Roman All Over Paris

We slept a little later today than we had planned on. Today's forecast (surprise, surprise) was for rain from 10AM until about 6PM. Naturally we didn't believe the forecast and didn't bother packing an umbrella as we journeyed out. We skipped breakfast and headed out towards the Latin Quarter.



After a bit of a walk we stopped by Paul and got some lunch. Jen got a delicious quiche and I got a roasted vegetable sandwich. The woman that rung us up was a little curt and got annoyed when I didn't know what the total was even though her register didn't display a total. She snatched away a 10€ bill from my hand quickly after I started taking money out of my wallet. This was the first less than stellar shop experience I'd had in France. That was a little taste of home enough to prevent me from being homesick.



After that we headed to the Jardin du Luxembourg. There was a guy taking photos of this old man in a seat, unbeknownst to the old man. After he'd taken five or six pictures I, like a sheep, decided that there must be something great about this old man so I started taking pictures of him. I don't know. Just looks like some old guy to me.



Shortly after that a pigeon came over to me and started picking at his feathers violently as if he were freaked out that he was covered in feathers. Then he looked directly at me and stood up on one leg as if to taunt me.



I quickly showed the pigeon that two could play at that game. He ran away in disgrace when he realized he'd been bested by a master.



There is an all-knowing golden god that watches over the jardin. I imagined that he may be some weird puppet god from a movie like Logan's Run. I think maybe I haven't seen that movie in a while because I don't think it's actually anything like that.



Today, like every other day this week, they predicted rain from 10AM to 5PM. Here is a picture of me shielding myself from one of the man unrelenting rain showers we experienced today.



We passed a restaurant with entrecôte in the name! You'd better believe we were going to steer clear of that tonight. Tonight's mission is to bring my 50% average of mistakenly getting entrecôte down to 30%. Instead, we stopped by a restaurant on one of the islands and had a quick crêpe, citron pressé and coffee. Sitting next to us was a large, bearlike German couple. The German man in was smoking and repeatedly reaching out behind him and flicking the cigarette ash in our faces. When the waiter brought them their pizza the woman looked at it like a monkey studying giant banana. I hated them.



After that we found a Canadian bookstore and got a few English language books for our trip down south tomorrow. It was the most expensive used bookstore I've ever stepped foot in in my life. I paid 7€ for a ratty used copy of Lucifer's Hammer. That's $10.27 for any Americans keeping track at home.



After our midday snack we went over to check out the Roman ruins. First we stopped by a little bakery and got a viennoise and a pear and chocolate tart.



We were pretty tired after our day so we went back to the hotel, took a little nap then headed out and tried to catch an early dinner before taking a boat tour. We sat down for dinner at the first restaurant which informed us that they weren't serving dinner anymore. Who would expect that a restaurant in Paris would still be open after 8:00PM on a Friday night, anyway? Jen had a 3,50€ glass of wine and I had a 4,50€ glass of water then we were on our way.



The second attempt at dinner was Le Recrutement Café. I had the giantest duck breast ever (with "five pippers") and Jen had a roast chicken. My duck tasted suspiciously like entrecôte, and I'm not just saying that because I'm a little paranoid about restaurants in Paris sneaking me entrecôte. Jen thought it tasted like beef as well. It was certainly far too big to be from a duckling. This duck was certainly a veteran at being a duck before it became my meal.

We sat next to this great British family with two little kids who were quite a handful. One of them started crying because there was no ice cream in his belly then when the ice cream was placed in front of him he began licking the plate with his tongue around the base of the ice cream container. His mother actually gave us permission to slap him if we wished. We elected not to.

After that we attempted to catch a tour boat on the Seine but the line was pretty long and after Versailles and the Eiffel Tower we'd had enough of lines. Instead we wandered along the Champs-Élysées and stopped in Monoprix on the way back home.



Being our last night in Paris I must say I'm going to miss this city a lot. The one thing I won't miss, however, is our "shower" where I'm forced to crouch in the tub and hose myself down like Gollum.

Note: This may be my last entry on the vacation. We leave tomorrow afternoon for Châteauneuf-de-Mazenc and I am not sure what our internet situation is going to be there. There may not be any opportunities to update between now and then, or it's possible that we may be able to update once or twice. Check back for updates!