Wandering About

So after a heavy night of boozing and ringing in the new year, Lauren and I had decided that New Year's Day we should probably take it easy due to the previous nights festivities.  We found ourselves just roaming around on Jan. 1st.  We wanted to check out and get an up close view of the Notre Dame so we did that.  We obviously wanted to go inside (in case there happened to be a Quasi Moto sighting) but opted out of that for a good reason....there were about 500 people standing in a line like I had never seen!  We came to the conclusion that since it was a holiday and lots of tourists are in town over the new year that that was the reason for the incredible line.  I of course went back later and walked around inside, but we will save those pictures for another day and blog entry.  Here are some that from that day though.

After we checked out Notre Dame, we wandered over to the coolest little bookstore.  It's pretty famous and it's called Shakespere and Company.  They have both new and used books and they're all in English, which is a plus for me!  Upstairs they have a lady who plays the piano while patrons read their books.

After the bookstore Lauren and I walked just tad over to the Latin Quarter.  We ate at a Kebab place, which was Lauren's first time.  She opted out of the kebab though and got a chicken plate I believe.  I definitely got the kebab though.  I love that stuff and wish they had it back in the states.  Then we find ourselves a bit parched and we hopped in to a bar called The Latin Corner.  Not even sure where to begin on this place.  First off they tell us they are going to put us in the VIP section.  So we follow them and we end up getting put in a back corner basically!  The service was quite horrible, and the smoke machine was intense.  Back home they use smoke machines but it will just let off a little bit and then stop.  Not here!  It was seriously billowing out the machine non-stop.  Lauren and I were starting to think there might be an actual fire!  Also the menu was a bit shady.  They had an option for 20 Euros and you could get a "sexy dance" from your waiter!  Where the hell are we? Needless to say we definitely didn't order that.  The drinks were kinda fun though.  They lit a sparkler and stuck it in your drink, so I will give them kudos for good presentation.

What I'm holding above is the worst Mai Tai I've ever had.  The only reason I managed to choke it down was for the mere reason that I had paid around 7 Euro's for it.  On our way out of the Latin Corner we actually see a girl getting one of the "sexy dances". Lauren and I felt sorry for her, as her waiter was nothing to look at...I'm hoping it was a special occasion (like her b-day) otherwise I would be puzzled as to why someone would order that.  Onwards to go wander around the Marais.  I had heard this was a posh and very cool area of town so we thought we would check it out.  After walking in circles and literally breaking out my touristy map we gave up.

We were quite hungry so we popped into a busy restaurant in the area.  That is how Lauren and I usually picked most of the restaurants we ate at during her stay.  Our motto was "if it's busy and crowded it must be good!"  We sat down at a little booth, looked at the menu and were immediately confused.  There wasn't one word in English and the prices weren't even that great.  We decided that if we didn't know what we were getting then we sure as hell weren't gonna spend a bunch of money.  We ended up finding a little Italian food place and it hit the spot.  We didn't go out this night as we were still recovering from NYE and we had to get up fairly early the next day for our Fat Tire Bike Tour around the city!