Our Paris Adventure: Day One

We caught the 5:34 A.M. Eurostar this morning, and as with all of our early Eurostar departures, we saw a fox run through our neighbourhood in the darkness--it's sort of like a bon voyage sighting for us now! This would be our last time departing from Waterloo before Eurostar switches its services mid-November to St. Pancras station, which will not only make for a faster journey from London to Paris (total travel time: just 2.25 hours), but also from our house to the station--although at this traffic-free time of the morning, that part probably doesn't make much difference. We mostly slept on the train, but watched the sun come up two thirds of the way through our journey:

As always happens with Eurostar, we arrived at our destination after a quick and easy ride, and stepped into Paris's Gare du Nord, this time to a mass of reporters who were waiting to interview rugby fans arriving for tonight's world cup final. Since we weren't dressed in rugby colours, we were ignored by the cameras and made our way past fans negotiating with ticket touts hovering in the Eurostar arrivals area. (There were also plenty of touts at Waterloo--two fans in our train car were happy to have lucked into a pair for £550 EACH. Maybe they were amongst the rugby fans we saw outside Waterloo, getting a 4:30 A.M. start on their beer drinking celebrations!) The queue to buy metro tickets was quite long, which gave me enough time to rehearse in my head what I was going to say to the cashier, but my thoughts were interrupted when a man budded in line, confidently taking his wrongful place in front of me. Surprised, I said in English, "Excuse me, there's a queue," to which he muttered something in French under his breath, shrugged his shoulders, smirked, and didn't budge. This was almost too much for my sleepy language skills, but I managed to say again, in the most halting of French and my most outraged tone: "Excuse me, everyone here is waiting in line!" and as I motioned to the long queue, the (also English-speaking) man behind me looked the offender in the eye and said, "Non, monsieur, NON!" Faced with the two of us, the interloper moved to the back of the line. After a less dramatic metro ride than ticket queue, Bob and I arrived at Christina and Paul's apartment in the heart of the Marais. The two uppermost floors with the flowerpots are theirs, with the lower set of windows belonging to their living room and the upper set belonging to the study, which would be our temporary bedroom since Paul was away this week:

The interior courtyard of their building complex is a lovely, quiet interlude

from the vibrant street below.

By the time we settled in, our tummies were growling for lunch, and Christina suggested a nearby place that ended up being a lovely start to our Paris visit:

I had one of my favourite Paris lunches, croque madame, but was so hungry that I forget to get a picture of it before it disappeared from my plate! Too bad, because it was particularly good, with an unheard-of (at least to me) two eggs instead of one gracing the top of the sandwich, and double the runny yolk = double the lip-smacking satisfaction. After lunch, we met up with Rachel, a Vancouverite who got Christina's name through one of those someone-I-know-knows-someone-you-know-and-I'm-going-to-be-in-your-city connections. Rachel was partway through a fascinating trip: after teaching in Korea for several years, she was heading back to Vancouver WITHOUT FLYING. So far she'd been through China and Russia, and was currently making her way through Europe before she would leave England on a boat (!) bound for Florida, from where she'd cross North America at her leisure. The four of us wandered around Paris this afternoon, taking in the ambiance of the streets

and peering at some of the details of Notre Dame

before moving along for more pressing (at least to Bob!) matters. Here's a clue for the French-speakers out there:
We each had two scoops (deux boules) of Berthillon ice cream to go along with today's sunshine. Never mind the chilly air; it's always perfect ice-cream weather in Paris! Here's my cone of fig and dark chocolate:
(Bob stuck to his favourite order: two scoops of dark chocolate.) Our post-treat wandering brought more street sights,

including far too many plaques telling sad tales, like this memorial for the Jewish headteacher, teachers, and students at this school who were deported and killed during WWII.
On a much lighter note, I quite liked the name of this shop--"waters of life" is definitely more poetic than "spirits":
This shop's bread display caught my eye--although it was strange to see it behind a window that boasted traditional ice cream.
I loved this gorgeous book cover

and flipped through it at another shop later today: Un Lion à Paris is a wonderful story with beautiful drawings that will make any lover of this city smile. Also smiling was this cute pig, sitting in a pot on this traiteur (deli) sign:
This period parade livened up the streets as it promoted special late-night events at the nearby National Archives.
It wouldn't be a day in Paris without some puppy sightings, and both of today's pics are of wee pups, sitting very still on the pavement, without any owner in sight. This first one sat, frozen, at the edge of the road, oblivious to traffic and passers-by,
while this one sat near a strange sign that proclaimed the space as the neighbourhood "Dog's Bar" complete with "happy hour"!
We stopped by the Pompidou Museum for a peek into its shops and were treated to a bit of spoken word via headphones as well,

but didn't stay too long, since it was time for dinner and we went back to Christina's to arrange to meet another two Vancouverites we know, Leah and Kevin, who happened to be visiting Paris at the same time as us. At Christina's suggestion, the six of us headed to nearby Chez Marianne,
a great, lively place where Bob and I have had delicious takeout desserts on our previous visits (oh the things they do with poppy seeds), but have never tried the sit-down dinner. Although we went into the restaurant above, they were full, and we were led across the street to an overflow dining room.
We were the first people seated in the pretty room, but even the overflow room was soon completely full--it was easy to understand why once we dug into Chez Marianne's glorious platters of mezes:
After dinner, we spilled out onto the street between the main restaurant and the extra dining room
and strolled around the neighbourhood in an effort to walk off a bit of our dinner.

Since we were last in Paris, a bike-sharing system, Velib, has cropped up all over the city. Free for the first thirty minutes (and only 1€ for the next half-hour), you can take a bike from one station and return it to any station in the city. We saw a lot of people riding these city bikes during our visit and are looking forward to trying them out on our next (warmer) visit to Paris!
We returned to Christina's and said our goodbyes, but not before I took one pic in the courtyard. It's not the best-lit of photos, but, from left to right, Christina, Bob, Leah, and Kevin still dutifully posed for the camera:
(Rachel headed back to her hotel shortly after dinner, but you'll get to see her in tomorrow's post.) Leah and Kevin headed off to Barcelona the next day, and we're definitely looking forward to hearing all about that leg of their trip. As for us, once we went to bed around midnight, we fell asleep almost instantly, which wasn't surprising when you remember that we woke up today at 3:15 A.M. alllllllllllllll those hours ago!