Takin’ It Easy

As you can no doubt tell, we’ve been keeping pretty busy so far, so we decided to take today a bit easier. As a happy side effect, this means that the post today will be much shorter in length, and consequently shorter to write. We got up late, got some tasty tasty pastries, and took the train to Montmarte. We started at Sacré-Coeur, a large church on the hill:

The light! It buuurrrns us! (I definitely need to get sunglasses)

My uncle Kevin and I had been joking about having a footrace up the Eiffel Tower. Needless to say, cooler heads prevailed, by which I mean we chickened out. However, Kevin decided that racing up the steps of Sacré-Coeur would be a good substitute:

Notice the head start he gave himself before telling me we were racing.

Despite Kevin’s underhanded tactics, I still managed to come out the winner:

Too slow, grampa!

Pictures were not allowed inside the church, so I don’t actually have any of the inside. However, I will tell you that it is a very nice church. We did go up to the cupola, however, and I do have pictures from there:

I seem to like climbing a lot of tall things and then taking pictures of other tall things.

We then descended from the cupola into the crypt. All of these older churches and monuments in Paris seem to have the same kind of thin, windy stairs, and this was no exception. There’s never any indication how much further you have to go, so if you are claustrophobic, beware. Afterwards, we wandered around and found a little Deli and got sandwiches. They also had a bunch of colored liquid in bottles that it claimed were “specialty lemonades” or something of that ilk. However, with flavors like “raspberry,” “mint,” and “bubblegum,” I’m not sure how they qualify as lemonade. Maybe they all also have lemon in them? If so, the bubblegum sounds gross. Scratch that, a bubblegum flavored drink sounds gross in general.

We then wandered around for a bit, and I decided I’d like to walk over to see the Moulin Rouge. So you know how the Moulin Rouge used to be in a pretty risque part of town? Well, it hasn’t changed much. That was, um, awkward, since we were there with my 11 year old cousin. One of the stores we saw confused me a bit:

Over here you got your melons, here are some bananas, here you have some buns...

I’m pretty sure I know what they mean, but I don’t think I’d call that a “supermarket.” Maybe it means something slightly different in France. Anyway, we did eventually sure find the Moulin Rouge:

Now to find that Green Fairy...

We then pretty much just went back to the apartment, bought some food, cooked it, played some cards, and went to sleep!

Woo, this post is only about a quarter the length of the previous posts. Good times, good times.

BONUS: Finally, finally, pictures of the apartment. It is located on L’ile Saint Louis, which is one of the islands in Paris in the Seine. To get in, you enter a set of doors from the street:

This leads into a little open-air courtyard which seems to be the norm for living in Paris.

There’s an upper floor with sort of low couches, the bathroom, and a bedroom:

There’s a set of stairs (sans railing) leading to the basement:

The basement is a converted wine cellar, and has a kitchen:

It also has a bed and a sort-of-couch, so we used it as another bedroom.

Overall, small, but nice. A good fit for what we wanted, and an excellent location.

Advertisement