Paris.

First of all, I can't think you Dgrinners enough for being so awesomely supportive of your peers. The feedback and comments for my previous Chernobyl posts have been more than I ever would have expected, and I do appreciate knowing that folks out there learned something from our travels!

The part that I didn't really talk about before was the 10 days before that part of the trip.

To start, my husband and I flew from San Francisco to Paris, France. I have been to Paris twice before, but both were different circumstances. The first time I went with my sister, the second with my closest friend. Yet strangely I had never been to the City of Love with my True Love, so off we went for the greatest date night ever.

Somehow I'd never seen the movie Amelie until just a few weeks before we left, so of course we had to hit Montmartre and the great sights it has to offer:





The best part is that the questionably-homeless dude I saw last time was feeding pigeons right next to us while I was shooting this. A year later. If that's not poetry, I don't know what is.

I love Paris and the beautiful architecture:





After our hike around the top of la butte Montmartre, we were ready for lunch. I looked around for the Cafe Butte but didn't see it. So instead we settled for La Refuge, which turned out to be a great choice. Our waitress's English was comparable to my French, and she was full of life. She reminded me so much of a female version of Sam from Benny and Joon. We loved her.

Cutting chunks of bread for the after-lunch crowd:



A "half" bottle of red wine is, apparently, a full bottle of wine. Much more than we typically drink so we had a little fun for the hour and a half or so we spent sitting there, watching patrons come in.



Finally we hauled our gear off the floor and ambled our way back to our hotel.



I kept poking Trav to not go to sleep (you'll never beat jet lag that way!!) but he insisted on passing out for a couple of hours. While I recorded our travels in my travelog I noticed the apartment across from our hotel window had some laundry out to dry. Something about turquoise underwear drying in the breeze struck me as just so freaking French. Plus the bra never moved until after we had checked out the next day. The weather was cold. I doubt it was actually dry.

My dirty little secret is that every time I'm in Paris I adore looking into people's windows and seeing how they live. The contrast from room to room is sometimes quick jarring.

In the evening we headed out to the city centre to catch some shots. Sunset was not entirely impressive, but I was right: There is little else that is satisfying as walking along the Seine with a hot date:



Self-portraits:



We found ourselves crossing Pont Neuf, which actually was quite amusing due to our mutual love of Jason Bourne. (Are YOU f***ing Matt Damon?)







I admit that my attraction to the Louvre is largely sentimental, but it was quite beautiful during the blue hour. However, it was also quite gusty and cold and I was getting famished by this point. I could not stop thinking about frites. Beautiful, hot, crispy, melt-on-the-tongue frites...

And we found them! On a whim we ducked into La Royale, some random bistro in that stretch of blocks between the Louvre and L'Opéra.

By the way, if there's any place in the world I'm going to break my dietary rules, it's Paris.



Thank god the waitress didn't speak English. I am tired of not being able to practice my French!



The frites were EVERYTHING I wanted, and more. Seriously, I have had many, many experiences when I had a mad hankering for something and couldn't get it. This was not one of those. Paris gets top marks for satisfaction.

We opted to walk back to our hotel rather than take the metro. It was a gorgeous night and our trip of a lifetime was just beginning. The following morning I wanted no-holds-barred French croissants. Not spongey tourist-pandering bready things like we had the previous morning. Real crispy croissants with a proper coffee.

Bingo:



Even though it's $30 USD for two people to get coffee, croissants and a small glass of orange juice, I'll pay it. How often are you in the City of Love with Someone You Love? Seriously, I would not trade these experiences for the world.

.... even with the strikes. Those famous French strikes. We were done in Paris and headed to Gare du Nord to catch a train to the Netherlands. And there was definitely something funky with the rail lines then. We weren't able to buy our tickets the usual way so we had to just hop the train and hope we didn't get kicked off en route.

A few days later we learned there were massive strikes in France and the fuel shortage was in full swing. By then we were out of the country, just ahead of the wave.

More later!