After the rainy weather of the last few days, and the whole week of rainy weather ahead of us, today was an absolutely gorgeous winter day for Paris. Clear skies most of the day, relatively warm (10C), and just a slight breeze. A perfect day for sight-seeing with the inlaws!
We started by walking to Luxembourg gardens which was pretty in the early morning light. Well it was like 9am, but since the sun doesn't get up until 8:43AM, it makes it easy to be up for the sunrise. I've never gotten up so early relative to the sun in my life!
After getting a bagel for breakfast (there actually weren't that many things open nor that many people out) we went to the Pantheon. The dome is under repair at the moment so it's not "quite" as spectacular looking as usual, but it's still impressive. It was originally built as a church but during the French revolution was re-purposed for secular purposes to be a mausoleum for the greatest Frenchmen. Inside you can find the burial places for Voltaire, Rousseau, Marie Curie, Louis Braille, Victor Hugo, and many more. It was pretty impressive and I'd recommend it.
Next we went to the Cluny Middle Ages museum which while it has a lot of really old impressive things, I'm kind of burnt out on yet more tapestries and stained glass and old crosses. It gets good reviews on Trip Advisor, but I wouldn't recommned it unless you're REALLY into the middle ages.
Afterwards we went to see Notre Dame during the day, and I wandered around Île de la Cité while my in-laws visited St Chapelle which I'd already been too. I stopped and got a glass of wine in a cafe, and just tried to feel Parisian. It was pretty nice actually! Afterwards we went to the Eiffel Tower, getting out at the Trocadéro metro stop and then walking down the hill to pass underneath the tower. The most surprising thing was how crowded it was, and that there were tons of tourists getting scammed by shell games along the bridge to the Eiffel Tower (guess where the ball is under the 3 cups I switch around). Do people not realize this is a centuries old scam?
We then went to a delicious bakery near the Eiffel tower (that has no web presence) and Popelini in the 3rd which has unique cream puffs.
Finally we made our way to the Marché des Enfants Rouges (Red Children Market, named after the uniforms of the orphans who lived here) which is an international food market. It was only half open due to the holidays, but had a lot of interesting food choices. If you're in the area it's worth going, but probably not worth it for a short Paris stay.
Other great discoveries today were some really pretty Parisian Christmas postcards in the gift shop of the Pantheon. I'd been looking for the last few weeks for something Christmasy to send friends, and the fancy postcards fit the bill. They're actually in French too, which always annoys me when you have t-shirts/postcards in English when the words are totally different for the local language. I want to send a Joyeux Noël card, not a Merry Christmas card!
We also finally found cinnamon, baking powder, and brown sugar! This is what makes everyday things such an adventure when living in France, since these common items are somewhat difficult to find and under very different names. Brown sugar has a completely different name than the literal translation, and baking powder has the same name as "yeast" (levure) except that baking power is "levure chimique" once you Google search it. And cinnamon (cannelle) is just hard to find for some reason...
There was one bad part of the day though, when I looked on our local bakery's door and saw they had left a note saying they'd be closed until December 30th. A whole week without fresh bread a minute from our flat? What kind of torture is this!?!?
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