Time to find the quintessential cafe in Paris to have breakfast. What about this one?
My seat is already taken!
We move on to a pastry shop that is hopping. That is a sure sign of good food … and convenience. Bo+Mie is a chain store, and many also return for Quiche Lorraine, etc. for lunch.
We have French breakfast pastries and fresh squeezed orange juice in our adoptive neighborhood.
A free walking tour is the first stop on our busy day. Ezra, a young man from Colorado, is our guide. He told us that the city of Paris that we are all familiar with is only 150 years old.
When pestilence, crime, overcrowding, and disease were the norm, Napoleon III had everything leveled and then built better houses and wider streets.
He enlisted Baron Haussmann. Most of the buildings and wide streets that we associate with Paris are his renovations.
The bottom floor is reserved for stores. The next level is for the rich, then middle class, and then servants in small rooms with rounded ceilings or angled windows at the top. These apartments were not penthouses although they have the best views. Stairs were the reason for this social strata.
Notre Dame
There were big crowds outside Notre Dame. It took almost an hour in a slow moving queue to gain entrance. The temperature was unseasonably hot and there was lots of dust flying and construction noise.
Inside there were beautiful wood carvings. Here is one of The Last Supper.
Clovis is the founder of the modern French state, and he brought Catholicism to Paris. By the 1200s, Notre Dame was the center for Catholic education as well for huge crowds to be baptized.
Notre Dame was built in the gothic style. Quick architecture lesson: Arched windows that are rounded at the top are romanesque and windows that come to a point are gothic. Most of the gargoyles were added in the Victorian age. Originally Notre Dame was gilded with jewels. In 1794, it was destroyed and rebuilt as Neo-Gothic.
Notre Dame has a checkered past. It was built on the site of the Temple of Jupiter. It was once used as a tannery which reeked of the smell of urine.
In the 1840s, Napoleon III wanted to tear down Notre Dame as part of his plan to rebuild Paris. Thanks to Victor Hugo, the church was tapped for restoration instead. Hugo was hugely popular and had recently written the novel: The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Ezra told us about an app called Space Invaders. An artist puts mosaic tiles of space invaders, mostly above street signs. You take a picture of the mosaic and it tells you if it is genuine or fake and catalogs it on your personal list. They are mostly in Paris but he has been doing it for 30 years, and they are now found in many cities. Below are the ones that I located.
Ezra recommended a restaurant called Au Pied de Cochen.
I was amazed to see these five tall Asian ladies all dressed alike. Were they adult quintuplets? Stewardesses? Perhaps on a Bachelorette trip? Hmmm.
I HAD to order French Onion Soup. Rob got Fish and Chips (or French Fries). All that is left is French Toast.
In the meantime, we get a crepe as we walk down the Champs-Élysées.
This obelisk called Cleopatra’s Needle was given to France by the Viceroy of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, in 1829 in recognition of the work of Jean-François Champolion for the deciphering of hieroglyphics. It is located on the Place de la Concorde where the infamous guillotine was used.
Arc de Triomphe
We had been excited to ascend the stairs and marvel at the view from the Arc de Triomphe. We tried to learn about this social movement but did not find anything.
This was our view.
Dinner AND a Show
We had dinner at a cafe near our hotel that was packed outside and fairly full inside. We were seated against the wall, and everyone was looking our way.
We looked up and realized that we were sitting under a VERY large TV screen.
Next thing we know is that a goal was scored, and everyone was celebrating. We had finished our meal and left on that happy note.
I checked the score the following day. Paris 1, Arsenal 0…and that was the final score after three hours. And they think “football” is exciting…yeah, maybe, for about 10 seconds!
Look for Rob under the screen.
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