quiet day

after a pretty killer day yesterday, we fortunately had nothing too much on the agenda today.

our first stop was lunch, and since our picasso run was in le marais, and since the falafel joints are in le marais... well then... one must venture off to the falafel joints while we're there, non?

so we tried out the 3rd falafel joint called chez marianne. and if you're going to go to any of the three we've blogged about so far, this would be the last on your list. i mean, it was good, and tasty, but it completely fell apart in our hands. 2 stars. recommend only if you have time and are curious, but if time is limited, definitely go to the other two and skip this one.


we then ventured off to the pablo picasso museum. it was cool seeing picasso's art evolve over time, as each one of the rooms was dedicated to a specific time-frame of picasso art. some of them were life-like, especially early in his careers (almost photographically accurate), while his later arts looked like he drew them after toking on an illegal substance. all-in-all, i'm glad we made the trip, but like grace posted on her blog, this location is definitely auditable for those who have limited time.


our last stop, as we were tired still from yesterday's marathon, was a patisserie called paul. seriously. just paul. and like any patisserie that can't be more creative than just a simple name as paul, it was mediocre. but here are pictures of some of the stuff we scarffed down.


so... after a long day, we were ->


and decided to call it a day. coming home to relax was nice, haven't just chilled out and done nothing in a while. i cooked up some eggs and rice for dinner, threw together a quick salad, tempted fate by pondering a gelateria downstairs, but laziness kicked in full drive, and it also got 'audited.' well, that's all of the food updates we have today, tomorrow is the notre-dame, and the paris sewer tour, so if my blog stinks tomorrow, it wasn't my fault! (har har har, not funny...)

haro! how doing? me tourist! no speak french!

what a day! we walked 8 miles today! and of course to offset all of that great exercise, we ended the day at mcdonalds. seriously. mcdonalds.

today was day one on 'be a tourist except not be as loud as them' journey. and on the agenda, was the louvre, the musee de l'orangerie, the champs-elysees, and the arc de triomphe. for a grand woobang of 8 miles of walking and 284 stairs.

first off, if you've never heard of rick steves, google him now. and anytime you go to any place in europe for any length of time, buy a rick steve's guide book on the area. then go to his website and download his podcasts (if avail) and listen to his podcasts while you're on the tour. aside from the small details like entire sections of closed artwork, and rearranged museums that don't coorelate with the audiotour... aside from those small pieces of unnecessary detail, it's awesome, and you won't regret it.

we started today at the louvre.

after getting lost trying to find our way through rick steve's audioguide because the louvre closed down one whole section and rearranged another, we found ourselves at the winged victory
and she was awesome. by far my favorite thing at the louvre. a breathtaking piece of artwork, she should be duplicated, except like... made into a lords of the ring ginormous statue, and she should guard the straights of gibralter.


we then found our way miraculously (since the signs only pointed to it 5000 times), to the venus de milo. where you find yourself wondering what exactly her hands were doing before they got chopped off. i'd like to think she was picking a wedgie as i hear was the problem with wearing sheets in those days...


and if you look up from the room next door from venus, you'll see this pretty bodacious cieling paining of icarus falling from the skies as his wings melt from trying to fly to close to the sun. interesting, except the theory behind it is a little off... since flying higher in the atmosphere actually causes the temperature to be cooler with the lack of oxygen, making it quite difficult for me to believe that icarus' wings would melted since... yeah ok i hear your dork alarms ringing. let's move on.


cool hallway.


random pictures in front of some equally random da vinci painting


and then... the mona lisa. i saw it, was marginally impressed, made me think dan brown as a bigger idiot than before for reading so much into such a small painting, and crossed it off my list of things to see before i die.


oh and in case you were wondering how small it really is?


but... oddly enough, one of the best parts of the day was this little picnic we had right outside of the louvre. at the butt crack of dawn (translated from quinn time to regular time as 8:00AM), we went and got a baugette from a local bakery. cut up some tomatoes, some brie cheese, throw down some arugla, a splash of sea salt, and you get yourself an instant cheap delicious healthy lunch! you can see grace defending her territory as i try to sneak in a bite of hers.


