I woke up this morning around 8:00am, ate breakfast at the hostel and then took the metro to the Louvre Museum. I got there around 9:05am, (they open at 9:00am) but the line was still pretty long. For some reason, the opening of the museum was delayed and wasn’t going to open until 10:00am. I sat there for an hour, planning my train ride to Reims tomorrow, and then made my way inside. I rented an audio guide, but not one of the old ones that look like a phone. It looked like an iPod, with a touch screen that had pre-recorded tours on it. You would select whichever tour you wanted, and then touch the screen to listen to commentary about the art. The map would also show up to display where you were. We’re finally getting past the 10 year old technology of pure audio guides.

I did a tour of Antiquity in the morning, followed by a tour of Italian art in the afternoon. I would have stayed longer, but the crowds were pretty bad. When you get surrounded by crowds of European school kids who are all yelling, it doesn’t become a whole lot of fun.

I decided to leave early and get some laundry done instead. I made my way back to the hostel and packed all my clothes in my backpack. I headed downstairs and had the attendant at the front desk draw me a map. It turns out that the closest laundry center was locked, so I walked a block down the street and found another one. Even though I had been in one earlier in the week, I still wasn’t sure how the machines worked. Luckily there was someone washing their clothes who spoke English who told me what to do.

While waiting for my laundry, I walked around and tried to find something to eat. It was raining and I didn’t want to stand outside forever so I just got an apple. Right before I was about to walk off, I noticed a guy making crepes. He started talking to me in French and I couldn’t understand a word he was saying, but he realized I was an American and switched over to English. He let me try some of the quiche he made while I ordered a banana and Nutella crepe. We got to talking:

Me: “I could probably buy one of those crepe skillets back in America right? They look pretty easy to make.”
Him: “Yeah, you wanna try and make one?”
Me: “Sure!”

So here I am in a market in Paris waiting for my laundry and I’m learning how to make crepes. He told me to pour the batter at 12 o’clock on the skillet and then use a wooden dowel to spread it around in a clockwise direction, trying to pivot it around like a clock hand. Turns out that it’s harder than it looks. My crepe didn’t spread evenly and had a bunch of holes – it looked nothing his. He then offered to make me the one he has for breakfast each morning, with cheese and pepper. It was a lot better than the one I ordered; you could actually taste the flavor of the flour crepe, rather than just the ingredients.

He uses two types of flour, a black flour and a white flour. The black flour cooks at a lower temperature than the white, around 200°C rather than 250°C and he had a good number of scars on his forearm to prove how hot it was. We talked a bit longer, and I learned he was from southern France, near the Pyrenees. My laundry was about ready, so I paid him for my crepe, tipped him for the lesson, and said goodbye.

I got back to my hostel and found a new roommate sleeping. He is from Italy and my roommate from the previous night (Roberto from Brazil) is still here too – so far, I haven’t met anyone in the hostel from the US. Roberto did tell me that he heard there might be a transit strike tomorrow so hopefully that doesn’t affect my plans to go to Reims.

After lunch, I crashed and went to sleep until 7:00pm. Because Paris is so far north, it has very long days and doesn’t get dark until around 9:15pm, so I had a couple more hours of daylight. I took some picture of Notre Dame in the soft lighting created by the setting sun and then walked west towards the Louvre. I saw an Asian lady taking pictures by herself and asked her to take some pictures of me. Neither of us could speak French (and she couldn’t understand my English) but I did get some good pictures.

The rooms aren’t anything special with four bunk beds and a small shower but the location is great. It turns out my hotel is closer to the center of Paris than I first thought – I can see the Seine river and the top of Notre Dame from my third floor window. I only have one roommate, a guy about my age from France and our conversations are pretty limited; he speaks about as much English as I do French. But I don’t mind traveling alone (obviously) and have plans for my next couple days in Paris. Tomorrow I am doing a wine tasting and going to the top of the Arc de Triumph. On Tuesday, I am taking a walking tour of Montmartre, and then I am spending Wednesday in the Louvre and other museums. Time to go to sleep – its 1:00am here (early Monday morning) and I’m going to wake up early and take pictures with the good lighting from the rising sun.

**I finally got the chance to upload some pictures so go back through my previous posts and look at them!**

Today we left the hotel at 8:45am (which had a ping pong table which we played on for three hours) and took the trip to the American Cemetery at Normandy. Because of the constraints of the tour, we only got to spend an hour there before we had to leave. We went into the visitor’s center and talked with Alison there who was very helpful and gave us a full booklet of information and French and American flags. She told us to place the American flag on the side near the coast and the French flag on the opposite to represent where the troops on D-Day. She also gave us a bucket of sand which we used to rub on the graves to make the letters stand out. I was really disappointed that we couldn’t see the bomb craters or empty machine gun nests. That, more than anything else in Paris, is what I was looking forward to the most. I would go back right after the tour, but I’ve already planned the first few weeks and I’m headed in the other direction.

After the American Cemetery, we went to Juno beach where the Canadians landed on D-Day. The beach is nothing like you would see in Florida – it is very flat and had mud instead of sand. Our group went on the beach and our professor read a very well written poem. After the beach, we went to a World War II museum in Caen and saw a 35min movie about the war. The room was pretty dark and there was no narration so I don’t think anyone remembers much of the movie.

We ate dinner at a modern restaurant in Rouen and then walked down the Seine to different bars. The first bar we walked in was, “American Bar” but there was nothing American about it and they only spoke French. They did have pool tables though with red and yellow balls but we didn’t play. We went out to one more bar and played a game of pool there. The tables are about the size of bar tables in the States but have much smaller balls and the table has rounded pockets – makes it pretty hard to shoot for the corner pocket down the rail. After that, we walked back across the Seine to our hotel and called it a night around midnight.

Here is the view from our hotel in Rouen: