Day 2: The Blue Line?

The Indian restaurant was right by the bus stop.  But the bus had to stop further down because of other buses, so we had to pass a Turkish restaurant. And mom said, "We should eat here tomorrow."  It was about 6:30 by now and we were hungry again.  And for some reason, the French seem to eat a lot of food.  Our dinner was 3 courses.  First we had samosas.  We each got 2 with a salad on the side.  The samosas were amazing - some of the best I've had.  Fluffy curried potatoes with green peas, yum!  I realize this may read like a food blog, but deal with it :) 

Our next dish was curry  Naan came separate but we both got some.  I had lamb curry, and mom had chicken.  And it was also amazing.  Seriously, this was some of the best Indian food I've had in decades.  We stuffed ourselves, and finished off the naan dipping it in our curry sauce.

Our final dish was dessert.  The menu said sorbet, but the waiter said they had ice cream, so we ended up with 2 scoops of vanilla, because they had run out of chocolate.  Two scoops each.  The ice cream was decent, but not as good as Braum's.  Overall, this was an incredible meal!

So we finish eating, and are waiting for our bus.  It finally arrives, around 7:40, but the driver wouldn't let us on.  I was under the impression that service ended at 8:30.  I even remember hearing it on the audio track.  But apparently the blue line isn't as busy, so it stops earlier.  He even opened up the brochure to show us he wasn't making it up.  Since there was a small group of people waiting for the bus, not just us, we were all a little upset.

Day 2: The Yellow Line

This was probably the worst part of our day.  The bus was packed and we ended up sitting in different areas.  The wind picked up, and with the bus moving, it was quite chilly.  I had to put my hoodie on and my camera hand was freezing.  We made slow progress, because of the traffic.  I will freely admit that I started to nap.

Mom had an adventure, though.  She was sitting there, and felt something weird in her hair.  She started wiping it, and there was green stuff.  Apparently she'd been hit by a pigeon!

My best time happened in the Arab part of town.   There was a dude in sunglasses with a scruffy beard.  He was wearing camouflage pants and black bikini briefs. I know this because his pants were hanging below his butt. I could see skin and tell it was bikini briefs.  He was drinking out of a large can.   The bus had stopped so that the cars in front could turn right.  There was a crosswalk with pedestrians in it.  Dude walks into the crosswalk and then plants his ass on the hood of the taxi trying to get through.  Then he motions the pedestrians to keep walking.  Meantime the taxi is honking and looking very unhappy.   Dude finally gets up and leaves, and the bus is able to proceed.

We were both glad to get back to our stop so we could change buses.  We waited for our Green bus.  And waited.  Two more Yellow buses came by.  Finally we went hunting for another bathroom.  A nice lady directed us to one in the Metro, but it was closed.  Although we did get to ride an elevator down to the Metro instead of taking the stairs. 

We continued waiting.  Finally a Green bus arrived and took us back to Notre Dame.  Then we walked down to our Indian restaurant.

Day 2: The Green Line

We caught our bus, but this time we went upstairs - the buses are all doubledeckers and open on top.  I had read the tiny arrows on the map wrong, so the Eiffel Tower was further along than I thought.  We had saw some cool sights, and eventually made it to the tower!  The bus actually circles the tower and then stops almost where it had first reached the tower.  But no one realized that, so when the driver stopped in traffic several people opened the back door and got off, and he started yelling at them.

We finally got to the stop and got off.  I was immediately accosted by a young woman asking me if I spoke English.  I automatically said yes, so she asked me to sign her petition for deaf mutes.  I started to sign, while holding on to my bags, until I realized what the scam was.  Sign here, where are you from, what's your donation?  I said no, and started to walk away.  She tried to follow and guilt me into donating, but I kept walking. 

We needed a bathroom, and decided to go to a cafe and sit and have a snack.  We had seen a few on our drive around the tower, so we read a few menus and found an expensive cafe.  The waiter suggested we have a tart, so we did!  It was a slice of a big tart.  It looked like someone had made a "crust" in one of those round pans with the rippled edges.  Then they put down a thin layer of custard, and put fresh raspberries, strawberries, and kiwi on top.  Cut a slice and then spray whipped cream around it.  It was good!

The bathroom was amusing, though.  Bathrooms in France are really hit or miss.  I remember the last time I was here, the only decent bathroom was at Normandy, which is run by Americans.  The bathroom was a small area with a sink and hand dryer, and 2 doors: one for women, one for men.  Each toilet room was basically toilet-sized.  When I came out, there was a smiling gentleman in a suit waiting for the men's room.  He was by the sink, so we switched spots, so I could use the sink and he could continue to wait.  It just seemed weird.

Rejuvenated, we headed back to the tower and wandered and took a few photos.  We found the public toilets, which were full, and probably why we saw a man peeing in the park, behind a wall.  We didn't feel like going up the tower, so we headed back for our bus stop.  There were some camouflaged guys with machine guns walking around.

