For our last full day in Paris (and our last full day in Europe), we wanted to relax. I know, it sounds a little odd, but we'd been on the go so much over the past three weeks that we really just wanted to chill and prepare ourselves for the journey home. After all, going forward eight hours is a lot easier than going backward, and though we were greatly looking forward to going home at this point, even the idea of having to go back to our original timezone was daunting to say the least. So, for our last day, we did what we really wanted to do in Paris, and what most women say you should do in Paris:
We went shopping.
Yes, this means that we had a full day of shopping in London, and another in Paris... but we bought more in Paris. We also shopped on a Thursday, which meant places weren't as busy and far less stressful to look though. Oh, and sales. What woman doesn't like a good sale?!
Mum had Googled good places for shopping the night before, and come up with the Galeries Lafayette and another called Printemps right next door, which were (thankfully) only one short train ride away. That was where we started our morning. And to our great pleasure, when we walked inside, we came across none other than Angelina's.
In case you've forgotten, that's the place where we got hot chocolate and pastries a couple days ago. It's still delicious. This time, we ordered tea and coffee, and croissants -- all of which are amazing, and if you're in Paris, you should definitely go to Angelina's. They have the best hot chocolate in the country, and I'd say they have some of the best croissants ever as well. Also, fresh squeezed grapefruit juice. Yum. Yes please.
The Galeries Lafayette is seven levels of amazingness (though the seventh is just the terrace). The entire building we were in is devoted to women's clothes, accessories, etc. There were whole sections of coats, others of gloves, scarves, jewelry, perfume, dress clothes, casual wear, sports wear, lingerie, hosiery, shoes (of course!), and literally every pretty thing you could possibly want. Oh, and the top level was a mass of Parisian souvenirs, books, and writing stuff. You know me and writing stuff. ;-)
We took our time and went through each and every level that appealed to us, making note of the places we might want to go back to and try things on, until we got to level six -- the souvenirs. Here, the real shopping began. I'm not sure how long we spent up there, but we came down with some fun trinkets to remember our trip, and when we came down we were nowhere near done shopping. We went back to each of the designers we'd written down, and of course ended up getting a few things. When in Paris, shop!
I don't think I've ever seen a shopping mall so expansive and so much fun. I mean, we went into both Selfridges and Harrods while we were in London, but both were on the weekend and it was hard to get a feel for how nice the places were. This, because it was a Thursday and early enough in the day that no one else was out yet, was a really nice was to get to see the shopping in Paris. I greatly look forward to coming back!
When we'd semi had our fill of Lafayette, we walked down the street to Printemps. It's not as nice, I'll admit, but it's still nicer than anything we have in Albuquerque. I don't think that's hard to do.
All the way up on the sixth floor (yeah, there's six floors of women's stuff in this place too), there's a cafe. I don't remember what it's called, but actually, I don't think I ever knew. I think we just walked up and sat down. If you've been watching my Instagram, then you've seen pictures of our lunch there!
We each ordered a glass of wine (the house wines in Paris are just amazing -- no need or order high end) and split a plate of beef tartare with a side of fries. Kinda sounds weird, but when you taste the two together you see how well they go. It was amazing. I'd never had tartare before, but I like my meat rare so I figured it couldn't be much of a stretch. It wasn't. I want more tartare. Anyone have any good recipes?
In Printemps we pretty much spent our time looking for gifts for other people. I won't say who for or what they are, just so certain someone's don't find out what they're getting before we get it to them. ;-)
It ended with us going back to Lafayette and picking up a few things for another certain someone and then making our way back to the apartment to get ourselves situated and get our bags back in order. After all, we'd just bought a bunch of stuff, and our bags were mostly full already. Oops.
After almost an hour in the apartment, spent looking up restaurants in the area and trying to make everything fit in our bags, we left in search of dinner.
By now it was 7:00, later than either of us like to eat, but we wanted to do something a little more Parisian on our last night here. So we wandered around the area and looked at menus. At one point we ducked inside a restaurant and sat down, only to look at the menu and realize that absolutely nothing there sounded good. The staff didn't seem too displeased at our leaving without ordering, which made us feel a little better.
