All the Time in the World

...would not be enough time.
Paris. Sunday. We checked out of the hostel after breakfast and headed over to the Arc du Triumph again, having talked to a fellow traveler in the hostel abut the tunnel that leads from the sidewalk to the Arc and generally involves no death by high-speed cars.

We took a couple pictures with Jenn's camera (like, two, and then it died), and read a few of the plaques on the ground about people who had died for France and various wars France had won (It literally is just this big arch dedicated to the glory and awesomeness of France!). We wanted to walk along the Champs Elysees, because how can you not when in Paris?

(I promise we're in front of a Champs Élysees street sign)

And we did do it, but we were there the day that the Tour du France came through Paris and so pretty much the whole street was a clusterf*** of yellow t-shirts and people wearing the flag of the country they supported as capes/dresses/shirts/bandanas, etc. We didn't stop in a single shop, simply because all we wanted at that point was to get to the Louvre park so we could stop walking. We did, however, find a Monoprix and bought our lunch (and dinner) there: a loaf of cheap bread, slices of sausage, a bag of chips, some cookies and some gummy-candy- all for less than 6€, which is about how much one sandwich would be at any street vender. So I think we did pretty well, considering.
We continued walking along the Champs and were, at this point, less than two blocks away from the Louvre park. And then they blocked off the street completely and we had to walk in a circle around the barriers to get to the stupid park. Damn, I was mad. We kept coming upon the street to turn just at the moment that they were blocking it off, and then had to continue moving away from our destination until we got to the point when they didn't need to block off anything else. Finally. We were so dead tired of walking by the time we got to the park, we just sat in front of the fountain for around an hour, eating, wriggling our toes out of our shoes, and halfheartedly shooing away pigeons who kept trying to bother us. We didn't get any pictures of the fountain, but since I'm going back this coming weekend, I'll see if I can get one or two. (Like I said, Jenn's camera is the worst. It thinks, no matter how new the batteries are, that the batteries are nearly dead, which is very frustrating!).
It was very relaxing, though it was interesting how quickly the atmosphere changed from hot to cold depending on weather or not the sun was out. That seemed to make a huge difference, which was not really something I'm used to. The fountain area was nearly empty when we got there, but by the time we left, nearly every seat was full and a lot of people were walking around. We walked to the Louvre (it's a big park so it took about ten minutes) pretty much just to go to the bathroom. There was a long line in front of the pyramid, but since Jenn is totally Paris-savvy, we went down into the metro entrance and got in after just moments of waiting. The security, in my opinion, is very lax at the Louvre! They just check your bag for a couple seconds; there isn't even a scanner for you to go through! Very interesting...
After using the restroom (free! whoo!), we went up by the pyramids and took the most touristy pictures ever: one of each of us holding down the pyramid with our hands (literally everyone does this- there were at least five people doing it at the exact same time as us).

We decided to go to Sacre Coeur at Montemarte. We got to the area by metro, and when we came out, we saw stairs. (This wasn't the main staircase to the top, it was a side one, so it wound a lot and half the time we didn't even see the stairs until they were in front of us, teasing us...) there are only 235 steps up to the church (as opposed to the 670 to the second level of the Eiffel Tower), but after a full day of walking it seemed like so many more!
We got to the top and found some steps to sit on, admiring the view for a while. We were very lucky, because we happened to be there RIGHT at the time when THIS GUY was performing!

It was just spectacular to watch. Once the performance was over, we went into the church to have a look around. Jenn said she liked Notre Dame better (which I can understand but cannot say for sure as I haven't seen the inside yet), but it was still quite beautiful. The mosaic with Jesus was very large. I'm not sure I really have another way to describe it; it was just plain big. And concave.

(Not my picture- it's from the internet)

Anyway, the church was beautiful but neither Jenn nor I are very religious people, so after sitting silently for a while and just enjoying the peace and quiet, we exited the building. We wanted to go to Versailles, but it was going to close three hours later, so we decided instead to just go to the Moulin Rouge and then spend some time on the beach of the Seine, relaxing. We wanted to go to the information booth near Sacre Coeur first, just to make sure that going to Versailles wouldn't be like super cheap or easy and actually worth the journey out there. On the way, we stopped at a super-touristy shop filled with all things "paris" and bought some postcards and we each got a print of the Eiffel Tower. We ended up getting 12 postcards (I got ten, she got 2) for 2€. Pretty good deal! 

We stopped at the info-booth and the lady gave us directions to the Moulin Rouge. She didn't write them down, though, so we kept thinking we were going the wrong way. It was a much longer walk than we thought it would be (you know how everything looks really close on a map? And how nothing ever is close in real life? yeah, it was like that). 

On the way, we *sweartogodnotmakingthisup* saw a little kid, sans pants, peeing into a drain on the sidewalk while his mother stood watch. I... just... what... I don't get it. The really funny thing was that Jenn did not see it, and so when I was freaking out about it, she thought I was talking about something entirely different that was totally normal and not interesting or strange in any way. It took us a minute to sort out the confusion there. 

Okay, so we got to the Moulin Rouge and it was... okay? It was cool, I guess, 'cause there's a windmill and all, but it wasn't that pretty or well-cared for or even in any way isolated from the city. Next door to it was a money-change machine and a "quick burger" which is a European fast food chain that I think I've already mentioned. The point is; the Moulin Rouge was not worth the twenty minute walk from Sacre Coeur. Not at all. 

(But we took a picture anyway)...

My dumbass moment of the day (really, of the year), happened when we were on the sidewalk waiting to cross the street to get closer to the Moulin Rouge. There was a girl there talking very loudly to three French kids and asking them where the Eiffel Tower was (except that she was speaking in English). Honestly, I didn't even think about the fact that it was a weird situation and that something didn't feel quite right, I just saw these kids and this American all looking really confused. I went over and asked her "What are you looking for?" in English. She stared at me for a second, completely taken aback, and then pointed behind me to the big camera I had walked straight past and said, "No, it's filming." 

Yeah. 

I totally interrupted a movie. 

I'll just let that sink in for a bit while you laugh. I understand. 

We did appreciate the free, public bathroom in the Quick Burger and the cheap crepes from a vender next door, though. I'm just glad that Jenn got a French crepe (even if it wasn't the best). Mine had a liquidy chocolate in it that got all over everything. My jeans, my shirt, my new sweater, my backpack, everything! 

I forgot! Jenn got me a lovely, soft, black sweater and a really cute mini dress with poodles on it (the former, quite english, the latter, very french), and I ended up wearing that sweater off and on all day due to the sometimes-cold. 

So, after we finished our very messy crepes, we went back down into the metro to get to the beach. There is pretty much a long platform along a lot of the Seine bank on one side of one area of Paris, that is filled with sand. It's not so much a beach as it is a walkway where you can get sand in your shoes. We did spend a lot of time there, though, as we were tired enough that sleeping on some hard sand seemed like the best thing to do in Paris at the time. It was really pretty fun. We people watched, especially two hoola-hoop dancers who were hanging out nearby, and a beautiful family that spent some time near us. But mostly, we slept. 

At some point, we both had to use the bathroom, but we still didn't want to leave the beach. Looking back, we clearly should have just waited until we wanted to leave and then gone to find a bathroom together, but what we did instead was go separately. I went first, searching along the street in cafes and such. I walked into a shop with Greek food and must have seemed very obvious because the guy behind the counter asked, "Les toilettes?"

"Eh, oui, s'il vous plaît" I said, putting on my best "I'm cute" face. 

"En bas," He responded (which means, downstairs). 

"Et... ils sont pour le publique?" (loose translation- do I have to buy something first or are they free?) 

"Pour toi, oui!" He said. (Gotta love it!)

"Ah, merci beaucoup!" 

So I used the (surprisingly) clean bathroom. When I came back upstairs, however, the boss had showed up and he bombarded me with questions about what I wanted and what I was going to buy (I seriously felt like I was being attacked), so I quickly got a piece of baklawa (it was spelled with a w, is that normal?) and ran out. I told Jenn about the place when I got back, and she did find it, but that scary boss man was still there, yelling and attacking customers so she left and came back, not yet having found a bathroom. So at that point, we decided it would be okay to leave the beach. I was around eight, I think, then, and Jenn needed to be at the station by ten which meant we'd need to be on the metro by 9:30, at least. We hadn't actually eaten the rest of our food, so we decided to try to find a place with a bathroom where we could sit and eat. Jennifer remembered a little park with a big monument in the middle that had a photography exhibition and public bathrooms, so we went over there, knowing it was very close. It could probably have been dirtier than it was, but not by much. It was in this mini park surrounding Le Chemin du Saint Jacques, and within that was the exhibition of this photographer, Gabriel Diaz, who had gone to several towns and just walked through, taking a picture every eleven steps. There were big tv screens that were showing the pictures in rapid succession so that it looked like motion-stop animation, which was pretty cool; but most of the pictures weren't that great. Lots of road.

We could hear a concert going on at the Hotel de Ville, which we were walking toward, but it was pretty much over by the time we got close enough to see or hear anything. We admired the building while on the move and then hurried over to Notre Dame to finish our cookies and stare at the church. It felt very circular, as that's how our journey here in Paris really started; with Our Lady.