Paris Travel Log 2006-12-19

Yesterday’s declaration of victory over jetlag was premature. I lay awake until around 6am this morning, before finally nodding off and sleeping through our set breakfast time. Mom and Dad were great sports putting up with a tired and grumpy Will for the rest of the day.

False starts seemed to be the theme of the day. Our target restaurant for lunch was closed, so I had a random club sandwich on our way to somewhere else. Then, the museum Mom really wanted to see was closed. But then it turned out that it wasn’t. But then we found we’d left the address in the room. And so we got directions. But the person giving us directions sent us to the wrong metro stop. So we decided to see the interior of the nearby national opera house instead. But the main hall was closed for rehearsal. And on and on.

Everyone’s had days like this, but it’s a bit of a shame to have one in Paris. And on only a few hours’ sleep, I wasn’t rolling with the punches too well.

Good luck finally started coming our way late in the afternoon, when we just stopped trying to do much of anything. After cutting through some gardens and the Louvre’s courtyard (note bocce balls!):

…we had some delicious tea, hot chocolate, and desserts at the first café we came across, the Angelina. After walking in, we discovered that the Angelina just happened to have been sitting next to the Louvre since 1901, playing host to people like Proust and Coco Chanel. As the waitress told us later, we would have been waiting at the door for an hour at least, if we’d not come on Tuesday – the one day a week that the Louvre is closed. Our luck was slowly changing, as clearly evidenced by Dad’s truly world-class Mont Blanc pastry (think a dash of chestnut, sitting atop a mountain of sugar and cream).

From there, we took a brisk (read: chilly) walk to the Saint Sulpice, a beautiful church that would have been worth seeing even if it hadn’t featured prominently in The Da Vinci Code.

Then finally, it was another walk back toward the hotel and a stop at the third creperie we encountered (our first two choices were closed. Argh!). But the food turned out to be simple, filling, and delicious. The restaurant was also really conducive to conversation: just the right amount of light, the right level of music, no crowd at all, and plenty of tasty Bordeaux. So we ended the day on a high note, sharing the most leisurely meal I think we’ve had yet in Paris.

Overall, it was a day of karmic reckoning. We’d had such great luck and gotten so much done in the previous two days, that I think we simply owed the universe one day like this. Our debts now hopefully paid off, I look forward to seeing what tomorrow has to bring (and to getting to sleep right away).