Thursday the Paris Way

We set out Thursday morning with a general plan for seeing Opéra and Notre Dame and for finding a scarf for me.


Our first stop, as always, was the bakery for an almond croissant. I really don't know how to properly describe the tastiness of this pastry except to say I've never had anything like it before. It's a good thing I don't have access to these at home or I'd be in trouble.


We took the Metro to the Opéra stop and surfaced from the stairs and turned around to see this gorgeous building in all its glory, along with many tourists taking photos of themselves in front of it.


We walked down a couple streets to the Galeries Lafayette (a fancy department store) so I could see the inside of such a place. It was gorgeous, but still a department store, so I felt the need to flee!


There were vendors all along the sidewalk outside the store selling scarves, neckties, shoes, purses, hair trinkets and on and on.


We walked further and went into C&A, which Michelle said is kind of like Paris's version of JCPenney...oh joy, to look at scarves. It was really busy in there so I had to seriously fight the urge to flee. Michelle had me convinced I was going to buy this fluffy, off-white scarf until she presented me with more options.


Here are some more of the front runners. I needed it to go with my skin tone and with my red coat and the gray coat I have at home. I'm always trying not to buy the same type of things, the same color schemes, but I'm drawn to them so what's the point of fighting it if I know that's what I like? Of course, I bought the black and white hounds tooth scarf!

Max pointed out this lovely belt buckle, but I had to pass.

While waiting in the very long line to pay (what the? It was like an amusement park line) I spied these picturesque umbrellas. The 4 cashiers seemed to be in no hurry at all which was very unlike the way American cashiers seem to be. The girl who rang me up didn't say anything to me. She must have been able to tell from my very American sounding "Bonjour" that I didn't speak French, but she didn't even make eye contact with me or anything.

Also amusing during this experience was that The Black Eyed Peas song "I Gotta Feeling" was playing in English over the speakers...that song is everywhere!


I took Eva and Lucas outside to wait for Michelle and Max to go through the long line to buy Max a scarf (he'd found it after we'd already paid for our purchases). Lucas does not like to have his picture taken, so he's always making weird faces or hiding his face completely, but that didn't stop me from trying.


We walked for awhile trying to find a bus stop that would take us to Notre Dame and ended up waiting for 20 minutes at a bus stop (luckily we got to sit down for some of the time) only to have many buses come by that weren't the one we needed. It was a total "FRANCE!!" moment.


Michelle was fed up, especially because Lucas kept saying that we should have taken the Metro. Even though public transportation is so plentiful in Paris, it is still tricky to get around, and becomes even more so when kids are always offering their opinions, complaints and demands. It was definitely a challenging Smotherhood day for Michelle.


We finally got on a bus (victory!) and had a beautiful tour past many gorgeous sites in Paris, including The Louvre (that's why we like to take the bus rather than the Metro), if only we could have convinced Lucas of the beauty of our thinking.


I snapped this photo as we walked down the street to Notre Dame, but now I'm wondering why we didn't stop to buy crepes there, we didn't do any eating except for our morning stop at the bakery...what the?


We made it to Notre Dame and it was even more beautiful than I'd remembered it. I was thankful for the blue sky which offered such a lovely backdrop for our photos.


This man poured rice into his hands and had birds swarming him. He'd shake off the pigeons who tried to get in on the action, but let the little birds land all over him. Max said it's one of his dreams to try this, though Michelle is completely sicked out by the possibility.


I was totally smitten with the lamp posts in Paris and love this picture.


We went inside Notre Dame, but I had a hard time reconciling the abundance of tourists and cameras (though I was among them) in a church. I leaned over to Lucas and said, "Can you imagine people wandering through and taking pictures in the temple?" It wasn't as bad as last time when we went to Sacre Coeur though, I was so put off by the disrespect that I had no good feelings about that church at all.


Lighting candles isn't something we do in our church, but I do like the idea of seeing a visual representation of people's prayers like this. But then again, it costs 5 euros to light one of these big ones and 2 euros to light the little ones, they must make a fortune on these!


We made our way back outside and took Eva to play at the little park on the side of the church. I wandered around taking many pictures.

This is one of my favorites.

I also love this picture of Michelle with all her gear around her neck, including her cute necklaces.

We began our long (though we didn't know it was going to be so long) journey home and spied quite a few sights along the way, including this paisley-scarfed, smoking man. Almost everyone in Paris smokes, it's really my only complaint about Paris.


The stickers on this sign cracked me up, especially the one of Issac from The Love Boat.


As we walked along The Seine, Michelle, Max and I were all taking stealthy (as in we held our cameras down at our waists and snapped photos) photos of the many items for sale along the way. This is one of my favorite stealthy shots of one of the vendors smoking behind his wares.

Here's another one of my favorites.

This another lovely view we had along our walk.

Once again we found ourselves wandering around trying to find a bus stop that would get us home. We ended up going across this cross walk 4 times (which was rather funny) in our attempt to find the right bus stop.

We ended up accidentally finding a chocolate shop that Marc had been looking for, so Michelle and Max went in while I stayed outside with Eva and Lucas. They only sold dark chocolate in there, so it had no appeal for me, plus I was very tired at this point.


We walked a long time before giving up on finding the right bus stop and surrendered to the Metro, even though it was at a very busy station that Michelle would rather have avoided.


We took this self-portrait on the Metro, and decided it was okay that it was blurry because we were feeling blurry at that point too.


We were so wasted by the time we got home, yet Michelle managed to come up with dinner once again. I really don't know how she does it. If it had been up to me we would have picked up Grecs every night from the place around the corner (though we did end up having them 3 times during my trip).


Later that night, Max, Lucas and I walked to get some gelato and ended up running into Patty and Bernard (our friends from the cafe) there! It was so crazy to be running into people I knew in Paris! Lucas, of course, hid from the camera but by hiding behind his cone he is showing the scale of his ginormous gelato flower.


We passed this cafe on the way back to the apartment and were treated to a rare, people-free shot.

**Have you had an almond croissant?
What do you think about photos inside churches?
Would you like to have birds eat out of your hands?
Do you ever feel blurry?
Do you like dark chocolate?
Have you ever lit a candle to pray for someone?**

Comment Window Tidbit: I am back home now, and am thinking maybe it's good that I am behind on my Paris posts because that means I can hold onto my trip that much longer.