Last Sunday (Paris)

A week ago we were in Paris. A week goes by so quickly (especially when you're climbing stairs).

These are the stairs that took us to our 2nd floor (3rd in America) apartment. The first day we had no lights on the stairs but by the second day they were working. Good thing Dave brought his supply of flashlights along.

Andrea knew about a Sunday street market where the crowd sings French songs and dances. It's on Rue Mouffetard. Don't ask me where that is, we just followed Andrea through the metro until we arrived at the right place.

They pass out song sheets so you can sing along... if you can figure out which song they're singing and read French real fast. The refrains were the easiest.


At the beginning of the market was this beautifully decorated building.

We spent so much time watching the dancers that the market was closing just as we started to shop but we did get some awesome freshly baked bread and cheese. We passed a Jeff de Bruges ice cream vendor who sold us some really delicious cones.

Rue Mouffetard is a street leading toward the Sorbonne, with lots of interesting shops and small restaurants with good prices.

We chose this one because the quiches in the window looked really good. The restaurant was so tiny the waitress hardly had room to walk between the 6 tables to the back. She had a microwave at the front where she heated slices of quiche she took from the window display, then put some greens on the plate and served them. They made their own ginger lemonade. I had an asparagus quiche. The texture was soft and creamy.

We tried an apricot tart for dessert, but it wasn't nearly as good as Susan's tarts at the Village Feinkost.

We walked to the Sorbonne and visited the Pantheon in the Latin Quarter.

The inside was beautiful.

This is where the first demonstration of the movement of the earth was demonstrated by Foucault using his pendulum to track the movement. The pendulum was at 1600 when we arrived and 1700 when we left, proving that the earth had rotated beneath it.


This is a the ceiling where the pendulum is suspended.


We also went downstairs to the crypts where Alexander Dumas, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Marie and Pierre Curie, Carnot, Louis Braille, and many other notable people are buried.

Then we headed back to our apartment for a quick dinner. The Louvre was open for free entrance until midnight so we figured this would be a good time to visit it. We didn't take any photos but we saw the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa and some of the other Italian paintings. Since the Louvre was pretty crowded and we were tired, we decided to head home, stopping at the Arche de Triomphe on our way home. The stairs to the top were closed because it was midnight. I can't say we were terribly disappointed not to climb that set of stairs although I'm sure it would have been worth it.