Paris Update!

Bonjour! Just a quick update! There's so much to do in Paris! Every day I come up with a fairly ambitious amount of things to do and then we do about a third of them. Tomorrow's plan includes 9 chocolate shops (Matt put a limit at 8). I'm not sure we'll make 9 chocolate shops, but it's a worthy plan nonetheless.

It rained on us tonight but we still managed to walk all the way home under our umbrella. (We'll certainly never make 9 chocolate shops if it rains on us tomorrow).

Today we had lunch at a restaurant with two Michelin stars! We've never had any kind of meal at any kind of Michelin starred restaurant. But La Table De Joel Robuchon has a great lunch deal that was too hard to pass up. We got soup, appetizer (I had rabbit pate! I had never had rabbit or pate. It's not something I would usually eat. But whatever, why not!), entree, cheese course (yes, a cheese course!), dessert and coffee. It also came with a bottle of wine. The dessert spoon had gold dust on it and the chocolate that came with the coffee also had gold dust on it. Matt noted: "There's a finite amount of gold in the world, and some people are eating it". Today, we were those people.

I have to tell you about our entree, it was unreal. I wish I had a picture but it was such a classy restaurant we didn't feel we could take out our cameras in the middle of the meal. It was fish and chips -- being that it was fried fish and potatoes -- but it wasn't any fish and chips you've ever seen. It was an entire fish, that had been fried -- tail and eyes and everything (Matt's fish wouldn't stop looking at me) and they cut it open in the middle and folded it over and fried potatoes on top of it. I know I can't explain it. But it was crazy.

Oh wait, I googled and found a picture. Prepare yourself:

Yes. We ate that. It was really good actually. Matt liked it a lot a lot. I liked it a lot. But yeah, it was weird.

We don't usually eat at classy restaurants, so we found it a little intimidating. The kept offering us more bread! They only give you one roll at a time, and if you eat it, they come back and ask if you'd like another one. And come back and come back and come back. They also constantly refill your wine and water glass. At one point, Matt wondered, since they had silently been refilling him -- how much wine have I drunk? Who knows? And since there were a billion courses I never quite finished any of them and every time they took my plate away, they were really concerned and kept asking if everything was ok. It was ok! It was just filling!

We've also had crepes (very good!), falafel (very good!), baguettes (some very good! some just ok!), and macaroons (also quite good!). Eating is very important to us. We have restaurant reservations the next 3 days, so we'll see how all that goes!

Matt, as it turns out, really likes cemeteries. Creepy right? Perfect thing to do on the honeymoon yes? I had only planned to go to one of the famous cemeteries in Paris, but we went to a second since Matt liked the first one so much. The graves are all really cool (they have statues and little buildings and all kinds of things) and Matt took about a thousand pictures. Yeah, it's still weird. But he likes what he likes I guess!

It took a day or two but we finally figured out the 'Velib' here. Velib is a system of bikes that you can rent and return all over the city. We've been Velibing everywhere and it's a really great way to see things. We've seen twice as much being able to ride bikes than we would walking. Matt is still vaguely paranoid about injury since you have to ride with the traffic, but there are lots of bike lanes and we haven't had any trouble.

In general, we've been having a really great time and fitting in all that we can while still trying to relax and take it easy. We went to the top of the Sacre Coeur and you get a really great view of Paris (but there are 300 steps! Feel the burn!). And we went to the Raspail Market and bought cheese and bread and soap from the stalls there. And we went in Notre Dame at night. And we walked down the Champs-Elysees and saw the Arch De Triumph.

We have lots of pictures of the trip, but I don't have time right now to upload them and make them the right size for the blog, but I'll put them up when I get the chance.

Wednesday and Thursdays we're finally going to hit a bunch of museums. So we'll let you know how the Mona Lisa looks. Small I hear. But we'll have to see.

Hope all is well in America! Au Revoir!