Death, Ascension, Heaven, and Hell

Quite the theme for this post, eh?  It really is pretty appropriate, though, since we visited all four by dinner.  The Catacombs, Montmartre, the Sacre Coeur, and Pigalle - the respective synonyms for these Parisian staples fit rather well.  As I mentioned before, I'd never visited the first three, so it was an exciting day.





Death.  The Catacombs of Paris, quite literally, are full of it.  The sign at the entrance warns you: Arrête: C'est ici l'empire de la mort - "Stop: Here is the empire of the dead."  Kind of a grave greeting (pun intended), isn't it?  The catacombs are part of the caves and tunnels carved out of the rock underneath Paris' streets, the only part open to the public.  The rest of the tunnels are shrouded in legend and myth, closed off to the casual visitor yet spanning 280 kilometers in reach.  My favorite story involves police stumbling upon a secret cavern and the eery circumstances of it all.  I mean, it's straight out of a novel or a movie.  The old entrance to the city was right around the current entrance to the tourist site, and it was given the name Hell's Gate.

As for us, halfway through the tunnel we passed under the sign that warned us of our entrance into the actual ossuary, and that's where things got interesting.  Six million people rest there, and you see a lot of them.  Bones upon skulls upon more bones are stacked on each side of the path, often elaborately fit together so that they could fit as many as possible.  Memorials are interspersed throughout and you can touch as many as you want... or none at all, of course (the memorial in the photo above translates to "Come, people of the world, come into these silent abodes and your tranquil soul will be struck by the voice that rises from within.  It's here that the greatest of schoolmasters, the Tomb, holds its school of truth.").  Even in a place so overwhelmed with death and generally-accepted scenes of repulsion, it was actually really peaceful.  I wasn't sure how I'd feel walking through, but I felt much the same as I would in any of the Parisian cathedrals - calm, respectful, in awe, and not at all revolted by any of it.

Ascension.  I was feeling renewed, ready to climb back to the surface and keep climbing up to Montmartre.  Taking one of the longest metro rides possible while still remaining inside the city itself (20 stops on the same line!), we emerged in Montmartre.  The artist's nirvana, it's a village within a metropolis, known for cultivating the talents of Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, Salvador Dali, Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec - even Langston Hughes, believe it or not.  Lunch at a nice, if slightly overpriced, bistro felt like Paris in pure form, and I definitely needed a beer after all of the walking we'd done so far.  However, there was still more to be done, and at a steeper clip.  We climbed at least 100 stairs, which look like a 'roided-up version of the stairs from The Exorcist down which the priest gets thrown to his doom, to reach the Sacre Coeur, the highest point in all of Paris.



Paris, from the Sacre Coeur

Heaven.  Well, sort of.  You could see from one end of the city to the other, with familiar glimpses of the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the spire of the Sainte-Chappelle, and the Centre Pompidou.  Inside, you are forbidden to talk above a whisper, and you can add it to the list of beautiful cathedrals in Paris.  The big Pope's hat on the hill is a favorite of school kids and couples during the day, and of gypsies and the homeless by night.  I really wish we'd known that we could have climbed up the dome, but we missed out because we had no idea.  Wish #2 from my imaginary Montmartre genie would be that I wish we had a better idea of Montmartre's layout, because we could've visited a few of the cooler places there on the way down from the Sacre Coeur, instead of just bypassing it on the way to Pigalle.  If we're going with the three wishes theme, my last wish would be to have a house in Montmartre, duh.

Hell.  Pigalle.  And I don't mean Pigalle is Hell in that it's a horrible, despicable place, but more so that it's a hub of debauchery and hedonism.  Visiting where I stayed for the first time in Paris, I felt much more comfortable during the day with a few companions than last time, at night by myself.  The sex shops, strip clubs, and brothels-in-disguise looked much less menacing than before.  We ignored the Asian "performer" outside who was playing innocent to try to lure people into their club, but some tourist had no idea what was going on and got sucked in.  Poor guy.  We confirmed that we couldn't afford a show at the Moulin Rouge (80 euros to get in, a lot more than that if you wanted dinner/champagne to with it), so we looked for a bar.

Going through all of the afterlife's various states was exhausting, so a pre-dinner nap was on tap (shocker).  And remember how I said you shouldn't go looking for a decent meal between rue Saint-Jacques and boulevard Saint-Michel?  Yeah, well, we pushed our luck and ended up on the losing side this time.  The food wasn't good, but at least the company was.  Bummed about our dinner misfortune, we turned in early, but drinking wine in the apartment wasn't a bad consolation by any means (and cheaper!).  The benefits of staying in an apartment just kept adding up!

It's possible to have too much of the Champs Elysées

March flowers in the Jardin des Tuileries

It's official, I'm jaded.  What else is better than strolling along one of the most famous streets in the world on a Parisian spring day?  Well, there's a whole list, and I'll go into greater detail in a later blog post, but if you're not shopping then the Champs Elysées is kind of pointless if you've already been there before.  Sometimes there are just way too many other things you can be doing that you feel like you're wasting precious time.  Don't get me wrong, I love the Arc de Triomphe and the history it stands for at the top of the hill, and I love the Grand Palais, Jardin de Tuileries, and l'Orangerie (still haven't been inside, but I want to!) at the Louvre end - but I can do without all of the in-between, unless I'm looking for something specific, like my France jersey, of course!

Before I start sounding like a grumpy old man (too late?), allow me to set this up.  Back when I was studying abroad, I lost my passport and had to go to the American embassy in Paris to get a new one.  The receptionist at my scruffy hotel in Pigalle told me to metro to the Arc de Triomphe and the embassy was right around there.  Wrong.  A thousand times wrong.  Getting off the metro at the Arc left me 2 km away from the embassy.  So, running short on time and having no idea how far I had to go, I ended up running halfway until I finally gave up and took a taxi the rest of the way in order to make my appointment on time.  It got worse from there, but the point is this: bad memories.  No, the Champs Elysées wasn't to blame, but it's all about guilt by association.

On top of that moment, though, it's just hard to get into the stores and cafés around the George V metro stop.  Overpriced and not very reminiscent of vieux Paris, it's just not my bag - I'd rather shop in the Marais, around Châtelet, or, if I had the money, at Place de la Vendôme.  I didn't have all of these thoughts until after the fact, of course, since I was too busy being Grumpy McGee.  I felt like we were wasting an afternoon, but it was my fault for waffling and not coming up with other suggestions.




La tour Eiffel

 The day started out great, though, with a nice metro out to the Eiffel Tower.  I hadn't yet ridden on an above-ground metro in Paris, so part of line 6 provided a welcome break from the underground metro-boulot-dodo (look it up) atmosphere.  It kind of reminded me of Chicago, riding above the street, breeze coming through open windows, green trees lining the sidewalks below.  We did the Eiffel Tower thing, which is always nice because the scenery (the Champ de Mars, Trocadéro, the Seine, etc.) really can make a twisted metal structure look pretty special.  We played the obligatory game of "Dodge the Overbearing Guys Selling Crappy Souvenirs" and ended up getting lunch on a street corner by the Seine.

Sailboats in the fountain, framed by the Musee d'Orsay

One lady even asked if I lived in the neighborhood and if I knew where such-and-such place was.  Stifling a desire to hug her, I shook my head no.  Désolé, mais merci beaucoup !  I'd done it, ladies and gentlemen - I'd finally been mistaken for a local Parisian!  My life's work was complete at that moment, and I could revel in the fact that I nailed my clothing choice, body language, and other comportments that day.  If I could remember how I did it, I'd tell you, but I probably just had a blackout moment and everything clicked.

Another pleasant metro ride took us to the Arc de Triomphe.  The serenity under the Arc is amazing considering the kamikaze driving situation going on around it on the Place Charles de Gaulle.  We even found some street performers that we had seen on our visit back in 2009 in the Latin Quarter, which was awesome!  They're 3 great dancers who always seem to attract big crowds, and I would bet that they pocket some good change for it.  But then came the trek past the countless stores and people (Haagen-Dazs ice cream helped!), and we were spent by the time we reached the Jardin des Tuileries.  At that point, I didn't care about the kids sailing boats in the dormant fountain or the flowers just starting to bloom.  I was exhausted, ready for a pre-dinner nap, and I wasn't the only one.

