first things first: my skin hurts. i think it’s what they call wind burn, actually. it’s making my face and hands all fake-warm and burn-y and in need of some serious moisturizing, which i shall have to postpone until after i write my daily novel for you. so, shall we begin?
i started off today less than ideal with the weirdest dream i've had in a looong, long time. the kind that leaves the rest of your day all tainty and such. you know the type. no worries my weirdness surrounding my dream was immediately pushed to the back of my mind the second i saw myself in the mirror. last night i fell asleep with wet hair. this morning i woke up looking rather Medusa-esque. very chic, very Paris. and that is the hair that i chose to immortalize by being in a bunch of pictures today. i make the best decisions.
anyway, we started off our day on a business oriented foot. we headed to the train station and purchased our train ticket for tomorrow night. 8:20 PM- 7:30 AM. thrilled. we also met a nice lady from minnesota who was staying with her cousin in Frankfurt and was here in Paris by herself for the day. we seem to have a knack for finding the lonely, women travelers from the states over here. i guess our knack could be worse, such as attracting those people who hand out fliers on the street or people who have recently eaten a bowl of onions. but i digress.
at noon we met up with marissa's friend and his two cousins in front of notre dame. we talked for a few minutes and then they took us to a fancy pants restaurant just across the street, called Cafe Panis. now, i remember telling someone once that i wasn't a huge foodie; that i didn't really care about food, and that i ate mostly to not die. i've since realized that’s because i really was just eating to not die by stuffing myself with the cheapest and most boring stuff i could find. paris has opened my eyes to real food and i have a feeling i'm going to pay for this realization once i go back to feeding myself on a college student's budget. in this restaurant i had the best Crème Brûlée anyone has ever had. ever.
marissa's friends were so generous, they shared all their food with us so we would be able to experience as many authentic french foods as possible. (side note: my meal came with french fries which were probably the worst fries i'd ever had. jeez france, step up your fry game. honestly.) at the end of our meal they "insisted" me and marissa absolutely had to see the bathroom, because it was fancy or something. so we did, and it wasn't anything at all. in fact it was rather cramped and it smelled funny, as public restrooms do. but when we came back we found out they had insisted because they wanted to pay for the whole bill, and it was no small bill at that. i am constantly dumbfounded by generosity like that from practical strangers.
us in front of the fancy restaurant: the guy on the left was marissa's friend. (the picture is slightly blurry because i have a camera that no one knows how to operate. apologies)
after that we walked across the stree to visit Notre Dame, which thankfully was free. and gorgeous to boot. worry-ith not, for i took loads of pictures inside and you shall all see them soon enough.
marissa's friend insisted they take a picture of us in front of notre dame. so we did. notice the awesome hair.
Notre Dame was only around the corner from Sainte Chappelle's cathedral so we headed in that direction. i'd learned about Sainte Chappelle's in my art history class last semester so i knew this was one of the major things i had to see. and it did not disappoint. the outside of the building just might be more impressive than the inside with spires so thin they remind me of fish bones; so delicate and spindly. the architecture is so precisely thin that the entire thing seems to be made of stained glass. speaking of stain-glass, the entire top layer of the cathedral is just stain glass and it's absolutely breathtaking. i actually took a video of the stain glass windows, which i just attempted to upload on here for you to all enjoy. but the internet would have not of that. so you're going to have to do without. apologies.
right around the corner form Sainte Chappelle's we visited the Conciergerie, which started out as a palace for the city's royalty and was then turned into a prison, which housed marie antoinette in the last days before she was executed. the first floor of the building was being used for some super strange, modern art show- we were unaware of this and so we were both confused when unicorn skin, "bird houses" full of books made of legit bird feathers, and a bear rug made of wood greeted us, instead of the prison we were promised. however we were not entirely wrong, for it was the basement of the building that is full of historical information surrounding the prisoners it housed and their situations for being put there.
i left the concierge with a sense of bittersweet awe. the way the stories of those executed during the french revolution were presented gave a sense of sadness and reverence for those who gave their lives. it left me actually wanting to search out about the revolution and it's history on my own, which is something i can say i've never felt before about any other country's revolutionary history.
all in all, today was a really great day full of really great experiences. i think after being here for four days i've finally gotten past all the overwhelming fluff that paris tries to throw in your face and i'm starting to see and really value the rich history this place has to offer. not going to lie, i'm kinda sad to go.
oh! funny-ish story time: so i've seen a lot of pigeons lately (especially today where this dude at Notre Dame was putting pieces of bread in his mouth and letting the birds come eat the bread from his mouth. it was as if he wanted every disease ever). i was actually almost ran into by two separate birds who decided to fly right where i was about to step, but anyway... on the way home from the Conciergerie i actually saw a lady act like a pigeon. like legit the first thing i thought when i saw her running was, "wow, she looks exactly like a pigeon!" background story: our bus driver today was insane. like, i'm sure he is the man solely responsible for giving all of France a bad name. he's loud and scary and when people see him driving- they run. about 40 to 50 people were walking across the street at the crosswalk, where they're supposed to walk, when he suddenly felt entitled to honk his way right through it. so he did. this is when he almost hit the unsuspecting lady. she was about half way through the crosswalk when he started laying on his horn. it scared her so bad that her first step was more jump than step, but even that feels incorrect because it was really more flight than jump. she then ran away with her arms flailing behind her very pigeon-esque. not going to lie, i laughed. and how could i not? she looked like a pigeon! haha, i'm still laughing, not sorry.
his insanity couldn't be all fun and games forever though, so he did almost hit a little five or six year old boy. and that had nobody laughing. when i saw the little boy run out into the street without knowledge of who was driving right for him, my heart lept. i legit thought we were going to hit him. luckily my bus driver did what he does best and he layed on the horn long and loud enough that the boy jumped/flew back onto the sidewalk, where his very caring and absolutely mortified mother was there waiting for him with words of love, fear, and threats and a lot of tight arm grabbing and shaking. can't say i blame her though, i thought he was a goner as well.
so the tour bus that we've been riding around in plays music in between each fun fact about the city. want to hear the song that's was played ten times more than any other song?
this is just one version of it, not the actual one that we've had the privilege of listening to for the past three days straight. i say that like i hate the song now, i actually don't. just to be clear.
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