Brian’s travels from Berlin to Paris were pretty easy done. His exciting moment was having a German guy help him set up his voicemail (which was all in German). My experience was a little more hectic.
The flight from Johannesburg to Frankfurt was wonderful. I got a nice meal in my stomach, had a great night’s rest, and watched “Cop Out” about 12 times. Pretty stupid, but it was one of the only things on.
When I landed in Frankfurt, I hopped a quick train to the actual rail station, where (Yost told me) I could buy a seat reservation to Paris that would get me into the station at 12:49 – the exact time his was getting in. Sounds too easy right? Well…
I went to the desk and asked for the seat reservation on this particular train. “All sold out,” she told me.
“OK, well when is the next one?”
“13:00.”
Not too bad. I tried to get a hold of Yost, but he wasn’t picking up his phone, so I figured I would just book it and he would call when he got a chance. So, I went back to the desk, I asked to just book the seat on the 13:00 train.
“That one is sold out too.”
“OK…when is the earliest I can get to Pairs?”
“Tomorrow.”
Shit. What the hell am I supposed to do now?! I can’t get a hold of Yost, and I can’t make it to Pairs on the day we are supposed to meet. So I went and grabbed a quick snack just to cool off a bit, and then about 20 minutes later checked to see if any seats had opened up. Nothing. I took a walk over to the tourist office just to see if there were hostels around just in case I had to stay the night. She gave me a few places, and by the time we were done I figured I’d make one last attempt to get this train.
“Our machines are down, so we can not see if the train is full, and we can not issue you a ticket.”
The train was about to arrive at the station, so I just decided to try my luck, show up, and sit down hoping that they would let me ride this train. As it turns out, there were two unreserved seats on the ENTIRE train, and since I was there early enough, I grabbed it. And, since it was unreserved and I didn’t buy a reservation, it was free. Even better, I ended up sitting next to a girl from Sweden who was also traveling around Europe (turns out we will be in Rome at the same time, too!), and this lovely woman who is a concert pianist from New York. The three of us had a great time just chatting about everything.
When I arrived in Paris and stepped off the train, a familiar face was staring me down from across the tracks: half of 827 was finally reunited. We caught up on our two-hour walk around the city to find our hostel, during which I think we both sweat off 20-30 pounds. It is so freaking hot in Europe…but I guess that’s what you get for going from winter to summer.
In any event, our hostel was perfect. We shared a room with two other guys who are extremely nice and friendly (one from England and one from German). But who wants to spend their time in Paris in a hostel? So, we grabbed my birthday bottle of wine (given to me by Michael, a former Blue Star specialist from South Africa), some €0.80 baguettes (which were about two feet long), some grapes and a disc and made our way to the Tour Eiffel.
The line was crazy-long, and we didn’t really feel any burning desire to go up to the top anyway. Instead, we chilled out on the lawn, ate our baguettes, drank some wine and had some grapes, and then threw the disc around. After all of that hard work, we just laid out in the grass until about 8:45, and then packed up and walked to see the Arc d’Triumphe and the Louvre. Once again, just the outsides. They’re the most iconic parts anyway, right?
After a great night’s rest, we woke up to our included breakfast that consisted of a croissant, a baguette, and some ridiculously delicious granola. From there, I decided that it was time to finally get my leg checked out (long story short, some African bug bite that I think got infected…I’ll spare the details). So we made our way down the E.R., wrapped my leg up and gave me some antibiotics. Not too exciting…
It was kind of an overcast day, but it was clearing up, so we decided to try these Velib bicycles that they have everywhere around the city so that we can do this amazing self-guided chocolate tour we found in the New York Times. Velib is basically the zipacar of bicycles, in that you pay €1 for the day and get to rent bikes from anywhere in the city and drop them off at any other stand. Cool right? Well, it would have been if the machine took our credit cards. All in all, I think we tried seven or eight different stations, and none of them were working for us. That was kind of a buzzkill, but we chose to do the chocolate tour anyway, only on foot.
We got lost for a good few hours, and when we finally made it to our first destination, we were welcomed with a sign on the door that told us they had permanently moved locations. Damn. Our next stop, however, was supposed to have two of the stores within a few doors of each other. So, we made it back to that side of town, and found our first destination: J.P. Havin. We ordered to truffles (and got two free!), a slice of chocolate-hazelnut cake, and two macarons (all to split, of course…). We grabbed a little stoop outside and dug in.
**Side note on macarons. These are not “macaroons” like we know them in America. These are flaky, light and airy cookies that surround a frosting-like pastry cream. There is a huge debate about who has the best ones in Paris, so we (mostly I) attempted to find out for sure who had the best ones.**
Verdict on J.P. – Awesome! The truffles were great (I think we were both partial to the salted caramel one), and the macarons were really, really good (we both liked the orange-ginger-chocolate one). However, considering they were our first endeavor into the world of macarons, we had nothing to which we could compare them.