Our friend Chuck de Gaulle

Luck was on our side as, somehow, we found this great place for cheap in the Latin Quarter for dinner.  They say you shouldn't eat between rue Saint-Jacques and Boulevard Saint-Michel, and I wholeheartedly agree, but we found a place that worked out great.  Hors d'oeuvre, main plate, and dessert for 10 euros, and they were all good.  I don't advise doing this, because the success rate is slim in finding a solid place, but we got incredibly lucky.  We even found this place called The Great Canadian Pub along the river that was everything you'd imagine a stereotypical Canuck pub to be like - hockey and boat racing on TV, all wood interior, Labatt and such on tap - sounds pretty good there, eh?  A few brews there and we were ready to call it a night.

We were excited about the next day, especially me, when we'd visit the Catacombs, the Sacre Coeur, Montmartre, and Pigalle.  I'd never been to any of those places except Pigalle, and even that would be interesting to return to the site where I stayed 2 years ago.  I couldn't wait!

Allez les Bleus !



The goofy author

I woke up and it was game day - kind of like a Hokies gameday, but not - and I needed to equip myself with some FFF (Fédération Française de Football) swag.  We emerged from our quiet little residential oasis on rue des Ecoles, headed in the direction of the Champs Elysées, and more specifically, the Nike Paris store.  I really wish I had some more money to throw around, because the shirts and shoes in there are awesome, and some can't be found in the States.  My new France away jersey seriously depleted my spending money for the day, but it was totally worth it.  The team was only unveiling it later that night at the game, so I was one of the first to score one.  I guess I'm kind of like a girl in that sense, I want to do 2 things with fashion choices: (1) find something that no one else has, and/or (2) get there before everyone else, so I can wear it out before it gets overplayed.  Really though, can you blame me?  Besides, I pulled off both, which is what I like to call The Double Whammy... to answer your question, yes, sometimes I'm ridiculous.

We popped in and out of a few more stores before metro'ing back to the Châtelet area.  Strolling the rest of the way back to the Latin Quarter, crossing the Seine and l'Ile de la Cité, we settled for a croque monsieur, an omelette, and a few beers at a café near the Saint Michel metro stop, where our friends met us.  Feeling recharged after an afternoon nap, we were ready for the footy match.  I donned my new jersey and we hopped on the RER to the Stade de France.  They had some great-smelling street vendors right off the train and we scooped up a few merguez and french fries - and they were delicious.  To tell you the truth, the 4 of us blended in pretty well with the rest of the French fans at the food stations, and we stuffed our faces accordingly.



Le Stade de France

The atmosphere was festive, and it was an experience to just observe the French version of our football pregames.  On our way towards the stadium, the Croatian fan section passed by us - surrounded by a SWAT team escort.  I'm not sure whether they felt that the Croatians needed to be protected or contained, but guys fully clad in riot gear and automatic rifles were somehow deemed necessary.  We found our seats after a lot more walking, and, although we were in the upper deck, we were in the very first row, which gave us perfect views of the action.  We marveled at the teams warming up, the singing of La Marseillaise (their national anthem, in which they sing about killing "infidels" and French fields being watered with their blood - look it up, I'm not lying), and the introductions of each team.  Some of the best and most famous players in the world were playing in front of us, like going to an all-star game in the U.S.



Le stade de France, in its massive splendor

The game itself was pretty entertaining but, unfortunately, ended 0-0.  There was some exciting play and a few great chances, but no dice on goals.  It was the return of Patrice Evra and Franck Ribéry to the Stade de France, and they each got healthily booed - Evra for his World Cup captaincy failure and Ribéry for his World Cup failure along with the whole had-sex-with-an-underage-prostitute-besides-the-fact-that-he's-married thing.  That usually sours public opinion about someone.  The crowd warmed back up to him once they realized that he was the best player on the field that night, and he really did have some slick moves that spiced things up (still talking about soccer here).  During halftime, some French actor bombed his act.  I think it was supposed to be funny, but it really just sucked, frankly.  In the second half, the Croatians, answering my concerns in the previous paragraph, set off a flare in their section (their section was surrounded by a chain link fence) and threw 3 smaller flares onto the field near the corner flag.  Of course, the fans booed and whistled them, but that only made them even more enthusiastic.

