Day 38 ~ License to Île

These first few days in Paris are all found days. We’d originally intended for a couple of days in the French countryside, which we decided to cancel to simplify our trip in response to COVID. So until tomorrow, everything we’ve done has been all time we wouldn’t have had in Paris at all. It’s been lovely.

Today, the action started the second we set foot outside our apartment. The Sorbonne building across the street had meters and meters of sidewalk lined with secondhand stalls. There were tons of clothes vendors, knick-knacks of every kind, booksellers, and all kinds of fun stuff. The stalls were wonderfully curated, and someone with a designer’s eye could do something really neat with all this stuff…but we are not those people. We looked, we admired, then we walked on without buying much of anything. Also, prices were vintage store prices, not flea market prices – reasonable enough, but more than we were looking to pay. Anyway, we’ve encountered a ton of similar markets in Europe, and this was maybe the best one we’d seen. I love that I accidentally caught this lovely young Parisienne testing out the opera glasses:

We headed toward the river. Stef was thrilled to find that the river was lined with bouquinistes. These are permanent stalls, with storage infrastructure and everything, set up to just pop up with books and prints ready for sale. They are full of gorgeous, fun, and inexpensive things. Again, someone more creative could have decorated an apartment. We weren’t sure how we’d get a print home, so we left mostly empty-handed. Still, bouquinistes are really cool.

We did cross over briefly to Ile St. Louis, another big island in the Seine with some of the city’s oldest and most fashionable neighborhoods, and had a sandwich there.

We headed toward La Ile de la Cite, home of Notre Dame. You will recall that this beauty had a catastrophic fire in 2019, and it’s still under massive reconstruction – looks like for years to come. Still, it was fun to cruise around it, and the front facade still looks magnificent.

We saw this neat Metro station with a massive plant store surrounding it:

Since we were unable to scratch our cathedral itch at Notre Dame, we headed to St. Chapelle, also on the island…just like every other Paris tourist midday on a Sunday. The line was massive, and it seems everyone had timed tickets, so we were shut out of that for the day. Onward.

We crossed to the Left Bank, and were relieved to find it much less crowded than the Iles had been. We wound our way up some streets, cruising by a game store that was really fun, and some eateries we’d like to make it back to. We strolled by some of the buildings of the famous Sorbonne university.

Finally, we were able to hit up a church. We ducked into the cathedral of St. Severin, and found it to be a great representation of the French style of cathedral.

We ducked into this tres Parisienne little park:

We cruised by the outside of the famous Shakespeare and Company English-language bookstore. We expected it to be crowded, but we had not expected a substantial line of people waiting to be admitted. Again, we conceded defeat due to being ill-prepared for Sunday afternoon crowds, and resolved to try again at a time that would not be so popular.

We shopped away our sorrows at more bouquinistes, and tried to forget our disappointment for good by stepping into the popular A. Lacroix Pâtissier. Alas, we were there for the Notre Dame apple, which was sold out. We got a fig confit thing that was totally unlike any pastry we’ve had before, and quite delicious. Sorry, no pics. 🙁

We headed down to walk along the river a bit on this lovely evening.

We picked up still more patisserie and a baguette to have around the apartment for later. After a little apartment time, we headed out to pick up dinner – falafel and shawarma we took, you guessed it, back to the river. We watched the sunset evolve into nighttime, with the sky turning the buildings pink:

Then bathing our falafels in pink light.

Then the bridges and lights of Notre Dame blinking on.

Viva la France!