France 2023 - Day 10 / Paris

Steps today : 27 460 / 18.1 km

My mom wanted to visit the Montparnasse Cemetery this morning, so I thought we'd have breakfast nearby on what I call "Brasserie Row".  For those of you who know Paris, that's the area around Boulevard Montparnasse near the intersection with Boulevard Raspail.  On my trip in 2017 I had a great breakfast at Le Dôme - instead of regular sized croissants, they serve you a little basket of a mini croissant, mini pain au chocolat and mini cinnamon raisin bun. Sounds huge, but it's cute and perfect!

Here's an other example of Paris' beautiful architecture that we spotted alone the way:

The walk is 20-google minutes, but to my mom that morning it felt like hours. In hindsight, I think she was starting to get my cold + was tired after many long days of exploring and her energy was starting to dwindle.  

I think there are 2 kinds of people in the world: those who need time to recover from the trauma of waking up and need breakfast before starting the day. Off the top of my head, my mom, Frank and at least 2 of my good friends are like that. The other kind is people who are "out of bed, shower, go" and breakfast can wait for an hour or so. That's me. It's not always easy for those 2 personality types to mix in the morning and this morning was a good example of that.

We got to Le Dôme around 8 and it was closed. ARGH! figures. We crossed the street to Le Select and had a great breakfast.

We spent about an hour at the Cemetery, lots of fascinating graves!

And of course, the popular Ricardo Cat!

The weather was windy, of course, but we were encouraging ourselves by saying the wind would blow the rain clouds away. After 2 wet days we were fed up!

I can't recall anymore how I was feeling regarding my cold at the time, but I am sure I still felt under the weather because we stopped for a drink and I had tea instead of a cocktail! That says it all. 

I was intrigued when I saw "blue tea" on the menu...  any why not add a pastry?

Next on the agenda was to visit the Monument to the Martyrs of the Vel d'Hiv.

Someone laid flowers on it, very moving.

My mom had another funny Eiffel Tower moment like when she first saw it a few days earlier. The Vel d'Hiv monument is at the back of a long narrow rectangular park dedicated to it near the Seine, it's about 200m in and I'm sure it's done that way on purpose so you have time to contemplate it as you approach because it does take a few minutes. To our backs was the Eiffel Tower but she didn't know it. When we turned around to leave the monument, BOO! there is was - she exclaimed she saw it, it was very amusing.

After this, we walked along the Island of Swans to the Statue of Liberty.

Then loitered around the Bir-Hakeim bridge for a while

It was a little after 1PM by then, so we decided to go for lunch at the popular café's near(ish) to the tower.

We at first picked the Champs de Mars, but it was crowded and too loud so we crossed the street and went to the Dôme instead (not the same Dôme as this morning). I must have still been feeling less than 100% because all I had was an omelet and water!

After lunch, we made our way to the Flame of Liberty which is now popularly known as the Diana Memorial. (Laviolette Building along the way)

We walked towards the Champs Elysées, but I soon changed my mind. I'm really not crazy about that area of town - it's just too crowded and it gets exhausting. Instead, we got on the metro and headed back to the area around the Seine Islands.

We explored the Saint-Germain l'Auxerroi Church:

Admired Yayoi Kusama's latest art installation:

And then the atrium of the Samaritaine department store which I wanted to show my mom, but they ruined the stunning visual effect of the staircase with a display of fur scarves - I didn't bother taking a picture.

And now: time for a drink! I wasn't intending to have alcohol since I was fighting what I called an "almost-cold", but when I saw they had Montbazillac on the menu, I caved. I am on vacation after all!

It was a little after 5 by the time we left, and neither one of us was feeling all that hungry for a large supper, so we started walking back to the hotel with the intention of scoping out more restaurants in that area for something "snacky"

We crossed the Pont Neuf...

And decided on this place for supper by about 6:15. They had salad with goat cheese on the menu which sounded perfect... until I saw it! Gigantic! I couldn't finish.

The place was less than 5 minutes from the hotel, it was an early night for us tonight - both trying our best not to get [more] sick.