Lundi

Itinerary:

Slept until 11 a.m. (AGAIN! We are the laziest travelers ever!)

Walked to the Eiffel Tower and shared an egg, ham and cheese crepe while sitting on a bench. It dripped butter on my pants.

Walked over to Rue St. Dominique for cafe au lait at our favorite bakery.

Bought our Carte Navigos (week-long Metro passes) and hopped a train to Clingancourt, a northern Paris suburb, to shop at Les Puces (the fleas [flea markets]).

Bought shoes, souvenirs, gifts for friends. Looked at furniture and jewelry and art and antiques for hours and hours.

Shared a "hot dog," which was a piece of halved sausage on a baguette.

Took the metro back to Paris.

Ate dinner at a Chinese restaurant on Kleber called Chez Zhong. I accidentally ordered potatoes for dessert, but quickly rectified the situation when the waitress said "QUOI?!"

Had planned on seeing Married Life at a theatre on the Champs Elysees, but got turned away. Apparently they show only one movie a night there.

Walked down the Champs-Elysees again instead.

Walked past Le Grand Palais, to Les Invalides, then to the Eiffel Tower.

Drank wine at a cafe near the Eiffel Tower, where we experienced our first and only rude French waiter. (He drummed his fingers on the table while he waited for me to decide what I wanted to drink!)

Went back to the room and slept.

Notes:

I keep imagining I'm feeling my phone vibrate and I'm relieved when I realize my phone isn't with me--every time.

At every table in every cafe, there is salt, pepper, and mustard. The mustard is so strong it makes my eyes water and tastes faintly of wasabi.

Chad says that Paris is the opposite of Dallas--I know how to say the words correctly, the dogs don't like me, I order better dishes than Chad, and I'm always right (especially when it comes to directions when we get lost, which happens at least once a day).

I fell down crossing the street to the Champs Elysees. I was wearing a pair of flats I bought at Les Puces for 10 Euros. They caught the cobblestone funny and made me slip. Chad says they're made of plastic.

C: Did you notice that all the hoodlums at the market wore Dolce & Gabbana?
S: Chad, no one says "hoodlums" anymore.
C: I'm gonna feed you to the hoodlums!

Pictures:

This is the view out over the Seine from the Metro station at the Eiffel Tower.

I took another picture before this one in which Chad looks extremely unhappy. I didn't end up uploading it to Flickr, but I should have because it was more authentic than this one, in which I forced him to smile. Chad did NOT like Les Puces, to say the least. Rick Steves warned us that it is the gritty, seamy underbelly of Paris, but I guess we didn't expect it to be quite so gritty and seamy. Definitely an adventure, though.

We asked the lady who sold us the "hot dog" to take this picture of us, which she gladly did. Note that I look nearly dead. I hope it's the jet lag. But this is the picture that made me decide that I guess it's time for me to begin wearing lipstick regularly, here at the old, withered age of 25.

Chad at the cafe with the rude waiter. We decided it was part of the authentic Paris experience and tried to make the best of it.

This is a picture I took outside our hotel, straight down Rue Hamelin to the Eiffel Tower. I was really dumbfounded by the hotel sign, which advertises Hotel Elysee Union, and is really weird, since the hotel we stayed at was called Hotel ElyseeS (as in the famous street) Union. I've decided that Paris is in desperate need of a good copyeditor (ME!).

And another picture of the Eiffel Tower. This one is from the window of our room. Although I'd already taken roughly 300 pictures of the Eiffel Tower by Monday, I justified that this one was absolutely necessary by saying I didn't have a picture of the Eiffel Tower from our window SPARKLING at NIGHT yet. Yep.