Paris Part Deux

So. Just as i thought, I am finishing this blog from my living room in Greenville but I feel if I was able to find time on the trip I should make time here back home to complete the tale.

So we left off at Sacre Couer with a very spiritual afternoon. We wandered around in the area around and behind the church which has a lot of restaurants and art for sale on the street. We found an Irish pub called Corcoran's (Connolly's of Paris, felt just like home) and sat outside for a pint. A lot of artists walking around offering to draw you for a fee, which seems to happen to me a lot, the whole 'Let me paint you" thing. I think this particular gentleman may have been more interested in painting Carrie in retrospect. He was a very nice older man with some very interesting teeth. After our beer and stroll we took it back the hotel. Our daily installment of jet lag reared it's ugly head again so nap time it was.

We had yet to see "Paris at night" so we had to shake off the exhaustion and head out for dinner and wanted to scope out the Eiffel Towel all lit up. We were in search of some mussels and found a very nice restaurant right up from Le Meridien Etoile (our hotel) that my regulars at Devereaux's (Dave and Silvia, thanks guys!) recommended called L'Auberge Dab. We were seated and they were quite busy. We were given French menus which we stared at and tried to make out words that were close to English. The waiter noticed our confusion after a few minutes and passed by and huffed out "English menus" (insert strong French accent here). He hurriedly dropped those off and we inquired about the mussels we saw on the menu. As it turned out they were served raw, I guess similar to how one would enjoy oysters. Neither of us had ever had raw mussels and this place was pricy enough that we decided we weren't going to start here. So we pick up and bounce out of this place and I think we made that server a little less miserable as a result. We decide to wait on dinner and head to the Eiffel Tower to catch the nightly twinkly lights.

So we head back down Rue Malakoff. At eleven o'clock each night the Tower lights up with these twinkling lights, which was cool if only to say you had been there and seen it, so...yeah, "I've seen that!" Got some good footage of it too. Strangely there are a lot of little bands set up around the congested viewing area playing Native American music? And they were dressed like Native Americans? Not sure what that was about. After this it was time for some late dinner, which isn't hard to find considering how late Europeans eat.

There are brasserie style restaurants EVERYwhere. Before we got to Paris I was hoping we would come across a brasserie or two. No worries there. They are on every corner, just as popular as a bakery or cafe. And the menus are all very similar offering pretty much the same things. So we sit down at one of these many brasseries, Le Malakoff, which happened to have mussels and onion soup, which was on Carrie's short list of grub to grab. I had the charcuterie plate, which was very good but showed me just how good ours really is at Devereaux's:). Carried enjoyed the soup and the mussels were divine. The servers at this place were badasses and you could tell from minute one. They were polite too which was nice because this place was busier than hell and had every seat filled. Carrie spilled about half of her glass of chardonnay and our server swapped out the entire place setting. Very pleased with this meal and service which gave me a little more affirmation that all service in Paris is not crummy, cause it isn't.

Day 2 starts off later than most because we were able to sleep in to the late hour of about 9am. We set out in search of a street vendor with crepes filled with Nutella, which are also everywhere. We stopped at a glorified street cart which had about ten seats in this little space right off the street. We had possibly our favorite lunch here, at this little hole in the wall...literally. Carrie got a panini and I got the shaved beef kebab sandwich with 'samurai sauce". Both served with pommes frites cooked to order.

I again out ordered the wife. The smell of this slab of beef lingered out into the street which is exactly what lured us in, that and they were heating up Nutella crepes streetside. This place had no real name on anything. I don't even think they have a name, just an address. All I can tell you is that it is across from the Luxembourg Gardens and has a burgundy awning. Go there. And get the shaved beef kebab with a large helping of "samurai sauce". You're welcome, trust me.

Cheers from Paris....er...Greenville,

A

PS-I have spoken to a lot of you who have been following the blog and I greatly appreciate your compliments on the writing/humor in these posts. I will try to keep that enthusiasm and wit on recapping the last few days even though it is a week now officially that we've been home. The memories are still very fresh in our minds. I feel a certain responsibility to finish this out and document the trip to the best of my ability. Carrie put so much time and effort into the planning of this excursion the least I can do is document the events as we remember them. It was undoubtedly the most amazing 21 straight days of our lives.

Again, thank you for following us along the way.