Paris - Day 2

After a solid night's sleep on our awesome bunk beds, James and I started out in search of a delicious pastry breakfast. Once we located and inhaled our pain au chocolat we set out on foot to cross the Seine river to the south side and walk towards the Latin Quarter where we were meeting up with our friends from home, Zac and Leanne. Unfortunately the weather wasn't really on our side with lots of rain off and on but we braved it and kept on going (being sure to photograph our dismay). We walked past the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle with the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes just beside it and then onto the Panthéon and the Jardin de Luxembourg. Outside the latter was a comprehensive photo display of shots from the Tour de France to commemorate its 100th anniversary. Pretty cool!

 

 
We met Zac and Leanne at the massive Fontaine de Saint-Michel which is right by the Seine, just up from Notre-Dame. After walking around the small but densely packed block of restaurants in the Latin Quarter we grabbed some Mexican food for lunch and got to hear about their trip. 

They had just returned from a month in India where they stayed at an artists' retreat while learning some different traditional techniques of block printing and tie dying. Check out their website & blog here: http://goldandginger.wordpress.com/. Having rented a place through AirBnB just east of the city in Fontenay-sous-Bois, they kindly invited us over to hang out, eat some snacks and drink some wine which we were delighted to do! They showed us all the incredible prints and scarves they bought in India and described their favourite dishes that they'd eaten as well as their experiences on outings around the city. We also discussed some of the serious stuff they were confronted with - what it's like to be a foreigner there, issues of violence against women and culture shock among other things. Love chatting with these two. Overall we are really glad it worked out for us to meet up and chill out in Paris! 

Knowing that we had our Eiffel Tower tickets to make use of, and going on the recommendation of Mariana that being at the tower before, during and after sunset is the ideal time, we left Zac and Leanne to head to Paris' iconic site. We arrived around 9pm but since it's summer the sun doesn't set until about 10-10:30pm. It took us about an hour to get to the top after waiting in the two elevator lines, one to the first level and one to the third level (the second level is a restaurant). Once we got up there I felt that exciting feeling of oh-my-god-I'm-standing-at-the-top-of-the-Eiffel-Tower and it just kept going for the next hour that we were up there. Hilariously enough, we even saw a guy propose to his girlfriend right in front of us, and sure enough she said yes and everyone at the top clapped for them. Cliché yes, but also a pretty adorable memory! 

One cool part about being up there that night was that Dîner en Blanc was happening right across from us down below at Trocadéro. We couldn't figure out what the event was from seeing it at the top, so after we were back on the ground we walked over to check it out.

It's essentially a giant picnic in public that guests attend dressed entirely in white, only learning of the location the last minute. But you have to sign up! Check out the website http://dinerenblanc.info/ to learn more about the concept and if you want to know the history of it. If you're in Toronto and you're interested in being a part of the next one, it's on August 29!

With tired legs and hungry stomachs we headed back to the hostel around midnight to eat some kebabs before calling it a night. One more day to go!

Paris - Day 1

In mid-June, two weeks after James and I settled in Lyon, we headed off on the TGV (train à grande vitesse, the high-speed trains that travel about 200 km/h) to the one and only City of Light. It was the second visit for both of us which was good because we'd both done a lot of the major tourist attractions previously and this time could do more meandering. Aside from just wanting to see the city again and some friends that live there, we had a couple of other reasons to be there. One was that there was an alumni event for U of T and the second was that our friends Zac and Leanne were going to be visiting the city at the same time. Perfect timing!

We booked a hostel right behind Gare de Lyon as we had a 7am return train ride back to Lyon so we wanted to be able to get there easily. With three days in the city our plan was to meet my friends who live in Paris on the first afternoon and evening, so in the few hours before that we decided to stroll around our neighbourhood. We checked out the Place de la Bastille, the famous square from the French Revolution where the Bastille prison formerly stood (it is now a giant roundabout intersection with the July Column at its centre) followed by Place des Vosges, a lovely enclosed garden and the "oldest planned square in Paris" according to Wikipedia. We walked around a bit more before heading back to the hostel to get ready to meet my friend Mariana.