After the game, we somehow bypassed a lot of the crowds and got on a train decently quickly to go back into the center of Paris.  We had a few brews at a pub around the corner and I made friends with the bartender at the expense of my English-speaking amis.  As the bar was about to close down, we were still hungry and we knew what time it was - it was kebab time.  It was about 1:30 am, so there really wasn't much of a choice, but if you ever read my old blog from my time abroad in France, you know I was in love with kebabs.  I was ready for another one, as were the rest of our group.  Loaded up on tomato, lettuce, ketchup, mystery kebab meat, pita bread, and french fries, we ambled back to the apartment, tired but completely satisfied that the night had unfolded well.  Sleep felt almost poetic, with the Parisian night sky filtering into the apartment through the 2 skylights.

But that's what Paris is all about, right?  It's the feeling and vibe you get from otherwise mundane activities, stopping and thinking about how it's all just... better.  Everyone feels differently about Paris, but here's how I think about it: imagine the times when you were stressing over exams, and when you finished your last exam each year, ready to go home to the beach for summer, you walked out of the class and let out an audible sigh that spread into a smile, or maybe even a surpressed yelp of joy - a realization that better times had arrived (however temporarily).  Paris makes me constantly feel like that split second of directionless emotion, where you're ready to let loose but you haven't even thought about where and when and with whom - when you just want to hang in that balance before responsibility hits you again.  It even makes me think about and write sappy paragraphs like these!

You know what, I knew I liked this place.

La belle Ville-Lumière

"Remember, gentlemen: it's not just France we're fighting for, it's Champagne!"

Winston Churchill would be this quote's originator, and do his motivations really surprise you?  I'd fight for Champagne, too, after the amazing hospitality they showed us on this day.  It started with another insanely beautiful day.  All of our hostesses and taxi drivers in Champagne kept telling us how lucky we were - to give you an idea, the French Riviera gets about 2,500 more hours of sun per year than Champagne does, so there's usually not much sun to be had.  It was the kind of spring day you could imagine Ronsard making a poem for (yep, I just went literary on you), so it was a perfect day to venture out to the countryside town of Tours-sur-Marne, site of Laurent-Perrier.


A little background to set up this great chance we were given: Laurent-Perrier is closed to the public, and only offers tours to wine professionals.  Des politely asked if they would allow a tour for a wine student and they generously accepted.  We were stunned, in the best way possible.  I mean, maybe they're not that exclusive, but I guess we didn't have our hopes up that they'd accommodate us.  But they did, so we hopped in a cab on a Monday morning and zipped along the Marne River until we reached their estate.  Unfortunately but probably smartly, we didn't take any pics because we didn't want to come off as too touristy or ungrateful.

Entering the gates of heav- I mean, Laurent-Perrier

Tours-sur-Marne is tiny, with only 1,300 people living there, and you can drive right through it in under 2 minutes.  There are zero tourists, or at least, there weren't any when we were there.  We pulled through the gates of Laurent-Perrier, and it looked like any normal work-filled Monday - the only people we saw were employees.  After all of the public dog-and-pony shows we'd been through, it was awesome, albeit slightly intimidating, to know that we were the only outsiders there.  The concrete sculpture inside the gates greeted us with an all-too-appropriate maxim: "Ne Buvez Jamais d'Eau" (Never Drink Water).  Madame Snozzi (stop it, way cooler than the person you're thinking of) was the name of our tour guide who gave us, and just us, a nifty tour of their building and the cellars down below.


We saw their steel vats where last year's harvest is going through the first fermentation process, and Mme Snozzi told us that the master wine maker will taste all 80+ of them in order to figure out how much of each vat goes in which champagne, or which ones will become reserves for later years' production.  That sounds like a fascinating task, but can you imagine trying to notate and remember all of them?  Right next to the vats was the bottling process, complete with bottle conveyor belts and Rube Goldberg-esque machines.  A few extremely polite workers passed by every now and again, each one nice enough to extend a "bonjour" to us while on the way to what I wanted to imagine was some romantic wine-making task.  I'm sure it was a lot more mundane than that, but I can have my own champagne dreams, right?


Their cellars were much more industrial-looking, but I liked that.  It truly felt like we were in the middle of a workplace, not passing through a doctored-up show piece like some of the public tours (nothing wrong with that, we'd just done enough of that already).  There was a lot more brick than chalk showing since they're so much closer to the river and the chalk is softer because of it.  We stopped and talked to a riddler (bottle turner) for a bit and watched him work his magic.  Machines have taken over most of the riddling process, but human hands still turn the most expensive and irregularly-shaped bottles.  In less than ten seconds, the guy had quarter-turned all of the bottles on the rack (40 or so) and pushed them in slightly so that the bottles stood at a steeper angle, a small part of the up to 50,000 bottles he can turn per day.  He turns more bottles of champagne before lunch time than we'll ever hope to touch in our lifetimes.  Their wine library was really interesting, with about 6 to 8 (if I remember correctly) small, gated vaults holding about 30 bottles each.  Note to self: add "tasting a champagne bottle that comes from a producer's wine library" to your Bucket List.