The hard part about finding a place to eat in Paris is that though every place has their menu posted outside, most of them aren't in English. So, though something might look good, you really can't tell what it is. And though some of those places also have English menus, they don't have them posted outside, and it gets old to continuously walk into restaurants and check for English. In the end, we realized that no matter what place we looked at, we were always comparing it to the restaurant we went to on our first night here, La Gorille. So, in good logic, we went back.
Surprisingly, and quite happily, they'd gotten an English menu by now! The last time, the waiter had kindly translated as much as he could, in adorable broken English. This time, he proudly came to our came and offered us something in our own language. Huzzah!
Again, if you've been watching my Instagram, then you'll know what we had for dinner. I ordered a rabbit fricassee with stewed onions and white raisins and a side of mashed potatoes, and Mum had cod with fried parsnips in a parsley sauce. The duck we'd had the other night was amazing, and if possible, this was even better.
Let me start this by stating a simple fact: I don't like raisins. I'd fully planned on picking them off my food and eating around them. But when they were put in front of me, I figured I should at least try one, you know, to be polite. And then I found myself constantly digging through onions to find more raisins, because the raisins were amazing and made every bite superbly delicious. Seriously, I know it's hard to eat a rabbit cause they're so cute and fuzzy and all, but they're so yummy that I really didn't care. I could've had two of them and been very happy.
Mum's cod was amazing too! It was perfectly cooked, flaky and delicious with crispy skin, and the parnips underneath were so good that neither of us could stop eating them. The sauce paired perfectly with both of them, brightening up the dish and transforming the cod from plain white fish into something so yummy that you couldn't not eat every last bite.
Yeah, we ate it all. And then we got dessert.
Before we get to that though, I have a little joke to tell you. It's a bad one, I'll warn you. But we're sleepy, and we have been for a while, so things like this are hilarious.
Me and Mum were talking about parsnips, which were in her dinner. And really, they're like a cross between a carrot and a potato. So logically, I said that they could be called a cotato, because they couldn't be a parrot.
Yep, that's the whole joke. Yep, it's awful.
Moving on. Dessert!
Ever put dark chocolate and lime together? Yeah, me either. But put them together in a mousse and add little tiny pieces of white chocolate for texture, and you have this dessert. And it was amazing. We ordered one to share, and we had it polished off in no time. It was delivered, and in minutes it was gone. It would've been sooner, but it took me a minute to get a picture and post it to Instagram. ;-)
All in all, this was a great day in Paris. We both got exactly what we were looking for, we had a great time in each other's company and enjoying both the food and the experience of Paris shopping. It's definitely something that I would recommend doing, especially if you're one of those who's a huge fan of Paris already. Me, I'm a London girl, but Paris may have it when it comes to the shops.
The next day, our last day in Europe, we decided to do something a little more touristy. But first, we had to pack everything up and take it up the ridiculous windy staircase in our host's house, which, by the way, had been painted black. So not only was it tiny and winding, but we couldn't see where we were going when we were on it. No bueno. We had to work together to get each suitcase back up the stairs without dinging the walls.
See, check out at the place we were staying was supposed to be at eleven in the morning, when the housekeeper came to clean everything up for the next guests. But our flight wasn't until eight that night, so our host was kind enough to let us leave our suitcases at the apartment as long as they were packed and upstairs, and nothing was in the housekeeper's way. Which meant we had to get everything back up to the top. But we made it without too much error, and by ten that morning we were on our way to our final touristy destinations: Notre Dame and Saint-Chappel.
Now, something that we'd discovered along this trip was that neither me nor Mum are very good at walking slowly. We walk fast. We do it at home, too. I have no idea how to do anything slowly, actually. I like the idea of meandering through an area, but I just can't do it. That was why we figured we could easily fit two places into this morning and afternoon.