making our way to the orangerie museum, here's what i would recommend. make sure you get the museum pass as paying however much to enter this museum alone is probably a ripoff, and then just look at the monet murals, as the whole downstairs impressionist paintings to me was just... eh.


on the last leg of our trip, we made our way down champ elysees, and visited the arc de triumphe


finishing the day required a pastry, so if you are going to go to a pastry house and only have like 30 minutes in paris, this is the place to go, order the macaroons, and the apple tart, and you will want to thank me profusely. i take cash. and ladure apple tarts

blarg

a blarg - better known as a blog that has no creative motivation behind it.
today is going to be a blarg. brain fried, caput, gone. so without too much undue brain damage to the 0.25 brain cells i have remaining:

we went to cafe de flore, to sip on our very first cafe creme (almost a week here and no coffee??? incredible!). this place sucks. the coffee was good, not outstanding, and the check came out to 11.40 euros, for TWO cafe cremes. uh... seriously?! and THEN, i flipped the guy 15 euros, and he stuffs it into his pocket, says thanks, and walks off!!! confused, i sat around looking like a dumfounded tourist (because... i was a dumfounded tourist), expecting that maybe he went to go back for some change. alas, this was not the case, and by the time that grace got back (see what happens when she leaves me alone for 5 minutes???), we were past the time where it would be very uncomfortable asking the waitress for our change. especially since he was wiping down our table asking us to leave so that another patron could use our table. confused, and baffled, not wanting to say anything as it might violate 15,000 customs, we left, paying 15 euros for 2 cups of coffee that were good, but not mind boggling fantastic. sigh... (there are words much stronger than *sigh* going through my head, but there may be kids reading! like... my parents!).

so... probably not going to go here anymore...


but... here's a picture of cafe go-ers in their natural habitat. 2 cafes, a glass of water, of course a pack of cigarettes, and... most obviously... a coke light.


and in case you're wondering what a 7.50 euro cafe creme looks like... if you're picturing a 2L mug...

tbbbbtthhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!! (with a little pouting in between)

but, to make up for it, we ventured out to a bakery (for our once a day dessert rule), do Poilane. they are famous for two things.


1) THE best apple tart (aside from Grace's of course... it's a different type of tart you see, Grace's and Polaines are like two seperate categories of apple tar... digging myself into a deeper hole? shut up now? you bet).


and 2) butter cookies. these guys need to take lessons from Grace on butter cookies because her butter cookies rock their world. utterly destroy, pulverise, vaporize, think... smithereens. but smaller.


we made our way to a big shopping mall (according to grace's blog, one of the first ever 'malls' which, of course, i don't remember at all since... well... i'm a goldfish). quinn's hungry monster came out, and just as we were starting to look at baking equiment (our all time favorite sections of any dept. store), the quinn reflection of mr. hyde came out, and grace had to rush the quinn to the nearest eatery to make sure he reverted back to his dr. jekyll form. we daydreamed a bit about perhaps starting a baking shop one day soon (with me as the floor cleaner and dish washer of course), and decided to call it a day early.

the next four days are going to be museum madness (aka get it out of our system and out of the way). we'll have much more pictures posted soon (hopefully of me doing obscene things to old greco statues, followed by pictures of security guards throwing me out of the louvre. from the top of the building). stay tuned.

random pictures

during our walk back from ice cream, i took some random pictures on our stroll. for your viewing pleasure:

random bike rental station that we came across

and of course if you're curious exactly what gracecarmel looks like when she's blogging...

she's just absolutely adorable :) from blogger hater to professional blogger all in 3 days. what can we say, we're blog addicts.

shalom!

our journey today began with a trek out to the Jewish Quarter in the 4th arrondissment. using chrichelle's walking tour gift, we strolled down rue de rivoli, and just before we entered into the heart of jewish town, we found ourselves staring at a chocolate joint, that was serving... what else... hot chocolate. this... we could not pass up.



after downing what may be the BEST hot chocolate i've ever encountered in my entire life (seriously, imagine melting a big bar of chocolate, and putting it in a cup. that's what you're looking at above), we strolled down and made our way to the heart of the jewish quarter, where we came across two of the best falafel joints in paris (per besteats.com) and i can attest, they were delicious!

