly. No one in line around me was speaking English, though, so for the first time on the trip, I popped in my headphones and listened to my iPhonePod to pass the time.

Half an hour later, I was inside getting my ticket. I got into the next line, for security, and when the woman spied my lunch, she pointed at the bag check, as you're not allowed to take food into the palace. But I really did not want to have to find my way back after the palace tour, and the lunch was inside a plastic bag inside my picnic bag, so I went and stood in line at the bag check, shoved the picnic bag inside my shoulder bag, looked around sneakily, and went on into the palace.

To yet another line for the audioguide, alas. At this point I was really starting to get annoyed with the crowds, annoyed with myself for running so late, and it was uncomfortably warm inside, and I hate being uncomfortably warm, so here I was, in this beautiful historic building, completely cranky.

For some crazy reason, the signs indicating which number to put into your audioguide machine are on the floor behind the ropeline in every room, which means that there's a crowd of people at the entrance to each room, trying to look down through people's legs to find the number, and then they just stand right there to listen, and then people are crowding against the ropeline to see what the audioguide is talking about. And the thing is, every square inch of every room is decorated with something, paintings or statuary or patterned wall fabric or intricately carved molding, and more gold than I have ever seen in one place before, and after six or eight rooms of this, the opulence gets overwhelming and it starts to kind of all look the same. And there were tons of people. And the audioguide recordings were not that detailed or interesting.

Crank, crank, crank.

So, I went outside.

And it was breathtaking. The grounds at Versailles are without a doubt the most beautiful landscaping I have ever seen. There is a Grand Canal designed to look like a perfect rectangle from the steps at the back of the palace, a lake off to one side, fountains everywhere (although they are only turned on for a few hours on weekends), a bunch of different groves all cut in different geometric patterns, and stunning views of the countryside any way you turned. I found a spot overlooking the Grand Canal to eat my lunch, and my mood immediately improved with cool air, gorgeous scenery, some personal space, and a delicious jambon et emmental baguette in my stomach.

I wandered around for a while -- it's amazing how little I pay any attention to time here -- and then, with an eye on the crowds and distressed at the idea of having to stand on the RER train back to the city, I headed back out to the train station.

The palace is extraordinary, and I would recommend it to anyone visiting the city, but the next time I come here, I can see myself simply spending an entire day in the gardens, which are, delightfully, free of charge.

*   *   *

Back to the hotel (on a practically empty train, thankfully) to rest for a bit. I took a shower and some Aleve, both of which also improved my mood, and then headed out for a very popular Parisian dish, steak frites. (The combination of perfectly cooked steak and perfectly cooked fries is popular with Elizabeth, as well.)

I had read an article recommending the five best places to get steak frites in the city. There is one restaurant, Le Relais de Venise, which specalizes in steak frites, to the extent that it is all they serve. When you sit down, the first thing the server asks you is how you want the steak cooked, and then what you want to drink, and that is it. I went to its offshoot location, Le Relais de l'Entrecote, in Saint Germain.

Again, I sat outside, and when the waitress came up to set my table and ask me how I'd like it cooked, I said à point, which I had since learned was the way to ask for medium-rare. She wrote "ap" on my paper table covering, I ordered a half-carafe of vin rouge de la maison (house red), and a carafe of water, and in no time at all there was a lovely little walnut salad in front of me.

Then came the steak frites, covered in some sort of green sauce that the menu proclaimed was very fameuse. I still don't really know what it was, I assume some kind of herb-y pepper-y type thing, and it was delicious, although there was too much of it for me. When I eat steak, I like to taste the steak above all else, so I ended up scraping much of this fameuse sauce off the meat first.

The best part about the meal was when the server appeared with a plate of freshly cooked frites and restocked the pile on my plate. A few minutes later, she reappeared with more steak! A restaurant that keeps bringing you steak and fries until you actively decline them is clearly the restaurant they have in heaven.

I finished my food and wine, paid my bill, and took the long way back to the Métro, just looking in shop windows and stopping in a bookstore that was still open. It was very entertaining to wander through it, especially seeing books I recognized and how their titles translated. (For example, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is called "Men Who Don't Like Women.")

Then back to my hotel, full, tired, and despite a few frustrations, still insanely happy to be here.

Sent from my iPhone

This entry is brought to you courtesy of a Frenchy Mix made for me by Mo, which I listened to while typing it.

Monday morning, I was up bright and early, just after 7. (Bright is inaccurate, though; it is still dark until around 8 here.) I hadn't set an alarm or anything, and was surprised at how early I got awake, considering how little sleep I had had in the previous 48 hours, and how much I had done my first official day.