It started with a walk across the river to the little island thingy where both Chappel and Notre Dame are located. We walked past Notre Dame on our way to Chappel, taking a few pictures of its side and some of the interesting architecural features before we continued on.
If you don't know what Saint-Chappel is, you really need to look it up. There's stained-glass as far as the eye can see, and it's stunningly beautiful. Every piece is different and intricate, depicting biblical scenes or scenes from the history of the area, and there's no way to take it all in in the span of a short time like that. In fact, we spent the better part of an hour just photographing the glass, trying to capture as much of it as we could so when we got home we'd be able to zoom in and see some of it a little more closely. As always, pictures to come, as soon as I can.
From there, we walked down to Notre Dame. The interesting thing about this place was that neither of us had any desire to go inside. The part we really liked about it was the outside, the architectural features that made the building so very unique. Seeing it from the side, you wouldn't think it's the same building that you see from the front. Same with the back! When we first saw it, from behind, we weren't sure what building it was. Then we came around to where we could see the front, the iconic image of Notre Dame, and it took our breath away. Beautiful. In my eyes, it's a must see if you're in Paris. Even if you don't go inside, just go look at it. It's fascinating (and the gargoyles are pretty fun too).
When we'd taken a sufficiently exhuberant number of pictures there, we walked to the other side of the river in search of an early lunch. There was one specific food that we'd been looking for since we'd arrived in Paris, a food that I greatly enjoy here in the States but that came from France and is supposed to be superb in Paris. Croque Madame.
Basically, it's a ham and cheese sandwich with a cheese sauce over the top and a fried egg over it all. And it's delicious.
We'd been looking for one for a while, and we hadn't found anything, which was sad. Some places had them, but they only served them in the afternoon (while here in the States it's more of a breakfast food). And then we came upon a little Italian place that had Croque Monsieur, and whose owner said they could make it into a Madame for us. Yay!
We were the only people in the little restaurant at that hour, which was nice since it meant we could sit in the quiet and enjoy our final lunch in Europ. Which felt strange. We'd been planning this trip for years (literally), and now it was coming to a close. With only slight melancholy, we ate our lunch and remarked on how authentic the Croque Madame is at this little place back in Albuquerque, La Quiche, and when we finished eating, the owner came up an rattled off a list of crepes we could have to complete the meal.
Neither of us had planned on dessert... but crepes! So we ordered a crepe suzette to split, after he described it for us. Basically, it's a crepe with candied orange inside, covered in Grand Mariner and set aflame tableside. Oh my goodness was it delicious. The Grand Marnier and the orange paired together so well that we almost thought about ordering a second one, but we knew we had a long flight that night, and it was probably best if we didn't eat too much beforehand.
By this time, it was only about noon. That meant we still had eight hours before our flight. We had to check out of the place we were staying no later than five, but it was going to be a half hour taxi ride to the airport and we knew nothing about that airport, so we wanted to leave early... but not eight hours early.
So what did the fast-walkers do? We walked around, of course!
But we wanted to stay in the general area of Bastille, close to the apartment, so it wouldn't be too much of a jaunt to go get our bags. Also, Google has no idea what's in this area. Seriously. No idea whatsoever. Every other place where we were, in every other city, Google knew what was around. Here, it hadn't a clue. So in wandering around, we ended up finding a lot of cute places that we wishes we'd known about before, so we could've gone to them earlier in the trip. Our bags were packed by now, so we couldn't have bought anything even if we wanted to. No point in shopping, then.
We walked down to the pantheon, which I still don't know what it is. It's a big building with a dome on top. I don't know. We weren't sure what to do. So back down to Notre Dame we went, to see how long the lines were to go inside. Too long for our liking. Okay... It was only a twenty minute walk to the Luxembourg Gardens, so we went there. It was pretty, but nothing like Versailles or St Stephen's Green or any of the parks we'd been to anywhere else. It was, however, a decent place to sit down and enjoy our last hours in Paris. We walked through the gardens and took pictures of the fountains, the statues, the flowers. We tried to make ourselves walk slowly, to enjoy everything that was around and before us, but of course, when you have a flight later that day, it's hard to think of anything but that flight.
