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!