We’re Going to Paris Days 9 & 10: Before Noon

“Now we’ve seen Strasbourg,” I said as we stood at the quay, waiting for the train to take us to Paris. Our stop here lasted all of 11 minutes.

“Now we never need to come back here,” Mike finished.
“You’re a world traveler now. Los Angeles. Mexico City. Paris.”
“That’s it. That’s the entire world.”
“Exactly.”
“You know we’re coming back to Paris every year for the next three years, right?”
“We’ll be living under a bridge if we do that.”
“Worth it.”


The train ride was uneventful and comfortable. More comfortable than our flights to France had been. We ate our bread and cheese and sausage and read and discussed what our final plans for our last afternoon in Paris would be.

But it turned out Mike and I had very different ideas on how we wanted to spend our last afternoon in Paris. Mike wanted to go back to Père Lachaise to see the Communards wall, where a plaque dedicated to all the nameless fallen soldiers of the Paris Commune sat. Then he wanted to see the Bastille, and finally he wanted to see the Hotel de Ville.

He also wanted to walk.

I wanted to get hot chocolate at a café and write. Maeve had suggested DOSE like a week ago and I still hadn’t been. So, after getting settled in Place D’Aligre, Mike and I parted ways, agreeing to meet Sylvain at Le Baron Rouge for wine and charcuterie at 6:30 or 7.

(Sylvain had plans to be productive that night, taking care of personal matters, until he learned what neighborhood we were staying in, and then he very excitedly suggested a very hip wine bar and promised us our best night of the trip.)

There are two locations for DOSE, and the closer one was just under a mile and a half from our Airbnb. I decided to walk because taking the metro would take roughly the same amount of time anyway. It struck me as, um, interesting that I was going to walk for 30 minutes to find hot chocolate in Paris, of all places, but I was determined on this course.

Can't get mad at it though, because all walks in Paris are amazing. I put in my earbuds and decided to listen to a Pandora playlist based off a song from the Amélie soundtrack, and then spent a good amount of time deciding which was the more #basicwhitegirl thing to do - the Amélie soundtrack, or the Kesha Pandora playlist? And honestly, when did basic white girl music get so awesome?

My walk took me through the Jardin des Plantes, which was absolutely stunning. It was 65 degrees outside. I had a great afternoon.

This bear and this man are fighting but it looks vaguely sexual.

I also walked by the Paris Mosque, which was pretty neat too, since I'd never seen it before. I didn't go inside because I don't know if you can (and I didn't really try), but it was neat seeing a religious structure built so differently than the cathedrals that I've been visiting this trip.

Finally I sat down at DOSE and I had a really swell hot chocolate while getting some good writing done and messaging Mike about his own adventures. He saw the wall! He saw the Hotel de Ville!

Apparently not the original Hotel de Ville because that place was burned down by Communards.

Here we honor Communards.

And Caitlin, there was a protest! HE SAW A PROTEST.

(When he called to ask if I saw the pictures he sent, I told him it was for a "Keep France French" demonstration. He was so deflated I immediately told him I was kidding and that it was a labor strike.)

Wow a strike what a special day in Paris.

At DOSE, I had a conversation with a very chatty Australian guy.
"I lived in California for a bit, when I was 21."
"Oh, where?"
"Guess. It's the worst place in California."
"San Bernardino." Nothing. "Fresno."
"Yes! Fresno! People usually guess that first. Or Bakersfield."
"Ugh, yes, Bakersfield is gross too. But I have some memories of playing high school soccer in San Bernardino so maybe I'm just biased."

Later we somehow got to talking about Trump and he asked me my thoughts on whether he was going to be impeached (at this point, nope) and if was going to run in 2020 (definitely) and how Trump was the reason he doesn't pay as much attention to the news anymore because he is the worst. I am honestly surprised it took this long for someone to tell me how terrible Trump is, but maybe the French are aware that their current president is not that chill either. YEAH I SAID IT.

Mike found me around 6 PM and we walked over to Le Baron Rouge to meet Sylvain for our last dinner in Paris. Sylvain told us that for his birthday, Maeve sent flowers and also bought him a mug that only he is allowed to use in their Berkeley apartment. He showed us his present for Maeve that he's working on but I won't spoil that here because it's not her birthday yet.

Le Baron Rouge is one of the best and most famous wine bars in Paris. It's where construction workers in bathrobes might show up after a long day but also where American and Japanese hipsters go when they're here on vacation. So in that sense, it's like the Stella Artois of wine bars. But it's a really cute place, and we had some really good wine and rabbit terrine and cheese and bread and it was exactly the right last meal to have in France.

"You really undersold how good crepes are, Caitlin."
"I did, didn't I?"
"Yeah, you were like, 'they're okay,' but they're really good."
"Yeah. My bad."
"I'm going to go home and be really obnoxious about Paris all the time now."
"You can tell people how much better the food is here."
"Yeah. Well, Trevor has been here before."
"Ah, yes, but you're someone who just appreciates the culture more than someone like Trevor would."
"Oh my god that's good. I'm definitely going to use that. And I'll tell my sister not to dress like an American here. Parisians dress differently, you know? She should know that. I'll tell her."
"Yeah, tell her to put away that fanny pack she loves so much. And the Hard Rock Cafe graphic tee she's always wearing."
"This is good. I'm using all of this."

Sylvain is apparently a huge fan of Arrested Development, which I never knew - it's my favorite TV show of all time. We also talked about the fact that Judd Apatow is an asshole, Jonah Hill is nice but maybe socially awkward and shy (Sylvain has met both of them), Patton Oswalt is great (I met him), and Gerard Depardieu is a monster (none of us have met him but he is apparently a big fan of Putin and also recently claimed that he survived his mother's abortion attempt, making him the French version of Charlie Day).

After dinner, Mike and I had one last crepe with ice cream and it was great OBVIOUSLY before heading back to our room.

"So I have advice for everyone who comes to Paris," Mike told me on the way to the airport. "It's a city with a lot of PDA, so you have to do it a lot. Just constantly have your tongue out."
"I can't wait to read your guidebook."


Our flight left Paris at 12:35 PM and now we're chilling in Iceland for a few hours. I'm bummed the trip has ended but I'm excited about being back home. There's a lot to do and it's gonna make me anxious until I can actually carve out the time to sit down and do it.

Okay bye France!