Paris 2018 – Day 7

Steps today: 20 829. Lots of metro time today, I was zipping all over town.

Today was a day full of detours, I’m normally much better organized than this – just call it one of those days.

My plan was to go to Reims today. I didn’t have a train time in mind, I thought I’d just make my way to the station and see what my options were.  This is not like me; I usually look up all the train times the night before, and show up at the station ages in advance. Then in the morning, I check my train times app to make sure all is still on time.

I left the hotel around 8:15, took the metro almost the entire way to the station but since there is no direct line from the hotel, I got off instead of transferring with the idea to have some breakfast and walk the rest of the way.  I took my time, stopping to take pictures of interesting things I saw along the way… and you guess it: arrived at the station just as the last direct train was leaving, the next one was at 1PM.

I could have taken slower less direct trains, but decided I would just go tomorrow instead so I bought a ticket for that train. Later that day I also realised that I did not have my Reims notes with me so it’s just as well I didn’t go! So unorganized today!

I took this picture just after I bought the ticket for tomorrow: 9:28AM, same time as the train.

So, what’s plan B? The reason why I picked today as a day-trip day was because it was a Tuesday and many things in Paris are closed. The 2 out of town chateaus I want to visit were closed, the Louvre was closed, I wasn’t in the mood to climb the Notre Dame Towers… So I went to the Tropical Aquarium.

It was great and even the little brats that showed up on a school field trip were really cute; it was fun to see them get so excited by some of the strange creatures in the tanks.

Very hard to get good pictures!

I swear to God this fish was looking right at me, into my eyes.

After this I went to the Museum of Immigration which was good but it was information overload – nothing sank in.

I was done by 11 and the restaurant I picked for lunch only opened at noon. It was nice weather so I walked it – 45 minutes in a mostly previously unexplored part of town.

This restaurant (Le Chalet Savoyarde) had SO SO SO SO many choices for raclette and fondue that my head was spinning; it was hard to pick one! Then I noticed that just a small fraction of items were available as a single serving. Wow, you call this a meal for ONE PERSON? It was great, but too much!  Look at all those patatoes for instance!!!!

Next, I needed to walk some of this off and so I just wandered aimlessly for about an hour and ended up at the Centre Pompidou. I remembered there was a rooftop restaurant there so I thought it would be a good place for a coffee and a drink. Guess what: Tuesday. Closed. Well, I suppose they mean Tuesday! HA HA HA this is a little surprising don’t you think?

I just had my drinks in a nearby cafe.

From here, I decided to go to the Army Museum in the Invalides. What I really wanted to see was the Église Saint-Louis-des-Invalides. I had seen it through the back window when visiting the Invalides Dome and Napoleon’s Tomb, but this time I wanted to figure out how to get into the church. I think it was free… and I got a free concert too!

I used my museum pass anyway do to a quick tour of some of the exhibits in the Army Museum. It’s so huge! (2 women in front of me in the security line thought they were at the Louvre! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA You should have seen the look on the security guard’s face when they asked him if this was the Louvre.  Funniest thing I’ve heard in a while!)

Useless armour! Yikes!

It was 5PM by then so I took a chance and took the metro over to check out the line-ups at the Catacombs because I heard that after 3PM they are not so long.  They wound around the block so forget it… I realize now that since this was one of the few sites open on Tuesday, they’d naturally be busier. Duh.

None of the restaurants near there appealed to me, so I headed back to the Brasseries near the hotel.

The weather is impossible. 7°C in the morning, then 23°C in the afternoon so whatever I wear is wrong. Yesterday, I decided to leave one of my 2 jackets behind but I froze my ass off all morning to the point where I feel a slight scratchy throat threatening to take hold. Today, I brought both jackets and melted. I was a hot sticky mess by the end of the day!

Tomorrow the forecast is 26°C in the shade!! UGH

Here are some random shots of my day: