Darcy's Paris Blog

Lots of work, and then sightseeing

Today I spent pretty much my whole day at work cranking on this book chapter I've gotta write. Good times. I still managed to skip out a little early, though, and take Sherry and Kumi (another NI corporate visitor in town for a night) around. They're both reading The DaVinci Code and wanted to check out some of the landmarks in the book, so that was our plan. We dropped off the car and stopped off at Sacre Coeur, not because it's in the book, but because it's spectacular and close to the house. Then we took the cable car down the hill for the city view and metro'd across the city to Saint Sulpice, a church in the book where a pretty major scene happens. It was high on their agenda, and after we were there I was glad we went. Then we found a great seafood restaurant in St. Germain and had the famous French moules marinieres. (We searched out other options after checking out the famous Cafe de Fleur and realizing that the prices were really high and the real food options were slim -- but hey, what do you expect for such a touristy place...)

And then we did a lot of walking. We walked past Notre Dame and did their souvenir shopping, stopping off for coffee/tea and dessert in a cafe near the big fountain at St. Michel. Then we walked past the Louvre (again because of the book) and down to Concorde to hit the Buddha Bar again, which Sherry really wanted to see and I was keen to check out again. I thought the walk would take 20-25 minutes, but in reality it took at least twice that long. I just forget how far away these places actually are from each other -- I've gotten so used to walking here that I forget that just because things are close on the map doesn't mean they're close in reality. Oh, well, it was worth it. Buddha Bar was a good time again, and much, much less crowded than when Neil and I went. Could've been because it was earlier in the evening, but I think it's because a lot of Parisians are out of town visiting family for the long weekend.

posted by Darcy @ 11:36 PM