Both: Hey, everyone!
Jen: It's Jen and Greg with an update on our travels.
Greg: So before we jump into it, just know that this is Part One of our Paris update. We can't really get all of the things we want to talk about into our normal update size of around 10 minutes. So it's going to be two or three updates. We, we're still trying to figure that out, but this is the first one.
This update is going to be about our time in... Paris, France!
Jen: Yay!
Greg: Nous sommes à Paris.
Jen: He's been wanting to say that forever.
Greg: Indeed. Indeed. I think, for me, the best part is when we finally went to the Louvre.
Jen: And I think that I would try to come up with something more important than pâtisseries. But if I'm being honest, that was my favorite part.
Greg: I mean, if it weren't for the Louvre, the pâtisseries would have been my favorite part. So we left Amsterdam via the train. We arrived at the Paris Nord train station and it was crazy outside.
Jen: Yes. I felt like when we walked outside, it was almost like walking into the streets of Manhattan from Grand Central Station.
Greg: I feel like it was worse.
Jen: I took a minute to be very thankful that we did not have to drive…
Greg: Oh yeah.
Jen: …in that. (laughing)
Greg: Yeah so I don't know how many of you have driven in Paris. But I think that if you do, you're taking your life in your own hands.
Jen: I think traffic laws there are more of like suggestions?
Greg: Yeah, it was really weird to see two people trying to take the same spot in the same lane and neither one wanting to back off. And that happened regularly.
So, from the train station, we were driven to our hotel, La Villa Madame.
Jen: Yeah, it was a nice little hotel that we found in a really great area. The 6th arrondissement, which was in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and the hotel itself was, like, a boutique hotel. I think there were only three or four rooms on a floor. And we walk in the door, and Greg says... Bienvenue!
Greg: Bienvenue!
Jen: Because he just likes to use random French phrases. And I looked at him and I was, like, “I don't think you're supposed to say that because I'm pretty sure that means 'welcome'.” And the nice concierge at the front desk said, “He's not. I'm supposed to say that…Bienvenue!”
(laughing)
It was pretty funny!
Greg: But a block or two away from our hotel was a fairly well known park called Jardin de Luxembourg. And we walked there from our hotel after we checked in. It's also near some other popular sites like Jardin des Plantes and the Panthéon. And we actually walked to all of those places.
Jen: Yeah, we did a lot of walking in Paris for sure. I think probably my favorite of those gardens though was probably the Jardin des Plantes.
Greg: Yeah, it was like a wildflower garden, right?
Jen: Yeah, it felt like wildflowers. There were some tulips and some different kind of flowers. The trees were all in bloom. Even though it was still pretty cold, I think the overall weather - like we said before - wasn't really what we wanted, but, cause it was in the mid forties, and pretty dreary.
It wasn't really our envisioned “springtime in Paris” weather. But, we did have a couple of pretty days to walk around.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Jen: We did walk down the Champs-Élysées and saw the Arc de Triomphe and all the fancy stores that Paris is known for. I think the only thing we did on the Champs-Élysées was visit a couple pâtisseries. No shocker there...
Greg: Well, there was one small part at the end where the park had not been fenced off so that we were able to get in and see a little bit of that park, which was kind of nice. But we also went to the Champs de Mars. Not walkable from the hotel - but while we were out around Paris, we did pass there.
For those who don't know, that's the big park area and at the end of it is the Eiffel Tower.
Jen: Seeing such an iconic structure in person, with my own two eyes, was pretty amazing.
Greg: Yeah, I agree. I mean, if not for all the fencing, it would have been the ideal kind of walk through the park. The Olympics are in Paris this year at the end of July, which meant all those nice, pretty green areas were all fenced off.
The park that goes along the Champs-Élysées was fenced off. The Champs de Mars was fenced off. Place de Concord was full of bleachers.
Jen: Yeah, it was neat to see though - I think - because when we're watching the Olympics in a few weeks, we'll be able to say, “Hey, we were there.”
Greg: One of the places we haven't mentioned that we went was the Panthéon.
Jen: Several famous Parisians are buried there. Alexandre Dumas, who wrote The Three Musketeers. Victor Hugo, who wrote Les Mis and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Voltaire, Marie Curie, they're all buried there. So, it was neat to see - I guess - that piece of history.
Greg: Yeah, the crypts - I think - are the most popular thing that bring people to the Panthéon, which I guess I understand. But for me, I mean, the building itself was really cool.
So, the places that we're mentioning, Luxembourg, Des Plantes, the Panthéon, they're all in an area of Paris called the Latin Quarter.
Jen: The Latin Quarter was actually called that because before the revolution, the students that lived in that area just spoke Latin to their professors. So that's how it got its name.
Greg: Yeah. I thought that was neat. Something else in the Latin Quarter that we walked by was a very small bookstore with a very long line to get in it.
Jen: And only one of us went in the bookstore. We'll let you guess which one did.
Greg: Right.
Jen: Um, but this bookstore, you may have heard of it. It's called Shakespeare and Company.
It's showed up in many movies. It's very famous. It's actually named after the original Shakespeare and Company that was opened in, like, 1912 or something. It's where a lot of the expat authors went to hang out. So the original one Hemingway went to. F. Scott Fitzgerald, all that. This one was opened in 1951 by an ex-serviceman who came to Paris and wanted to open a bookstore. So it's one of the most popular bookstores in Paris. The first book I saw when I went in there, and I thought this was pretty funny, was Around the World in 80 Days. And I thought about buying it. But I did not, because then I realized that I would have to carry a hardbound book in a backpack for however long.
Another cool fact about this bookstore. There's apparently a program that they have called the Tumbleweed program, and aspiring writers can apply to actually live in the bookstore from anywhere from a week to a month. And they just have to give a few hours of their day to help set up the bookstore. And it's really made for them to be encouraged to come and work on their books and have a good place to write and be inspired by all the people that spent time there.
Greg: Yeah by this point of walking around the Latin Quarter we had started to realize how much we had been walking and kind of felt it too. So we calculated going back to the last couple of days in Amsterdam through the first few days in Paris, we had walked about 50 miles over approximately six or seven days.
Jen: Yeah, that's five-zero miles. So it was a lot.
Greg: Yeah. There's times where I think I haven't walked 50 miles in a year.
Jen: (laughing)
Greg: Yeah. So I think this is a good spot to, to kind of take a break. We will come back with another update about Paris. We had to do them in multiple because we did so many things in Paris that we can't really get it into one update.
Jen: Yeah, so the next one will be more about the tours we did and some of our favorite food items.
Greg: Yeah, because we ate a lot in Paris.
Jen: Yes, we have eaten a lot everywhere. But yes, we've eaten the most in Paris.
Greg: I guess I should say, we ate really well in Paris.
Jen: We did. For sure. And we'll tell you more about it next time.