Luckily, our next place, Michael Cluicel, was about 10 doors down. We once again got truffles and macarons and settled ourselves on some steps outside. The macarons were much better here, but the truffles were better at J.P. All in all, it was an awesome and fun morning/afternoon.
From there, we went back to find some food and after a long search, stumbled upon this relatively empty brasserie. We asked the guy if he was serving food, and he just pointed to some other guy who had already ordered. It was a quarter chicken, tons of roasted veggies, and some bread. We went for it, and it was pretty delicious.
Off to the hostel, took some naps and caught up on email, and I met these two girls from London and chatted with them for a bit (I think we’re meeting up with them in Amsterdam)…and got ready to meet Yost’s friend Alex for some drinks. However, his train was delayed, and it was raining on and off, so we decided just to grab a cheese and deli plate with some wine at a restaurant right outside our hostel. It was delicious, and we felt pretty Parisian doing it.
The next morning, we planned our day to see some famous landmarks (food and non-food related). The first, a place called Angelina’s, is famous for their hot chocolate…and for good reason. It tasted like someone had melted down a delicious candy bar and served it in a cup. It was so incredibly thick, and we were more than happy we chose to split one. We had it on the go to our next destination, which was the Jewish Quarter in Marais. Here, we heard, were the best falafels in the world. Rumor has it that Lenny Kravitz is partial to them as well.
In any event, we made it to Marais, but we weren’t exactly sure how to find this place. We started asking around for falafel, figuring it was so famous that everyone should know. But people didn’t understand “falafel” until we said it with our terrible “French” accents: falaFEL. Then, apparently people started to get it. They pointed us in the general direction, and we finally stumbled upon the Jewish Quarter (which was pretty cool to see in France, by the way), and found the extremely long line waiting for these famous falaFELs. We got some free samples that they were using as bait (which clearly worked), but we were also told by one of the guys taking the orders that we should stick with the schwarma, and that he’d throw in two falaFEL balls in for free. Done and done.
We waited for a bit, watching the competing falaFEL stand try and muscle its way into the market to no avail. We were finally up, handed the guy our slip, and watched him make two GIGANTIC schwarmas and hand them our way. We walked back to this beautiful little park and had our delicious lunch, and continued our walk to Notre Dame, which is still a really impressive church. Once again, standing in line for 4 hours just to see this inside of it wasn’t exactly our cup of tea, so we did the Chevy Chase Vegas Vacation look-around, and started on our way to Pierre Herme.
Pierre Herme is supposed to be the end-all-be-all of macarons. And holy shit was it. They had so many crazy flavors, and were far superior to any other place we had been. I tried three of them (yes, don’t judge me, this is an experiment for the knowledge of the world): strawberry-wasabi, rose (a very close second favorite), and my all time favorite olive oil and vanilla. You would never think that olive oil and vanilla would taste that good, but it was out of this world stellar.
We made our way to the Luxembourg Garden, where there was a pond on which children were sailing little boats, tables where old men were playing chess, tennis courts, and tons of lawns where people were sitting and having picnics and relaxing. We thought it would be a good choice to rest our bones a bit from all the walking around, so we chilled out in these gardens for a bit and did a bit of people watching.
From there, we made our way back toward the hostel (on the way helping two girls from Holland and Sweden try to make a reservation at our same hostel), but decided to explore the area a little bit more. We found our way to the Sacre Coeur, a big church with an amazing town around it overlooking the entire city. We ordered some crepes (Grand Marnier for me, sugar for Yost), and sat on the steps of the church, listened to an orchestra of four twenty-something year old girls, and watched the city and the people. Really a fantastic day. But it wasn’t over just yet…
After napping at the hostel for a while, we took a suggestion from the guy at the front desk and headed down for dinner at this little place at the bottom of a giant set of stairs outside our hostel. It was out of this world good. We both got the duck with an orange sauce, roasted potatoes and some veggies, and split a bottle of wine. The food there was phenomenal, and we were both pretty satisfied.
We had about half the bottle of wine left, so we took it back up to the Sacre Coeur area, I got another crepe (Nutella and banana, the staple), and we watched the city at nighttime. The perfect ending to a perfect day.
Our last day in Pairs was upon us. I woke up early and grabbed some breakfast before heading over to the hospital to get my leg re-wrapped. As it turns out, they only take walk-ins starting at 1PM, even though I told them I was leaving for Brussels and they told me I could come in. They gave me a wrap and sent me on my merry way, and that was that.
We packed up our things, and headed back to the Sacre Coeur area just to take some photos, hang out and kill some time. After that, we headed to the train station to book our tickets to Brussels. We just missed the express train because of the long line, so we got cheap tickets (two train changes), and hopped aboard.
And here we are, on our way to Brussels. Paris – you were wonderful to us, but we have a bit more to see around Europe. Thanks for your time and hospitality.
More to come!
-Josh
1) AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME
ReplyDelete2) Lovin the pic of Yost and the Eiffel
3) Wish I with you guys...