We finished with a fantastic tasting.  We were led to a small salon-type room, complete with all of the classic Beaux Arts accents and furniture.  We were served glasses of their non-vintage brut and their brut rosé ($90 on the market, score!) by what seemed like our own private butler (double score!), and Mme Snozzi joined us and gave us some cool Laurent-Perrier swag to take home (hat trick!).  Both wines fit perfectly with the theme of the house and of the salon where we were seated - neat, clean, and classic, and the taste was full of white floral and citrus tones (more red fruit, of course, with the rosé).  We spent a little while talking it up with Mme Snozzi and learning about her career adventures, discussing France, the U.S., and, of course, champagne.  We bought a bottle of the brut, not sure how else to thank them for such an amazing experience.  One day, I hope to come back and enjoy a bottle of the Grand Siècle or the Alexandra Rosé on-site.  Of course I'll offer Mme Snozzi a flute, too.  It really was about as close to a once-in-a-lifetime event as you could get for someone like me who's not involved in the wine industry, and I encourage anyone to have me tour guide/translate for them on their own trip to the area (please?).

From the train, vines for miles

We could've stayed for many more days in Champagne, exploring the other small towns and visiting other seductive producers, but we had a date with Paris.  We took a taxi back to Epernay, bought our train tickets, picked up one last bottle of champagne (Henriot), and hopped on the next train to the City of Lights.  In about an hour we were unloading at the Gare de l'Est, in the hypnotizing hustle and bustle of mid-day Paris.  An awkward metro ride with our heavy, champagne-laden suitcases took us to our apartment in the 5th arrondissement between the Cardinal Lemoine and Maubert Mutualité metro stops (in hindsight, a bus might've been better and just as fast).  On the first floor just off a quiet courtyard, our apartment was awesome - I really recommend renting one if there are any more than 2 of you.  Skylights spilled natural light over the loft and the small room below, with a futon, a small kitchenette, and a nice bathroom with a great shower (although hot water was tough to spread out over 4 people every morning).

La Seine

We were one long block from the Seine and La Tour d'Argent, and if you've been to Paris, you know that's a sweet spot.  For about $30-35 per person per night, that was unbelievably cheap!  Quick sidenote: please educate yourself on the restaurant La Tour d'Argent.  Founded in 1582, it's one of the oldest and certainly the most famous restaurant in Paris.  Although recently downgraded from its 3 Michelin stars, its cellars hold about half a million bottles of wine!  If you're really lucky and show some interest in their unfathomable selection, you might be invited down to see their cellars, filled with the most famous wine labels and vintages in the world, some dating back to the 1800's.  It's an utterly incredible place that has history that I don't have enough time to illustrate here, and I'm obviously fascinated by it.  Ok, maybe that wasn't that quick of a sidenote.

Our walk home every night - Victor Hugo would be proud

Anyway, two more blocks down the river was the Notre Dame, and it was our backdrop every night on the way home from a night out.  On our first afternoon, we hung out around the Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter.  We were exhausted and headed off to bed pretty early, nothing too exciting other than that.  We had a lot on our plates the next day - we had to tackle our first day in Paris, our friends Mary and Jon were arriving, and, my favorite part, we were going to the Stade de France to watch France take on Croatia in a footy match (uh, unreal!).  I'll cover that next time, à bientôt!

La rue sans pareil...

...Would be the Avenue de Champagne in Epernay, of course (la rue sans pareil = the road without equals/the road with no match).  Shaking off the lingering effects of the previous night's wine (rather than the Grapes of Wrath, we can call this the Wrath of Grapes), it was time to mount up and conquer this 2 km slice of heaven.  It was a day for Champenois sunshine and cellars alike.  A day for champagne rooms and champagne royalty.  It was a day for Moët and Chandon.

