Gosh, adulthood is awesome. Freedom, responsibility (sucks sometimes), and fun! I met up with Emily, my latest au pair friend who is Mormon, and we simply wandered through Paris letting our feet and our noses guide us.
I started by climbing my way through the Abbesses Metro tunnel. I'm not kidding, it was a climb. The exit, or the "sortie", like in every metro, is usually a decent sized flight of stairs, maybe accompanied by an escalator. I noted that this one offered an elevator which I thought was strange, but then really thought nothing of it. The Abbesses one is real cute: a spiral staircase going up with different tiled paintings that curve around, each landing having its own mural. I was walking up, thinking, "oh cool! Different murals!" One must've been a scene of Moulin Rouge, one with poppy flowers or something, a Paris cityscape, cute little French people on one....As I continued up in a mass of people, the murals kept coming...and coming...and coming...I was certain I'd be looking at the last mural after counting 8, then 9, then 10. I swear, there were like twenty flights of spiral stairs going up that metro! My legs were BURNING. The crowd of people that I began my uphill climb with slowly started diminishing as we all discovered the cute-painted torture that lie ahead of us. When I surfaced, I was panting and glad to be done! But then I looked behind me and the very famous and popularly photographed "Metropolitan" sign in Paris was hanging above the stairs of death! It was an ironic moment for me. As I continued to look up (that is a well-known rule in Paris: ALWAYS LOOK UP. You never know what you might miss.) I soon fell in love with this district. The buildings, they came straight out of a French storybook!
I met up with Emily who also died coming up the stairs, and we just went. Finding ourselves down "sexy street" as she called it, we were staring at the pavement the entire time. Gross. Then we happened upon Moulin Rouge, the very famous Cabaret house in a red windmill building...Of course it was at the end of that street ;)
.......And by that point I was starving, so........ I used my built-in bread radar and found a delicious bakery. Emily and I made a joke of the fact that wherever I had us turning, I always managed to get us walking past a scrumptious boulangerie/painetterie... Carbs will forever be my kryptonite.
I had my first pain au chocolate. (It's a french style croissant with a strip of heavenly chocolate running through the middle). I WAS DYING TO TRY ONE. And I finally got the chance. As I said in between bites of the flaky goodness, "this pastry has lived up to every expectation that my American-foodie taste buds had". Here's a description to get your mouth watering with me:
Imagine a Costco croissant. It is really moist, buttery more than crispy, and falls apart just enough with each bite. Now imagine Pillsbury Grands flaky biscuits that pop out of a can. Bake one just so the top is golden and the inside layers are each it's own layer of doughy goodness. NOW imagine a puff pastry dessert that has the first ten layers instantly flaking off of its buttered bed. Combine them ALL together and you have a real, Parisian pain au chocolate. It's not shaped like an American croissant (see picture below) and it is 100x better. The top was extra extra flaky, the inside layers were doughy and buttery, the whole thing was moist and delicious, and the chocolate was like a mix of a soft tootsie roll, Nutella, and fudge. OMGoodness.
So that was just my snack to start off our self-guided tour. We both planned on getting crepes too since neither had experienced the Paris 'must-have'. We found the cutest little crepe window! It reminded me of the Waffle Window in Portland. I can't say I was as impressed with the crepe as I was the pastry, but it was still very good! What I love about French crepes is that they are much more "egg-y" than the ones I make at home or have had. The fact that it came out of a little window and had some bomb french cheese and ham in it made it that much better. I ordered it in French saying "je voudrais un crepe l'oeuf fromage et jambon" but the guy didn't hear me correctly and caught on that I was American. Dang it! Same happened at the aforementioned bakery; the lady responded in English. Hmph. I'm working on it....
We climbed up hills to the Sacre Coeur Cathedral, people watched, looked across the city from the top of the hill, and then made our descent. Ahh, so beautiful! We even made a random Columbian friend who asked if we wanted a picture together. Turns out she is at a medical (or engineering) school past Brittany on the very corner of France and has been here 2 years. She studied French for 3 years in Columbia then went on this program to come to France which is like a study abroad from her University. After her Masters, she is going on to get her Ph.D. Oh snap! It was a random encounter and we talked for a while. I love how easy it has been to make friends!
Then it rained! It was a gloooooorious thing! It has been so hot here that I am dying for the cold weather to come. Especially since my daily routine consists of working out when I'm not really working out because I'm just walking everywhere and up hills and stairs and I shouldn't be this out of shape but I am and its embarrassing ......ya......
We ducked under the closest metro out of the rain and when I surfaced about 35 minutes later, unfortunately it had stopped. But as I walked off the train and back home through my little neighborhood, I could not help dancing and singing through the puddled streets. It was a glorious day.
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