Paris - Day 7

Photographs.

Today was the meltdown day. The day where everything goes wrong. The day where you hate everyone. The day where you hate everything.

We got a late start today (I am not going to say that the girls were the reason but let's just say the girls were the reason) and decided our first priority would be lunch.  We had selected  Chez George.  We had called for dinner reservations the night before but they were booked.  They told us lunch was usually easier and to call in the morning.  So we called in the morning and the line was busy.  We waited and called again, busy.  Usually a sign that a lot of people are trying to eat there.  Us being the strong willed Americans that we are, ignored this busy line.  Perhaps the French telecommunications people were on strike?  Hell the whole country could have been on strike but how would we know.  Then we did what any true Americans would do, we struck out for Chez George. And we did it without taking the address or the phone number.  All we knew was the metro stop.  So after wandering around the 2nd arrondissement for 1.5 hours we finally found it.  And guess what, No Table For You.  Ahghhhh!

In our anger M and I decide we will protest by walking to Ile de la Cite to see La Sainte Chapelle.  Why stop and eat when you can be mad and walk 2 miles.  So we arrive at Sainte Chapelle to find it is closed for lunch. Ahghhhh! Who ever heard of a Church closing for lunch?  Were the pews hungry?  Did the baptismal font need a refill?  But the line is growing so we decide to stay in line rather than risk losing our place.  So there we are standing line growing hungrier and angrier by the second.  Finally they open back up and we go to get our tickets, still fuming and a little weak from hunger.

Let me just say that God has a sense of humor.  Walking into St. Chapelle is like walking into heaven.  The stained glass is so amazing that it literally will take your breath away.  It is also cures bad moods, anger, and strangely enough hunger.  St. Chapelle is with out a doubt the most beautiful space in all of Paris and possibly in the world.

After being dazzled for an hour or so we all walked around the Latin Quarter's tiny streets looking for food.  I found a hot dog vendor that sold dogs covered in cheese, sounds good right? Wrong.  It was disgusting.  Memories of Chez Ferdenand came flooding back.   M and I ended up at a gyro shop and it was good, except for the guy behind the counter was cutting the meat with a knife that he was also using to try and fix his cell phone.  Fitting.

Everyone decided to go there own ways for the afternoon.  J went to the apartment to take a nap (surprised?), M and K went out in search of St Denis, which is where the French monarchs were buried, and I decided to walk around Montparnasse.   I wandered down to the Luxembourg gardens and watched a group of men play petanque, or what would call bocce.  I sat under a Plane Tree in an old chair right beside the court and watched them play for about an hour.  It was defiantly one of the highlights of the trip.

For dinner we dined at a Hemingway favorite, which happens to also be across for the apartment, called La Rotonde. Papa immortalized the place in The Sun Also Rises saying "No matter what cafe in Montparnasse you ask a taxi driver to bring you to from the right bank of the river, they always take you to the Rotonde." The food is great and the atmosphere truly Parisian. A must if you are in the area.

CE