We woke with a vengeance, and a sense of destiny; today would be the day when we made right the wrongs of sold-out baguettes on Day 4. Remembering the store with the bakery and the no-cold-medicine pharmacy, we trotted there to fill a shopping bag with baguettes and pain au chocolat and those little dough balls with sugar crystals on them.
But the universe had other plans.
They weren't open. Whitney calls this "the saddest little picture [she's] ever seen." Cue the sad trombones.
We weren't about to let the hours of one store hold us back from chewy carb glory, so we stalked the streets of Paris à la Javert and Valjean. A few blocks away, we spotted an open door, with cartoon-like wafts of baked yeast beckoning us.
They had bread. And it was fresh.
Oh, the condensation!
Conveniently a park lay across the street. So armed with baguette and Nutella, we didn't have to go far to enjoy the spoils of our war.
Who needs a knife anyway? Desperation is the mother of invention. Or just desperate dipping/scooping.
After our meal, it was only fitting that we visit the Arc de Triomphe; Napolean had his Austerlitz, we had Baguette.
We then traversed the Avenue of Champs-Èlysèes and Tuileries Gardens en route to the Louvre. There was also a Marks&Spencers along the way. Thinking that M&S only existed in the UK, we were shocked. And we relieved our shock by purchasing Percy Pigs.
The line was virtually non-existent (could the day get any better??), and armed with an audio guide, we enjoyed learning about the development of sculpture and painting from Greeks to Romans to the Renaissance to French Neo-Classicism.
Also, Whitney found a vent over which she posed like Marilyn Monroe. We are very mature.
And we very seriously evaluated the departure of the Winged Victory from Classical Greek ideals.
And we couldn't get enough of Mona.
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone: there was a painting of Christ turning water to wine at a wedding, and I saw that the artist included a cat playing with a stone lion, so I took a picture of the cat.
We thought that selfies were a recent invention? Psh, this guy was doing it before it was cool.
After our enlightening Louvre tour, we walked to the Church of Saint Eustache. It was built in the 1500s and is considered a gothic masterpiece. It's also where Mozart had his mom's funeral, so there's that.
Along the way, we saw a cool public bathroom.
Whitney forbade me from taking a picture of her with it, so I photoshopped her walking into one for context.
To alleviate some of th negative aspects of public toilets, this one had a self-clean cycle! Either it actually hosed itself down, or it had some very convincing sound effects.
Oh yeah, the church. It was gorgeous. And I just have to think that it's so interesting how some churches cost money to visit, while others are free (like this one). I'm surprised Mozart's mom's funeral isn't a bigger tourist pull.
I would add a sound clip of the organ playing some impressive, but slightly weird contemporary organ music (sounded like a robot talking at times), but the hotel internet is delinquent and I can't upload it with my phone (on which I'm composing this post).
We decided to cap off out Parisian experience with dinner at a sidewalk café. Actually, I've been quite surprised by these cafés; I thought that it was just in the movies that the French ate at sidewalk cafés and walked down the street munching on baguettes, but I've been really surprised at how accurate that was. We were two of the very few Americans in a few blocks filled with cafés. And at least six people passed us wig baguettes in various stages of consumption.
Okay, I spoke too soon. Our Parisian experience wouldn't be complete without a macaron. We saw one in a window, staring us down with the coy smile of the Mona Lisa. We knew we had to have it.
After confirming with the macaron seller that it wasn't coffee (we weren't really sure what flavor it was. When we pointed at it and asked, "café?", she responded with "Non, la saveur du macaron est praline." We didn't understand anything after "non," but "non" was good enough for us), we bought it and took it outdoors to enjoy.
It was delicious. The meringue was crisp and chewy, and the buttercream frosting provides a smooth contrast to the meringue. The flavor was strong enough to massage praline essence into our tastebuds, but not so much as to be overpowering. The French know how to do macarons.
So it was a win-win-win-win-win day for us. We'll see if the pickled herring in Amsterdam can rival this.
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