On Sunday morning July 30th, 2017 my sister Megan and I woke up in Paris, France. We had a restful night at the Hotel Dauphine- St. Germain. Our hotel was recommended to us by one of Megan's friends and it did not disappoint. The rooms were small and simple, but clean and had everything we needed. We had a window this time, unlike our London hotel, but there was just a view of a small courtyard. The breakfast in the hotel was great. There was fruit, eggs, pastries,cereal, coffee, and things we wouldn't usually have for breakfast like deli meat and cheese that are a staple in the typical Parisian breakfast. Everything was served in a gorgeous dining room. The staff in our hotel were super friendly as well. We had heard through the grapevine that French people dislike Americans, and if they did they all did a lovely job hiding it. Every person we interacted with in France was pleasant and most of them spoke English which made everything easier. After a delicious breakfast we walked to the Notre Dame Cathedral where we were meeting for a bike tour of Paris.
Our Aunt Sue had told us that her nephew led bike tours in Paris. So we booked a tour with our cousin's cousin Jay who we think we might have met once when we were little kids. I hadn't rode a bike in awhile so I was a little nervous about the tour, but it was literally like riding a bike. We picked up our bikes and leisurely peddled around the streets of Paris. The tour lasted about 3 hours and we saw Hotel de Ville, The Marais, Place Des Vosges, The Bastille, The river Seine Notre Dame, Ile St. Louis/Ile de la Cite, Sainte Chapelle, The Latin Quarter/St. Germain, Pont Neuf, The Louvre Museum, Museé D’orsay, Tuileries Gardens, Les Halles, The Pompidou Centre, and a view of the Eiffel Tower on the horizon. Some highlights for me were stopping for ice cream along the way and riding our bikes underneath the Louvre in a "secret" tunnel. I highly recommend bikeabouttours.com if you're ever in Paris. You can cover so much more ground on a bike than on foot, and you get a chance to see the city the way the Parisians do. The tour was appropriate for all fitness levels and ages.
After the tour we went and had lunch with our "cousin". He's been living in Paris for a few years so he knew a bunch of good restaurants and had some good tips for us. We walked by a falafel place that had a line about 45 minutes long and he showed us where the same exact food was served right near there with no wait. I'd never had falafel before and it was so delicious. I know you don't really think of Mediterranean food when you think of Paris but while Megan and I were there we had some type of international cuisine for pretty much every lunch and dinner. I didn't take any pictures at lunch but our cousin has a vlog that we made a cameo in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldoIj6tEB9M check us out at 8:42. After lunch our cousin gave us directions to the Eiffel tower! We had been in Paris for a whole half a day and had only seen it in the distance. After a metro ride and short walk we were there! It was so cool to finally see it up close. It was a beautiful day and we lied in the grass just relaxing for a little while. There were a bunch of street vendors walking around saying "beer beer beer!" So I bought a heineken to enjoy in the grass. There were also guys walking around selling Eiffel tower key-chains for a dollar and I though that was a pretty good deal so I bought a couple. Later we saw those same exact key-chains for 4 for a dollar everywhere we went. After a little while we walked closer to the tower and walked through a street market that had lots of art, food, and souvenirs for sale. We thought about paying to go up in the tower but the line was so long and it wasn't really something that was on my to-do list. I plan on going back to Paris when Maddie graduates high school and I want to save something new to do with her.
After we had our fill of basking in the sun underneath Eiffy we took a walk to Av. des Champs-Élysées, a street with some of the best shopping in the world. Champs-Élysées is pronounced 'shahn zey-lee-zey'. I was navigating us there with my phone but Megan had typed in the destination. When we were close I was like "we should be here but that street sign says 'Champs Elyse', I'm confused", but I was just being an ignorant American. None the less, we were there and we walked up the street towards the Arc De Triomphe and looked at all the fancy stores. We only stopped at one place, good old McDonald's. We both had to go to the bathroom and needed a little snack. The line to the bathroom was super long and wasn't moving. There were multiple languages being spoken but eventually we figured out that they were out of toilet paper in the stalls so we were grabbing napkins from the restaurant and were passing them up the line. It was a beautiful scene of women from different nations coming together for a common goal. After we took care of our business at McDonald's we hopped on the metro back towards our hotel.
We were tired from the long day but we had made plans to meet our cousin on Pont Neuf for a drink. He had informed us that like Vegas people could drink in public outside in Paris and it was no big deal. After freshening up really quick we found a small grocery store near our hotel and each bought a bottle of wine. We also wanted to get a sandwich. I had picked one out and Megan was looking at the display deciding what one to get. A store worker said something in French to Megan and she nodded, not having any idea what the lady said. Megan reached her hand out to grab a sandwich right as the store employee shut the curtain on the sandwich display putting them out of reach. She must have told us they were closing soon. Fortunately my sandwich was big enough to share. We walked to Pont Neuf (the oldest standing bridge across the river Seine) and met our cousin. He showed us a little island where there were dozens of Parisians relaxing and drinking wine in the light of the slowly setting sun. We chatted about Paris and he gave us some more tips and told us where the Pier was where we could take a cruise that was included with our bike tour. After chatting with him for a little while we went our separate ways and Megan and I headed to the Pier to take a sunset cruise along the Seine.
The cruise was so beautiful. The sun was setting as we slowly approached the Eiffel tower. I was hoping the light display on the tower would come on as it was just starting to get dark. The light show started exactly when we passed it and we got to watch for awhile as our boat turned around. We kept exclaiming "I can't believe we're here!" This trip had literally been 25 years in the making and sometimes I still can't believe that we finally got to do it. We cruised back up the Seine taking more pictures and sipping our wine. When it docked it was pretty dark and we should have been safe and went straight back to our hotel but we found a bench to relax on for a few more minutes while we continued to take in the beauty of Paris. Our serene moment came to an end when we saw rats the size of cats run by our feet and we started walking back towards our hotel.
Since Megan didn't get a sandwich earlier and I probably wasn't as good of a sharer as I should have been she was hungry. Before we called it a night we stopped at a sushi place right by our hotel and I watched Megan eat sushi in Paris (OK i stole a few bites). We ate fast and then went back to our hotel. It was past 11 o'clock and we were exhausted. We crawled into bed to get some sleep for another day of exploring Paris that lay ahead.
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