well actually, there are 3 of them, but since there were only two of us, we could only try out two, since of course 1) we each had to have our own falafel (looking back... we probably should have shared), and 2) since there were two of us, obviously one of us had to try one from each place so we could kill two birds with one stone... or in this case, 2 pita/flat breads with one falafel ball?)

yours truely went for l'as du fallafel. actually to be honest, i got suckered into it. l'as du fallafel and mi-va-mi were right across the little pedestrian road we were on, and there's this guy who comes up to you and in a 'invading your air-space' sort of way, asks/demands if you want to have a fallafel. feeling obliged, i got one from l'as while grace was able to get away and went to mi-va-mi across the road.


hers was parisian style, while i guess mine was more authentic. personal opinion? her's kicked mine's butt. but for 5 euros a piece (5 euros!!!) i'd have either one any day of the week! and of course we're going to have to go back and try the third place, chez marianne, but we'll save that for another day (when we aren't about to explode already).


being tired from walking 18 miles in 3 days, we decided to make the trek home (of course, being guy, i got lost, refused to ask for directions, and ended up adding 1-2 miles to our walk... oops...), and currently, although the day is still young at 3:30PM, it's time for us to take a break and relax. it's amazing how nice it is to be able to experience paris this way instead of a 1-2 week blitz package!

until next time!


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addendum!

and we're back! after a nice rest, we decided to make our way out for a pain aux chocolat, and then off to an ice cream joint as recommended by david lebovitz.

apparently, stohrer is supposedly this famous bakery that served the french king back in the day. we had their pain aux chocolat, and... eh. but we had it at 8 at night, so we're willing to give it another try in the morning when the goods are nice and fresh :)



ms. lontok was feeling a little ice cream kick, and to justify the ice cream, we decided to take another walk to the david lebovitz recommendation called pozzettos. this got an 'overrated' in our book, the ice cream was good, but not mind boggling, and we were a little disappointed by something that got such rave reviews. this will have to compare with berthillion, which is supposed to be God of ice cream/gelato. stay tuned.

2 days, 14 miles, potential weight loss???

first off, to all of the haters who have bets out on me as to how long it will take for me to reach 200 lbs... i say to thee... tbtthhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

not to name names, but there are certain individuals (CS, brian, chris) who believe that going to france causes people to gain massive amounts of poundage. i haven't read the book 'french women don't get fat,' but personal experience tells me exactly why. they eat small portions, and walk. everywhere. and it's not like san francisco where walking a block is like walking a mile, except the block has an incline the angle of half dome. paris is flat. almost texas flat. but without the texas 'absence of any character whatsoever.'

to recap two days worth, let's let the pictures speak for our activities:

Day 1
After actually waking up at a regular time (i.e. 9AM France time), grace and i went to take the 3 mile dry run trek to her culinary academy at Le Cordon Bleu. since they weren't open for a tour, we decided, heck, while we're out here, let's go chill out at the Eiffel Tower.


eating pain du lait, with gnutella of course, sitting on the lawn of the Eiffel, we decided it was time to go home (after 7 different tourists asked us if they could take a picture of them in front of the tower. probably cuz we have these 10lbs cameras strapped to our backs, makes them think inaccurately that we actually know how to use them...) and since the louvre was on the way home... well heck...



aside the fact that that we were butt tired, it was getting awefully cold, so it was time to go home...


Day 2
thanks to Chrichelle who gave us this awesome walks book, grace and i decided we would go check out the food area next to the louvre, called le madeleine. now at madeleine, is THE FAUCHON. it's so 'the' that you even have to capitalize the entire store name.

be forewarned. if you have not eaten yet, go eat, and THEN look at the following pictures. if you find yourself chewing on the screen, salivating all over your keyboard, i told you so. ok? OK??? ok. let's move on.



also in the area, was this big church called L'eglise de la Madeleine. wanting to see what the insides looked like, we strolled in, and we were surprised by a choir group from... of all places... tennessee. not... a... bad... field trip... not a bad field trip at all...


finally, after an exhausting day of walking around, eating macaroons and pain aux chocolat (it's a tough and rough life out here), we made our way home, and what would france be... without...


yup.. french poodles

well, we're off. time to enjoy a nice bottle of wine, kick off our shoes and relax our feet, and bid you a good night, and au revoir!