It was a forty minute walk back to the apartment, which was longer than we'd anticipated, but doable. So we started back. By three, we'd arrived there and were hauling our things down the main spiral staircase, toward the ground floor, excitement starting to encroach about going back home and seeing the people we love. This trip was fun, but it'd been three weeks away from everyone, and it was time to get back.
We caught a taxi just outside. We'd thought about doing the underground in Paris, but it just would've been too much of a hassle with all our bags, and we'd only just started to make sense of the system in this country. Taxis are easier, and now it's a set rate if you're going to the airport, so we knew upfront how much it was going to be.
CDG Airport in Paris is weird. Really, really weird. We had a hard time figuring out what we were doing. There were shops just inside, where you could get duty free stuff if you were from out of the country. But there weren't any signs for going through security, for getting to your gate. Odd. Then we came across these escalator tubes that take you up to another level of shops and eateries, but again, nothing about going through security and finding our gate. Down a looooooong corridor somewhere on that level, we finally found it. But we couldn't tell if there were places to eat on the other side of it, and we had no idea who we could ask to find out. See, by now it was close to four in the afternoon, our flight wasn't until eight, and we wanted to eat a little something before we got on our way.
Fortunately, we found a little kiosk that tells you what's by your gate, once your scan your boarding pass. That made things easier. On the other side of security, according to the kiosk, there would be a few shops and a couple of eateries. Only, when we got through security, nothing was open.
Apparently, though all the rest of the shops and eateries in the whole airport were open, those near the gates only open two hours before any flight leaves. Which is a little annoying if you want to eat something before your flight, cause it's nicer to digest a bit before getting on a plane, if you know what I mean. *sigh* so we waited. After all, once you're on this side of security, you can't go back.
It was a long wait, but we made the best of it. We sat close to our gate and talked about the trip, all the fun things we'd done and new experiences we'd had. Neither of us could honestly say what was our favorite part of the trip, what one thing stood out above all the rest. But we both knew what place was in my heart, what place I still wanted to go back to.
We'd gotten to see plays, eat foreign food, see historical sights, castles, and palaces, venture into new worlds of culture and language, and neither of us had gotten enough. This trip will not be our last.
At eight that evening, we boarded our flight for New York. This time, I won't bore you with minute details of the trip. All we did from here on out was go home. I watched Godzilla to drown out the noise of a crying child, Finding Dory to help me fall asleep, all the while watching Mum semi-peacefully rest beside me. When we arrived in New York, we semi-chaotically found our way to our hotel (the AirTrain service was down, so everything was a mess), where we stayed only about six hours before we were on our way again.
Saturday was a day of taxis, flights, and eventually landing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to find not just Dad but my brother and sister-in-law too, waiting for us just outside the terminal. They'd even brought our Nelson dog with them, confusedly sitting in the car wondering why he wasn't allowed to go outside. Our family helped us with our bags and brought us home. The boys went out and got pizza and wings, and Mum and I regaled them with tales from our trip. We unpacked our bags and gave out the little souvenirs we'd bought for everyone, talking about what we'd gone through to pick everything out.
And now, my friends. I'm home. In fact, I'm sitting in bed as I write these words, the end to our Europe adventure. It's Sunday morning, and the melancholy has started to set in. We've spent two years planning this adventure, and now it's over. I didn't even recognize my own room last night. We're no longer in Europe, and pieces of my heart have been left behind.
But not to worry!
I still have a lot more European things to share with you. I'm still on semi-hiatus from Too Many Books to Count until sometime in November, so keep your eyes out for posts about my top things to do in each country we've visited, tips and tricks for getting around and traveling safely, best eateries (of course), and pictures of everywhere we've gone.
Thank you so much for joining me and Mumsy on our adventure! We've enjoyed sharing it with all of you!
[love and stamps in our passports]
{Rani D. + Mumsy}
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