Bling Bling

OK...today began with a bit of a sleepin...until 8:30. First on the agenda was the shower with no shower curtain which was interesting. Water all over the floor and feeling slightly exposed. This was the first good night's sleep I've had since I've been here - a least until I heard Jules rummaging around at 3:00 looking for the Ipod because she couldn't sleep. But...I did manage to sleep until the wake up call @ 7:30. After our breakfasr of croissants and chocolate pastries, we set out for our hop-on-off tour of Paris.

The first stop was at the grocery store around the corner to buy a bottle of water. I didn't hear the price, but handed the girl $20 because I wanted some change. She refused to take it & Jules' $5, because it only cost $.18 - so off to the metro. After a quick stop at Starbucks for chai latte and a caramel macciato we caught our bus. After a seeing the Opera House & the Madelaine Chapel both of which had some nice architectural design, we were headed yet again down another sex shop street - Juliane's favourite. It was also around this time that we discovered the camwera's battery was dying. We thought that there was still about a third of the battery life left, but it was about a third of a second. Sooooo....what other way to compensate for our lack of being able to take supermode shots in front of all of Paris' leading attractions? Shopping of course!!! Yesterday our little shuttle driver Eddy gave us some good pointers on shopping. Well let me tell you...Eddy is batting 1000.

After hitting up a little boutique on a side street, we came to Le Printemps...The Garden of Eden...( well at least as close to Woodbury Commons as I can get Kim...)Seven floors of bliss...we found some pretty good buys there and I even managed to stay on tasrget as to what I was wanting to buy - sweaters. Noemally I get distracted by all the dresses and cutesy little shirts, but this time I was all good. Well I did get distracted by a few of the dresses, but the only reason they stayed on the rack was that they were 300 euros ( yes Nicole & Tanis even BCBG is still out of the budget over here). Although picture an entire floor solely for shoes...shoes as far as the eye could see. Shoes, Shoes everywhere and not a pair to wear!! So after doing our damage there, we hit the street again in hopes of finding a payphoe to see what was up with our night tour of the city, only to find yet again that our credit card would not be read in the phone. So after trying for awhile we decided to head back to our room to recharge the camera's battery and to make some phone calls o a phone tht would at least work.

There was still no answer at the tour place (only voice mail....augghhhh!) we set back out again for something to eat. We hit up the Cafe Zephyr...the WORST cafe in all of France according to Jules. Guess what our options were for eating? If you guessed....SALAD you win the prize. A prize of what you ask? The same prize we got - the shaft. So, that being said, Jules ordered a salad and I had salmon and we discussed the politics of the world - which probably made no sense from my end as I was getting tired. Our waiter was a little off...when we sat down he came over, said bonjour and continued to stare at me until I said "What" then he asked Jules she wanted some coffee. So after our little lunch was done and the waiter stood there trying to tell us how much we should pay each,which was not what we were wanting to figure out - and when Jules asked him to give us a minute he looked at us like we were idiots. So we quickly ditched that place and hopped on to our bus.

Ahhhh...the bus. There were some pretty interesting sights...a superb flower market, the Moulin Rouge, Opera house, Gare de l'est (a beautiful train station) and some massive arches that used to be gates to the city in the 17th century. That combined with the bus nicking all the tree branches in front of us which caused us to duck a lot kept us on our toes. At least until Jules had me captivated by a story about Kim & Trev & their daycare sagas upon which a branch full of leaves smacked me right in the face, followed by Jules getting smacked in the forehead. (oh well, at least there were no tripping incidents today and we can still see out of both eyes).

So tonight is the night for some city lights - we are off to see some of Paris at night.