Day two started after waking up a little later than we intended, as we were very exhausted from our first big day. We ventured out around 9am and went to Carrefour, which is the local supermarket. It's always fun to visit the supermarkets in various countries and see the differences in foods and packaging. The frozen foods isle is always a laugh. In France, they have snails and savoury crepes ready to be heated and eated. We also marvelled at the selection of tinned cassoulets and rilettes.
We bought a few things and returned them to base before heading out on the Metro for Place St Michel where we were to meet up for the Paris free tour, which was lead by the very energetic Linda. Here's the statue at the corner here:
The tour took us down to the riverside near Notre Dame where we crossed and walked down to the Pont Neuf, or New Bridge, which was actually the first stone bridge in Paris so is quite old. Here's a view of the buildings along the edge of the river, which apparently never go on sale so they're rather priceless:
The riverside is a beautiful and like almost every part of Paris, it's all very romantic. We walked along the South bank of the river until we came to the "Sex and the City" bridge, which has a few padlocks on it. It's nowhere near as amazing as the one in Cologne though. It's actually called the Pont des arts. I'll show you the view from the middle:
We crossed over to where the Louvre sits on the North side of the river. Although we didn't actually go inside the museum while we were there, we did walk through the courtyards and over the grounds to the 'front yard' across the road. The museum used to be the royal palace for a while before Napoleon got his hands on it. When it was actually occupied by the royals, one Queen in particular looked out the front window and saw all of the Tile makers workshops and decided they had to go. Now there is an enormous 'front yard' named the 'Jardin des Tuileries' or 'Garden of the Tilers'. Here's the photographic evidence:
Yes, the big pyramid looks a bit out of place, but it's really there sitting outside the Louvre. Anyhow, we walked through the Jardin, which is surrounded by very old and beautiful apartment buildings and replete with statues of every sort. It was also crowded with people out enjoying the nice weather:
At the far end of the park is a roundabout with a giant obelisk pilfered from Egypt sitting in the middle and a beautiful fountain, marking the start of the Champs Elysees. Far in the distance at the end of the Champs is the Arc de Triomphe, still visible as it's so freakishly big.
From here we finished the tour by strolling past the Grand Palais and the Petit Palais and over the bridge leading to the Invalides, which is the final resting place of Napoleon. The bridge is perhaps the most beautiful I've seen. All of this is in the shadow of the ever present Eiffel Tower:
With the tour over, we marched down to a cafe where we had a lunch of onion soup and cheese and meat with the neverending baguette which is an ever present side dish in France. We headed back to the apartment after this to rest up for our invitation out to meet up with Seb and Marine at a fashion boutique store opening.
We went along at about 6pm and met up with and hung out with our new Paris friends, who thankfully spoke a bit of English so we weren't left completely out. We were led along to a cafe in the gay district of Paris, known as the Marais. This was honestly the most fun I've had on a night out since we arrived over this side of the world. We got along really well with people and drank a lot of wine and had more meat, cheese and bread. The drinking eventually moved out onto the street where we mingled with the patrons of the cafe next door.
I can't imagine this ever happening in London, the drinking culture is just entirely different. Here it's a race to see who can get the drunkest first, whereas in France, they're talking about which wine region is the best and choosing the drink for the flavour. After this very enjoyable evening, we headed back to the apartment and crashed out. Here's some pics of the evening:
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