I met Mariana about six years ago when we worked in the same building, and in the last five years she's been living in France. She moved here to learn French and ended up marrying a Frenchman! After meeting up at the Madeleine metro station, she took us on a lovely walking tour of the area which is her favourite part of Paris. We went past the Opéra where I quite possibly saw the car of François Hollande, Place Vendôme which is a super fancy square and home to stores with the most expensive brands, le Jardin des Tuileries and on down the Champs Élysées. We stopped for a beer to people watch and chat, and because she is a super person who happens to work at the Eiffel Tower, Mariana gave us two complimentary tickets to go see it. Neither James nor I had ever been to the top so we were pretty excited! After a million thank yous we headed to the Arc de Triomphe for a photo op before parting ways.

Next we were off to meet up with Fanny who I met about 15 years ago when she and Natalia were foreign exchange partners and she lived next door to me with the Martinellis for three months. Natalia and I stayed with her five years ago in Paris as well, and even though it had been years since I'd seen her it felt like not much time had passed. My friend Benoît, who I'd met in Toronto through our French/English practice and thanks to whom we found our apartment in Lyon, joined us as well. Yay for convenient scheduling! It was a great little bar called Le Gobelet d'argent, with a tiny patio facing onto a square nicely tucked away considering it was in a crazy busy part of the city. It's also one of the oldest Irish pubs in Paris and possibly the smallest! We all talked both in French and English about lots of different things and it was really awesome to catch up. Feeling a little hungry Fanny and I crossed the square to order pizza for the group from a restaurant that conveniently delivered it to us on the patio at the bar. Amazing. 

After a great day and night we were pooped so we headed home to rest up for day two.

La Grande Boucle! (Otherwise known as the Tour de France)

This past Saturday Lyon was visited by the Tour de France, commonly referred to here as La Grande Boucle. It had been 10 years since the Tour last made a stop here, and this time marked its 15th passage to Lyon since the first Tour in 1903. This year actually marked the 100th Tour de France, which they cleverly put in to their logo using the "e" in France to mark le 100e which is 100th. You might be wondering how it's the 100th Tour given that it started in 1903 and it is currently 2013. I certainly was! The reason is that there was no Tour (understandably) during the world wars.

Saturday was the 14th stage out of 21 and it was a pretty toasty day for anyone spending the day outside, let alone cycling at high speeds for several hours. The day started out for the competitors in Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule nearly 200km away from Lyon and arrived here just past 4:30pm local time. 

We'd been waiting for about an hour and a half prior to that to ensure a good vantage point and to catch the passing of the caravan. I really knew nothing about the caravan before Saturday but it's basically an entourage of sponsor cars honking, playing music and giving away free stuff. Everyone went wild running to grab whatever was thrown their way, it reminded me of the Pride parade! My favourite car/float had a stationary bicycle on top of it with a guy cycling in the air, it was pretty cool.

We set ourselves up in Croix Rousse on la Montée des Esses to have a decent chance at really seeing the competitors climb the hill instead of just whipping past us on a flat stretch (thanks to a hot tip from my mom courtesy of the cycling-savvy John Perreault). The map above shows the winding strip they had to ascend and James and I were nestled nicely in between the two loops at the bottom overlooking the first bend from the ridge above. We brought ourselves a little picnic and a couple beers and soaked up some soleil while waiting for the big moment.

Once the last of the caravan drove past you could feel the excitement start to grow, and then the sound of cheers floated up from further down the route. Before we knew it we saw the leader charging up the hill and I'm shouting "Allez! Allez!" with the rest of the crowd. The guy in second place wasn't too far behind, and then the peloton came up from behind. After another few minutes the pack from the back came through as well and just like that, we'd seen the Tour de France!

Because I knew my photos wouldn't do justice to what we were seeing, I took a video to capture the insanity. Allez-y!