Breakfast is complimentary here, and it's actually quite nice. Cereal, OJ, coffee and hot chocolate, hard boiled eggs, croissants, pains au chocolate, and baguettes. And, my favorite, squares of La Vache Qui Rit! (It's so strange, coming from a society where people are constantly screaming at us that bread is the work of the devil, to see Europeans come to breakfast and take both a croissant AND a baguette and sometimes a pain au chocolate AS WELL. Yay! Yay for carbs!)

First on the agenda for the day was, of course, la Tour Eiffel. There was actual sunshine in the morning, which was fantastic. I took the Métro to Ecole Militaire, which is at the far end of the large Champs de Mars garden that leads up to the Tower.

Just like the day before, the first time it came into full view, I had to stop and breathe. I'm getting used to it, but it still knocks me sideways in certain moments, this whole me in Paris thing. Anyway, the Tower was the first thing I took a picture of with my actual camera (it's actually my friend Lori's actual camera, she kindly lent it to me because mine is old and big and heavy). And then I took approximately one zillion more as I approached the base. And then I took some pictures of other people taking pictures. I did not take pictures of the dozens of vendors shaking giant rings of metal Eiffel Towers at you, because as soon as you make eye contact with one of them, wow, are they right there in your space.

Each point of the tower has a ticket window, two for stairs, two for elevators, and one of the elevator ones was closed, so there was just the one line for the elevator, and it was really, really long. I thought that by coming in October it would be just medium long, instead of super long, but no, it was super long.

What can you do? You have to go up the Eiffel Tower, or I think maybe they don't let you leave the country. So I got in line, about noon (a seriously bad time, as it turned out), behind a man about my dad's age from Newcastle, with whom I chatted on and off while we waited. He had a younger girlfriend (not creepy young, she was maybe in her 40's) who decided to walk up the steps. He said, "Go ahead if you want to, but I'd drop dead if I did that."

Many of you know this about me already, but I have a terrible problem with my very flat feet when I have to stand still for any length of time. I can walk all day, no problem, provided I have good shoes. I'd get tired, and my feet and hips might ache a little the next morning, but it isn't painful at all. But if I have to stand in one place, I am quite uncomfortable after about 20 minutes, and after an hour and half, I am probably trying to hold back tears. And the line ended up taking an hour and a half.

(Tangent: I therefore could never be a supermarket checkout person in the US. I could be one in Paris, though, because they get to sit down! Why don't our checkout people get to sit down? There is really no reason they have to stand. That's all.)

So, if I'm being honest, that kind of put a damper on the whole experience. I got a ticket to go to the second level (I've been told that the very top is not really worth it because you're too high up to see anything), and, unlike the rest of Paris, there isn't really any place to sit and chill. The views were stunning, though, and I did take another zillion pictures in every direction, as well as some shots of the architecture, although every time I tried to take one looking up at the rest of the tower, I got a touch of vertigo.

On a whim, I walked down the steps from the second level to the first, as finally moving again actually does make my feet feel better. I confess that when Newcastle Man's girlfriend bolted for the stair entrances, I considered going with her, in a "How hard could it be?" way, but then decided that was ridiculous. Walking down, I knew I had made the right decision, even with the agony of standing in an hour-and-a-half line. It felt like those stairs took forever, and all the people I passed who were on their way up looked completely miserable, and there was no room to stop and catch your breath, as I'm sure I would have needed to do.

On the first level, I stopped in the gift shop and bought $40 worth of tourist stuff: mugs, a keychain, and postcards. I was planning to send a few from the Eiffel Tower post office, where you get a special postmark, but it turns out that the Eiffel Tower post office with the special postmark has closed in the five years since the Travel Channel show that suggested it was produced. Alas! People getting postcards will still get them, but a regular old Paris postmark will have to do. Quel dommage.

After about an hour, I took the elevator back down and wandered through some of the neighboring streets, but once you got out of the immediate touristy area, it seemed to be mostly businesses and banks. I made my way back to the Métro and came back the hotel.

If you don't know the city, Montmartre is a little place unto itself, and it is a bit out of the way from central Paris. Everything is so easily accessible by the Métro, though, and my hotel is a three-minute walk from the station, so I don't really mind the 20 or 30 minutes it always takes for me to come back to my hotel. Because Paris is such a nighttime city and I am such a nighttime person, I am okay with coming back for a couple of hours each afternoon to rest, writing or reading or whatever, before I go back out again for the evening.

This night, however, my feet and hips were still in some pain (I don't know, it's the way it's always been, the fact that my feet are flat causes no knee pain but much hip pain), so I decided to stay in Montmartre for dinner. I hadn't really spent much time walking around the main street just up from my hotel, the rue Caulaincourt, and I had found three different bistros online, all within the same block, that were very well reviewed. I checked the menu boards at all three and settled on Cafe Francoeur.

I've been trying, everywhere I go, to use French as much as possible, and it seems to be going pretty well, considering how long it's been since I've actually used it. It's been surprising how easily the vocabulary has come back, though. When I was wandering around after the Eiffel Tower, I came across a ticket kiosk for the RER, which is what I needed to take to Versailles the next day, but I wasn't exactly sure how it worked, because the Métro and the RER are sort of weirdly mixed together. It was the only time thus far I actually asked someone if they spoke English, and when the girl in the kiosk said no, I still got done what I needed to get done in French, although she definitely spoke slowly for me.

However, as I mentioned before, if someone says something I'm not expecting at a normal conversational pace, I'm lost pretty quickly. The waitress at the restaurant and I got through the conversation as far as me indicating that I was there to eat, instead of just for happy hour, and that I wanted to sit outside, and then she said something that I didn't get at all. She was young and nice, and when I looked confused she asked if I spoke English, and when I said yes, she asked if I would prefer to continue in French or English, and that she didn't mind English because she liked to practice it.

Anyway, there were specials written on the wall outside, but she also handed me a printed menu. One of the specials was Chateaubriand for 29€, but on the printed menu was "Juste un filet du bar avec haricots verts" for 17€. "Juste" in French is used the same way as "just" in English, so this I read as "Just a filet [du bar, which I took to mean "of the house", like it was a rather inexpensive cut of meat] with green beans." When the waitress came back, I used mostly English but did say "juste un filet" in French.

She soon brought me my steak, cooked rather rare (which I had ordered by mistake because at that point I did not know the term for medium-rare, and they have two different levels of rare, and I picked the wrong one) but it was still delicious, and green beans, and my wine, and all was well. I was completely full and declined dessert or coffee, and when she brought me my check, which I calculated should have been 22€, it was 35€. Apparently, I had just eaten a Chateaubriand steak without even knowing it.

When she came back to get the check, I picked up a menu from the table next to mine and, while falling all over myself to make sure I told her that I had totally enjoyed my meal and was happy paying for Chateaubriand if I ate Chateaubriand, I thought I had ordered the 17€ filet. She then fell all over herself apologizing if she had misunderstood me, but "filet du bar" is "poisson": that is, fish. Fish, which I eat none of any kind.

So, it all turned out fine in the end, because if she had brought me the European sea bass that I actually ordered, I wouldn't have been able to eat any of it and then I would have paid 17€ for green beans, instead of paying 29€ for Chateaubriand that I didn't order but ate every bite of.

And that, my friends, is it for Day Two. I am reading all of your comments! Thank you so much for sharing this with me!

Transcribed from journal:

While I was sitting there, on a bench in the Notre Dame garden, dabbing my eyes and taking deep breaths, a man on a moped pulled up to me and said something in rapid French. He was finished by the time I even processed that he was speaking to me, so I caught not a word of what he said. Was he asking me if I was okay? Was he offering me a ride? Je ne sais pas! We had an awkward moment where I sort of nodded, smiled, and looked confused all at once, and finally said "je ne parle pas le francais tres bien," which is almost right for "I don't speak French very well." He then told me in very good English that he needed to lock the garden gates in 20 minutes.

I know, I mean, I really do realize that people in France are going to assume you are French before you open your mouth, but it still makes me feel good that I don't scream American in my appearance. I like that I am given the benefit of the doubt at first, even if everyone else is too.

From there, I crossed a bridge onto the Ile Saint Louis, which is quaint and gorgeous, even in hazy evening drizzly rain situations. I wandered up the main road, named, helpfully, the rue Saint Louis en L'Ile, and passed two different restaurants that have been recommended to me, both of which I plan to try later in the week. I also passed Berthillon, which makes what is reputed to be the best ice cream in Paris. I spied a gorgeous tea room in the window, where people were sitting down to eat their desserts out of tall silver dessert dishes. Good money says you will also find me there later in the week. Possibly more than once.