Dom and the author, hanging out together

We were excited for a tour and tasting of Moët and Chandon, and they really didn't disappoint.  It was Napoléon's favorite champagne for a reason, and their property really showed off their luxurious style.  Their cellars are really different, with a lot more of their walls fortified by bricks rather than bare chalk walls.  They have 25 km of cellars, made up of 3 different levels of caves underneath the streets of Epernay, which amounts to... you should be sitting down for this... over 100 million bottles down there.  That's absolutely unreal!  Even while I was in the cellars, I couldn't fathom that many bottles in one place.  The cellar tour took us past a few artifacts that Napoléon picked up, back in the day, for his favorite champagne buddies, and we ventured past their priceless wine library, as well.  For the most part, we heard the same old things as we did in the 1st 4 tours, but our guide also talked about a lot of refreshingly new things.  We were shown a bottle of Dom Pérignon Oenothèque Rosé that was still fermenting in the cellar, and we were told it'll stay that way for at least another 7 years.  Last year, Dom P. unveiled their 1st vintage (1990) release of this 50/50 blend of pinot noir and chardonnay, and bottles fetch somewhere between $700 and $1,000 a pop.  It really was a wild experience to check out tens of thousands of these cocooned beauties, covered in chalk dust and still containing the yeast sediment.



Dom bottles fermenting (1 busted, can I lick it up?)




The champagnes we tasted afterward were great.  I had the Impérial Brut and Rosé while Des had the newly-released Grand Vintage 2002 Brut and Rosé.  The Impérial Brut was good - I got a clean, floral, and pear feel - and the rosé was more floral-and-red-fruit.  The Grand Vintage was like an upgraded Impérial, but with apricot and slightly more caramel notes... high fives all around if I got all that right.  Kept in ideal conditions, the 2002 will mature well for at least the next 10-20 years, but it's still perfectly fine if drunk today.  During our tasting, we even took a picture with Scarlett Johansson!  Ok, so what if it was a poster??  I don't see any photos of you with one!  Our tour guide told us that he got to meet her when she came 3 months before for her advertising photo shoots and general schmoozing, and it goes with out saying that we were both extremely jealous.



Dom Pérignon Oenothèque Rosé



The Grand Vintage was about the best that we could also afford, so we bought some.  Maybe one day we can come back and afford the Dom Oenothèque, but until then we're settling for Grand Vintage.  If you think you're a baller, you have to be verified, first, by buying up a few Dom bottles along with some accessories to go with it.  The scrubby-looking guy in front of me at the register picked up 2 Dom magnums, a 3-bottle Dom ice bath, and a few other items, to ring up a solid bill of about 700 euros (about $950).  Thanks, man, for showing me up with my 2 "wimpy" bottles of Grand Vintage 2002.  And he was wearing a Canadian tuxedo (jeans/denim shirt/jean jacket combo)!  I mean, raise your hand if you saw that coming... yeah, me neither!  Of course, then he promptly strolled over to his $200,000 Mercedes S65 AMG and sped off.  I want to be that guy.  He mounted up with his all-denim get-up because, frankly, he doesn't care what he looks like since he makes it rain more than Pacman Jones in a Vegas strip club.  If it was me, I'd take an Oenothèque or 2 and some of their Andy Warhol-designed wine glasses - and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't don a jean jacket.  But again, that's just me.

My XL hand next to a Dom magnum

La tour de Castellane

After lunch, we strolled the Avenue de Champagne, looking for our next victims to suck dry of their champagne (instead of vampires, champires?).  Unfortunately, a lot of places were closed to the public, and, being a Sunday, some that usually are open weren't.  We settled for Champagne de Castellane, which, if you remember, is the house that has the big tower that dominates the Epernay skyline.  Thankfully, they allowed us to skip the tour and just taste 4 of their styles.  The champagne and their house were good, but (snob alert!) a little unremarkable compared to the other champagne producers we visited.


Then it was time to track back to the champagne bar we visited the day and night before to have some oak-aged champagne (not really my cup of... well, champagne) and to take in the day we just had.  The place is called C-comme (pronounced "say come"), and it's pretty awesome.  A swanky champagne bar with a gift shop in the front and a cellar downstairs, check it out here.  As for dinner, it was at a simple brasserie up the road since it was a quiet Sunday night in town.


Rest up for tomorrow, because the single best experience of our trip is coming tomorrow morning, along with our arrival in Paris!  A bientôt!