#EatingOutside

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Paris, Day 7

Tuesday, September 20th was a cool, cloudy, rainy kind of day.

Lucille had a physio appointment over near Arc de Triomphe after school.

Lynda and I walked over to the metro to meet her along the way and she’d show us where it was while we waited for her to be done.

We rode to the chosen stop and got off the train to wait. She was late getting out of school so we sat and watched a few trains come and go.

Finally she came rushing in and we hopped on the next train to the right station. It was few stops away but our end station – Charles de Gaulle – Étoile is huge and waiting there was probably not a good idea.

Lucille pointed out where our exit was and hurried off to her appointment. We continued on our way and made our way up the stairs.

I’d seen many pictures of the Arc de Triomphe and the thing that I marveled at the most is the size of the traffic circle without any lane markers in it. It is a crazy sight to behold.

We took a few photos and decided maybe we would go up to the top after lunch. So we picked a street at random and wandered down it looking for food.

We walked down Av. de Friedland a few blocks and decided on Brasserie Le Balzac.

Even in the cool weather, we were determined to eat outside.

We shared fettuccine and a meat sauce for lunch and were getting ready to leave when Lucille messaged that she was done her appointment.

We arranged to meet at the base of the Arc.

Once there, we decided that between the cold weather and the line to go up, we’d skip going up to see the view.

So we decided to window shop on Av. des Champs-Élysées.

Lynda was going to look for a purse for her mom but the line to just get into Louis Vuitton was a bit ridiculous so we we kept walking.

Hard for the social status differences not to catch my eye

We stopped at Starbucks and Lucille bought us all drinks so she’s shopped on the Champs-Élysées.

Finding the entrance to the subway is challenging along the avenue as they aren’t marked with the big Metro signs like the peasant areas of the city.

A very cool ice cream truck near the end of the park

We wandered through some of Jardin des Champs-Élysées before heading towards the river on our way back to the metro.

As we strolled along Avenue Winston Churchill near the sign for and looking at Petit Palais, we ran into an American woman looking for Avenue Winston Churchill. We told her she was there and she looked at the Palais and asked if that was the Arc de Triomphe? I see why so many places aren’t fans of Americans.

We were soon on the Pont Alexandre III. The official description calls it an ornate bridge but it looks a bit gaudy to me.

We continued towards Hôtel des Invalides.

We kept walking through more park area. Like Beijing, I would bet I could visit a park a day for an entire year and not get to all the parks in Paris.

And of course the streets and building continued to catch my eye.

Finally we were back at the subway to go to the apartment before we headed out for supper.

I honestly don’t remember where we ended up but I know it was good as I’ve yet to have a bad meal on the trip.

After we were back in for the evening, I liked the quality of the light outside so I shot a couple shots from the balcony. There wasn’t much colour in sunset but I still liked what I saw.

With over 14k in steps I had almost twice as many as yesterday so I should be keeping my average over the 10k/day goal.

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Nice, Day 1

Wednesday, September 14th saw us leaving Paris early for a flight to Nice.

Our pilot told us it was a nice day in Nice and it was supposed to be sunny and 24 degrees. It was cloudy the entire flight so we didn’t see much until we broke out of the clouds near the sea. It was also raining quite heavily as we exited the airport looking for a taxi.

We’d arrived at 8:30 am and we couldn’t check into our Airbnb until 3:00 pm so I asked the cab driver to take us to a good place for breakfast.

He dropped up near 2 places and recommended Cafe Du Palais as the better of the two. So we trudged the block or so in the now pouring (but not hypothermia inducing rain like Alberta) rain. We decided on sitting inside as the umbrellas weren’t always winning the battle.

Took this to tease Curtis that we had Nutella come with breakfast (which we didn’t eat)

It was almost done raining when we left to find a place we could drop our small suitcase so we didn’t have to lug it around for a few hours.

Bag dropped and off to shop for an umbrella.

When we emerged from our successful quest, the rain seemed to have stopped. Or so we thought.

We walked around the shops and made our way over to Quai des États-Unis to look at the sea.

It still looked like rain would arrive but we strolled along without it happening.

It’s not a big hill at the end of the Promenade des Anglais but even though it was cloudy, it was still warm so we rested at the #ILoveNice sign. Trying to get a shot of just Lynda was a bit challenging.