We got some good seats up top, and some good pics. Then things went weird.  We went by a sight, and made a u-turn, and our audio recording said "Because of the demonstrations, we will have to change our route."  We noticed several roads were blocked off.  One of the bridges was closed and had a huge amount of police officers on it.  We finally made it to our next stop, and changed buses, so we could just ride the next route.

Day 2: Notre Dame

We started towards Notre Dame, and saw a souvenir shop to look at.  And I spied an alley nearby that also had shops.  After the shop we headed down the alley, which was full of shops and food!  There must have been 5 gyro shops!  And mom said "We should eat there for lunch."  We wandered and touristed.  I bought myself some t-shirts, got you a present Frank!  And I bought a Paris bag to carry all my crap in. 

We wandered around in a triangle-shaped area of alleyways, and came upon a Moroccan place.  They weren't quite open, so we wandered more and decided to wait for them to open.  They had kafta, which mom loves.  So we come back and get a seat.  They brought us some glasses of complimentary wine, and we ordered.

I got the chicken couscous and mom got the meatball couscous, which was kafta-like.  And we watched the restaurant cat wander around and play with inanimate objects.  Then our food arrived.  There was a honking big bowl of fine grain couscous, and a huge soup tureen of, well, a soup.  It had carrots, beans, turnips, and zuchini, and a beautiful orange broth.  There were side condiments of chick peas, golden raisins, and some hot spice paste.  They brought out a plate with a whole chicken breast and wing for me, and 3 big meatballs for mom.  We didn't have plates, we had bowls, so we scooped up couscous and dug in.  It was delicious!  And the spice was really hot.  We just had to use a little bit.

After stuffing ourselves, and leaving probably half the couscous, we traveled on.  Our next stop was Notre Dame itself.  It's free, because it's actually a church and still in use.  It was beautiful!  There was another section called the Treasury, that you could pay to see, but we didn't.  After leaving Notre Dame, we went through a giant tent out front that was hosting the Bread Festival.  It was people baking and selling bread and it smelled great.  We were starting to look for a toilet at this point, but decided to catch our next bus and get to the Eiffel Tower.

Day 2: The Blue Line

We're on the east side of Bercy Gardens.  On the west side is Bercy Stadium.  Our bus stop is on the west side of Bercy Stadium.  Sounds simple, right?  We started walking, and found a market and came upon the garden.  We walked alongside at first, in a cobblestoned alley.  Not nice tight cobblestones, but stones with lots of space around them.  We found an entrance to the garden, where there were sidewalks, and decided to walk there.  It had an unlocked gate with a sign saying No Dogs. 

The garden was nice.  It had a grove of orange trees, a vineyard area, and pretty flowers.  And people walking dogs.  We exited to the west, and there was a big open area with a carousel, skate park, and tons of dogs!  To the south was a giant - and I do mean giant - staircase.  Think 50 feet across and several stories high. 

We tried to walk west, but the stadium had construction barriers up.  We saw a dirt path with joggers to the south, so we followed it.  It wound uphill a bit, then ended at a stair way and steep ramp, with a confused guy in a suit.  We went up the ramp.  And up.  We finally found ourselves at the top of the garden in another "garden" area with sculptures.  And there was no way to go west. 

We started east.  Which is where we realized we were at the top of the huge stair, and the confused suit was just reaching the top.  He was joined by 2 more suits, also confused.  Frankly, so were we.  We could see the road on the south side of the stadium, but we couldn't get to it.  There was a giant pedestrian bridge over the river, and a sign about the French library.  Another bus stop was there, so we headed over.

The bridge was springy, because it was made of long, thin pieces of wood.  As we started over, the suits found an elevator, but it was out of order.  They kept walking.  Apparently the bridge was set up so that you walked on the sides, and then a center spot opened up that led to the street.  They went that way.

We continued on and crossed the Seine.  Then we had the choice of taking a large center section up high to the top of the library steps (the library was surrounded by more giant stairs) or coming out on the street by the river.  We took the street route, found a cross walk, and our bus stop was right there!  Then we just had to wait almost 30 minutes for a bus.

We finally caught our bus, and we were off!  We found the stadium stop and saw some sights, but we were mainly wanting to get near Notre Dame, so we could see it and catch the next bus we needed.  We finally got there, stepped of the bus, and voila - there's an Indian restaurant.  Mom said "We should eat lunch here."

Day 2: Getting started

Now, I know some of you are asking, Where the hell is Lauren's post for Thursday?  Well, Lauren is one tired puppy!  We got up early and went to breakfast about 7:45.  Our bus didn't start until 9:30, so we didn't want to be too early. We got home after 9pm.

We paid in advance for breakfast, which was a buffett.  There was a lot of bread, croissants, cereals, cheese, yogurts, fruit, and thin slices of a really good ham.  They had a few juices and a machine that dispensed several coffees, hot chocolate, and hot water, so I had tea.  We made croissandwiches  :)

It was really cool this morning, so I wore blue jeans and my hoodie.  Then our adventure began . . . .

Tuna nicoise salad

Huge salad!