DAY THREE

Day three we actually managed to wake up in time for breakfast at the hostel. They serve bread, a chocolate croissant, cereal, orange juice, yogurt, and a choice of coffee or hot chocolate. After breakfast, we went to Orange and bought prepaid phones. The lady there saw my ID and expressed how much she LOVED California. HAHA :D

my French cell phone

Afterward, we caught the metro to the Arc de Triomphe. Anyone can see the arc on the outside, but our museum passes allowed us to climb all the way to the top of the arc which seemed like a zillion steps up a spiral staircase. Nevertheless, it was totally worth it. Forget the Eiffel Tower! You can see the city perfectly from up there!

Then we walked along the Champs Elysses and got lunch at some restaurant. Our waiter had like movie star looks, but he clearly got annoyed of us for asking for more carafe d’eau (tap water). No restaurant really appreciates it when you order une carafe d’eau because its free… they all want you to pay ridiculous prices for real drinks!

My omelet on the Champs Elysses

While heading to the Eiffel Tower, we made a few wrong turns and ended up in a nice, non-touristy area of Paris. Like we saw real French women walking home from God knows where, and legit apartments and stores that are not catered to tourists.

While walking up one street, we saw a church which we decided to check out. I have been trying to take pictures of the REAL France, not just what you see in movies and on postcards. The church looked like it tried to use historic architecture, but it was definitely modernized. This guy that was in the church started talking to us in French outside of the church. We had a long conversation in Franglais (French and English mixed). He would help us with our French while practicing his English. He would laugh at some of the things we would say because they weren’t used in the correct context, but we would laugh at him because of how he pronounced some English words. He was cool for challenging our French skills, but he was kind of creepy. At the end of our conversation, in French, he was asking if we could all go out for drinks and was telling us that we should get boyfriends immediately because it was the best way to learn French… Needless to say, like many French guys, he started coming on to the smiley girls from California… we left him with a “maybe we will run into each other”… hopefully we won’t.

We proceeded onto the Eiffel Tower and left Trang to climb the tower by herself. Shelby and I had already climbed it in previous trips to Paris and didn’t want to spend the money to climb it again… it’s really not a big deal once you’ve done it once. We sat in a park next to a pond by the Eiffel Tower. It was really cute and had a really good view of the Eiffel Tower, perfect for pictures.

We took the metro back to the area around our hostel and looked for a restaurant to get coffee and dessert. We sat in a restaurant, but when we began to order dessert, the waiter started yelling at us in French. I could understand enough to know that he wanted us to order an entire meal and that we couldn’t just order dessert. So we pretty much got kicked out of that restaurant as he very sternly took our menus from us. But it’s totally OK because we went and got ice cream and crepes. Mine was a crepe with nutella and bananas and mint chocolate chip ice cream. Seriously, I love French food… even their ice cream is amazing.