Day 217: Cafe Valentin, Oscar Wilde

5 avril 2010 (Day 217)
We went to a boulangerie and Jenni Coyle and LeeAnn Hyer bought pain au chocolats and I got a raisin roll. We munched on our venoisseries while we walked to the Eiffel Tower. We were going to get in line to go up, but after we saw the line we changed our minds and decided to go to Monmartre and Sacre Coeur. We took the metro and I momentarily got lost. You apparently should always remember to get off on the same side as the rest of your group otherwise you almost get stuck in the train that is leaving and have to run around the metro system trying to get to the other side. It is quite the adventure going through do not enter tunnels and such.
Sacre Coeur is so beautiful! The climb up seemed like nothing, especially compared to my giant climb in Marseille. The inside of the Sacre Coeur is quite beautiful. We also went into one of the oldest churches in Paris that is nearby the Sacre Coeur. We walked around and looked at the vendors and Hyer found this hilarious key chain that said, “When we kiss I feel it in my ear” or something ridiculous like that. Jenni and I made her buy it. We went into the Jewish quarter to get “the best falafels in the world” but forgot that it was Passover and they don’t sell like any food. ALL the food places were closed, it was tragic.
We walked around looking for a place to eat and finally decided on a pizza place called the Café Valentine. I ordered an amazing vegetarian pizza that had onions, pepper, artichokes, and the like. Our waiter was a sweetheart. He let me order in French and would talk to me in French and he would talk to the other two in English. It did get more interesting though at the end when he brought me out a heart shaped sucker and told me his name and that he was thirty and single. Well okay!
Today we also went to a famous cemetery and I ran into Marcel Proust while looking for Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde. Oscar Wilde’s grave is especially neat because everyone has kissed it!
There was a group of musicians playing by the Pompidou Center (two guitars, a cello, and a violin) and there music was awesome! We sat for quite a while and listened to them play while we watched people. There were the cutest little children who were trying to dance to the music. I showed Jenni and LeeAnn the church, which is just across the street from the Pompidou and we went and got dessert at a nearby boulangerie. I got some chocolate flan that was incredible. Hyer ordered a lemon meringue and she got a lesson from the worker there on how to pronounce meringue. We walked by the shopping district and walked walked walked some more. We walked to the Toulleries Gardens which are right next to the Louvre and sat down and watched the adorable French children push boats in the water. We started making up names for all the people and decided that French fathers are quite handsome with their children. They bought a gauffre and we went and checked out the place de la Bastille and imagined Marie Antoinette getting her head chopped off there. Hyer did an excellent job reading us Rick Steve’s little history on the place.
We went by the Eiffel Tower again (it is 5 minutes from the hotel) to see if the lines were shorter. We didn’t go because the top level, the level on which Hyer wanted to go was closed. I asked the man why and he said it was because of the wind and that I spoke very good French. We sat in the park and did some more people watching and Jenni wrote some postcards and I got teased about my “French boyfriend” from the pizza place. Those two do a pretty good French accent.
We went supermarket shopping and they got some random stuff and then we found them a kebab frites for dinner and I got a ham crepe. We watched what would have been CSI in French and went to bed.