We stayed at the top of the hill killing time before I had to go get our suitcase out of storage.

Lynda waited for me as she didn’t want to walk down and back up the hill. I was there and back in under half an hour. We strolled in the direction of our Airbnb and we walked right past it to our harbour tour that Lynda had booked for 3:00 pm. I had thought we could check in at 2:00 pm so we had an extra suitcase to bring along.

We got our tickets and sat on a bench in the shade waiting for boarding time.

We moved to line up with others standing, waiting and the rain came back. It was just a light drizzle but only moments ago the sun was beating down on us.

The boat has room for 46 passengers, 22 of which can be outside on the upper deck. Rain or no rain, Lynda and I headed up top. I had razzed Lynda about bringing her jacket along to such a warm place but it was nice to have it to set on the already wet bench as a blanket. The rain picked up in intensity and the wind started blowing before we even left the harbour. Luckily, we had ourselves a couple of umbrellas.

So, we sat in the rain, huddled under the umbrellas as person after person left to go down stairs to huddle inside.

The wind was even stronger after leaving the harbour so I didn’t even try to get my camera out and decided I’d make due with my cell phone.

We exited the harbour and headed north east along the coast and turned into the harbour at Villefranche-sur-Mer. There are plenty of impressive houses to look at along the way. The rain had started to slow down so some of the chickens came out to stand in the way of our view. I was inspired by my friend Canada Slim aka Adam Kerr and his lazy faire attitude when it comes to level horizons and I snapped a few shots willy-nilly. (It still feels weird)

The tour was almost over when the rain stopped but we were heading into some bigger waves and we were starting to accelerate on our way back to Nice so even the cell phone camera was put away.

The tour is an hour long and not terribly expensive so I think it was worth it. The rain put less of a damper on it than the 20 something year old girls that couldn’t sit their asses down once they ventured out on to our level. We weren’t too wet when we were done and we only had a 5 minute walk to our apartment.

More stairs were climbed and it took us a while to get our keys as the directions weren’t 100% clear. (It is said that things are lost in translation and in this case, it was true.) But finally we were in and dropped off our stuff so we could head back down to town for supper. We picked Mamma Mia and shared a Pizza Margherita. I tried an actual Marguarita (It seemed weird not having any ice in it but it would be the best one I had in Nice.) while Lynda had Sex on the Beach. (The drink. Not… What are you people thinking? Lol)

After a leisurely meal, we decided we were tired enough to just head back to the apartment instead of exploring the town. So we again walked along the Promenade.

Seemed a bit early to crash but it had been a long day getting up at 4:00 am and all and I’d gotten over 17k in steps. Tomorrow we have a morning tour and pickup is 8:30 am.

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Paris 2022, Day 2

Woke up at 5 am. Fell back asleep at 6 am. Woke up again at 9:30 am and promptly fell back asleep until 11:00 am. Now my back was sore so I had to get up.

Lynda and I got showers and breakfast out of the way before Lucille got back from school. She says French classes are going slowly but she’s still got a whole lot more of a vocabulary than I do.

We headed out for a light lunch while we waited for Curtis to get off work.

We walked a few blocks to Le Bobillot Cafe.

We sat in the shade and ordered a meat and cheese charcuterie. I wanted coffee but it was pretty late for that so I went with a double décaféiné, Lynda ordered a glass of champagne and Lucille had vin chaud. The waitress confirmed she wanted hot mulled wine in the heat. (She did)

We sat and watched the people while looking.

Église Sainte-Anne de la Butte aux Cailles

We walked up towards a mall while we were waiting for Curtis to catch up to us. We ended up waiting at Place d’Italie across from the Town hall of the 13th arrondissement of Paris.

The important looking building that we have no idea what it is

We crossed the street(s) to Café Jules.

Lucille and Curtis ordered Crepes for supper with a Porn Star to drink while I shared a crispy chicken cesar salad with Lynda and I had Sexual Healing for a drink.

It was a pretty good meal and the drink had a bite.

We stopped at the grocery store for some ice cream for dessert to save some money and the vanilla bean Lynda picked was very good.

We again got our 10k steps in.

We visited for a while and were up well after Lucille and Curtis went to bed. It was after 11:00 pm before we got to bed. (Lynda was half asleep by the time I was a little bit tired.)