Hungry, I crossed yet another pont onto the Right Bank and headed west to find my chosen restaurant, Trumilou. However, when I got there, I discovered that it did not have beef for any of its plats du jour (which is what I really wanted and what had been recommended in the guidebook), and there were also tablecloths (which made me feel self-conscious because at this point I was really quite wet from a solid hour and a half in drizzle), and there was only one other table occupied (which was probably because it had just opened for dinner, but nonetheless made me feel weird about it). So, pas de Trumilou.

I had passed a couple of other potential dinner options on my way there from the Ile Saint Louis. One had a lamb plat du jour listed, which I am also eager to try here, so I walked in. There were four middle-aged people hovering around a front-desk type area, and none of them looked at me for a longer time than would be appropriate, even for the French. When they finally did... well, you know the look people get in their eye when they're totally amused at you but are trying not to show it, and cover it up by being overly solicitous but there's still just that look? They had that look. They pointed me to a table outside but under an awning and handed me a menu with only coffee and cocktails on it. I sat down until they left, and then I left.

So, two for two on the restaurants. I was now incredibly hungry, having not really eaten anything substantial since the Philadelphia airport which seemed like a week ago. I remembered a crepe place on the Ile Saint Louis and crossed back over the bridge, thinking that would be fast and filling. But before I got there, I spied the perfect place, a bistro called Les Fous de L'Ile, with wooden tables and chairs and lots of decorative chickens on the walls. They had a filet on the English menu outside.

I sat down at a table for two, with my back against the wall, facing the bar. Apparently it can be a bistro custom for the server to bring the actual chalkboard menu to your table, which is awesome. She brought me the French version, though, on which I did not see the filet. Instead they had something called "couer de beouf", which means "heart of beef", and while I thought it might mean the filet, they do eat hearts of stuff over here, and I didn't want to appear silly, even though my server was very nice and brought her French down to my level when she realized I was not native, rather than just speaking English, which I appreciated very much because I do want to practice.

Anyway, I went with a chicken stew-type thing, with rice and a quarter carafe of house white. (J'adore this French system of offering you quarter, half, or full carafes of wine.) The server also brought me baguette slices with tapenade with my wine, and a basket of baguette slices with the meal (um, j'adore this as well).

While I was waiting for my food, I started writing my journal and eavesdropping on the conversations around me, which is one of the joys of being a single diner. Two tables over was an American couple dining with a French woman who was obviously a friend of theirs, and she was waxing very philosophical about positive energy and life changes, and I just loved the fact that this was what people here talk about while they eat. Then a college-age girl and her mother sat down at the table between us, and that made me happy, because while I didn't catch most of what they were talking about, I couldn't remember the last time I saw a college-age girl and her mother having lunch where the girl didn't look bored and the mother didn't look vaguely disapproving. These two appeared to be genuinely enjoying each other's company.

My dinner was delicious even though it was neither beef nor lamb, and I can't tell a lie, I ate every piece of baguette that was in the basket, and there were many pieces. At some point during the meal, a diner in the other section broke out in opera, and his dining companion did as well, and the restaurant applauded before all went back to their meals.

I had dessert, a moulleux de chocolat, which is molten chocolate cake, served over salted butter caramel, and it was exquisite. I had lingered over the entire meal, as one is supposed to do, and by the time I left, shortly after 9:00, I was very very glad that Trumilou had not had beef on the menu.

Before I left, I asked the mother and daughter (who had conversed in English with the American couple on the other side of them) how long they thought it would take me to walk to the Eiffel Tower, and they said anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. I really didn't want to let my first day go by without seeing it, but it is more or less "across town" from where I was at the time. I thought I would give it a try and see if I could get there by the time they did the sparkly lights at 10:00 (you have probably seen video of the sparkly Eiffel Tower lights, which they do for ten minutes at the beginning of every hour).

The problem was that I had to walk through the Latin Quarter, along the rue Saint Germain, and the reason that was a problem is that the Latin Quarter is completely enthralling. It is very student-centric, and was therefore full of life, even on a rainy Sunday night. I kept turning onto different streets at random, whenever anything caught my eye, and once turned down an alley which led to this weird intersection of alleys which had pretty much every kind of food product you could ever want, from kebabs to crepes to pizza to gelato, all loud and buzzing and captivating. By the time I emerged back onto the rue Saint Germain toward the Eiffel Tower, it was 10:15, and I was just barely halfway there from where I had started.

So, I walked until I found a Metro, which is never very far, and came back to Montmartre. No, I really didn't see the Eiffel Tower on my first day, but I would not have traded the day I did have for anything.