Paris - Part 4

It's starting to feel like ages since I've been in Paris, so it's really a small miracle that I'm able to keep these days straight! So let's see, part 4 would be the fourth day which was the Sunday. Got it.

The parents tried out their 'let's ditch Margo' scheme again by claiming to be going to Giverny. This meant Mark and I were again left to fend for ourselves. After drying our tears, we wandered over to the Pantheon to look at the tombs of famous dead French men and the token famous dead French woman, Marie Curie, who was Polish or something anyways but that's not the point. The building was even more impressive and such on the inside than it was on the outside. The main feature of the main floor area (well, I shouldn't say main, there was art everywhere, but this bit was hard to miss) was one of the pendulum clock things that somehow tells you what time it is by just incessantly swinging on a string attached to the ceiling. There's one in the physics building at UW. Only this one seemed more out of place. Anyways, all of the tombs were in the basement, aka 'crypt'. The 'tales' of the 'crypt', aka the biographies of the dead people, were all in French but I like to think I was able to scrap together my knowledge to figure out what much of them were about. To all of those aspiring alive French people out there, fear not, there's plenty of room for you, too.

Our Sunday lunch was huge. Not in size (well, it was quite large), but in importance. We were going to Crepes a Go Go for some crepes. We hadn't had crepes yet, and no trip to France, in my mind, is complete without them. For my main course, I chose a potato with some herbs and creme fraiche option. It was fabulous. Mark had a complete thing with eggs, ham and cheese. For our shared dessert, we had a banana, chocolate and vanilla ice cream concoction that was amazingly delicious. After our fine dining venture, we waddled down to the river to search for river cruise options. We were quite lucky and stumbled upon a decently priced one hour cruise on a nice mid-sized boat with roof-top seating. Giving the pleasantness of the day, it was all very ideal and quite good fun. Now, to be honest, I can't really remember what we did after this. I think there was some meandering around the Notre Dame area, as that is where the boat had left from. Oh yes, we went and sat in the Luxembourg gardens on a shaded bench for a short bit before heading back to meet the parents.

We went out for a slightly early dinner to our corner cafe, where three of us ordered omelette completes. I'm not sure about the others, but a big factor in my decision was the fact that I felt I could pronounce the word complete. We then headed out for our big adventure to the Eiffel Tower. It was a bit of a trek, but we got there eventually. Well, that was a dull sentence. My apologies. Anyways, there was again a long line involved, then we waited in some more lines to get to the top. The line waiting was taken very seriously by some, as can be seen in the above photo. There was a very nice view to be had and many pictures to be taken. So that is what we did. We then slowly worked our way down as it was getting progressively darker, attempting to be arty in our camera work at all possible moments. There was an apparently amazing light show on the hour every hour starting at 10pm, so we hurried to get down and to a decent viewing post by this time. While waiting, a very bad salesmen attempted to sell me a dead rose by sticking it in my face even after they were told no and to go away several times. So then there was a wild bit of sparkly business on the tower, and we kept waiting for something else before eventually realized it was just a bit of sparkly business for the entire show. I played a bit with my fireworks setting however, and got some intriguing shots.

After the show, we stopped by a neighboring cafe for a bit of a night cap. Brian won by getting a good dessert. I had lemonade. You get thirsty so easily walking around on hot sunny days! Tune in tomorrow for the pen-ultimate highlight of the trip: EURODISNEY!!!