Day 2: A Taste of Greece in Paris
Thursday, June 1, 1995
Paris, France

After staying up late chatting with Stacey last night, our day started out somewhat slowly. We even received a call from the front desk early this morning. They first asked (what seemed like) for us to quiet down in the native language. We obviously had no idea what the party on the other side of the line was saying. Therefore, the kind manager, unable to express his wishes to his boisterous western patrons, had nothing left to do but make the universally known “shhhhhhh” sound into the phone. Finally, his intentions were quite clear to me. We got the point. Anyway it is getting late on Thursday night right now and I’d like to get to bed soon. But have no fear, the following paragraphs will summarize Thursday’s events.

By now we have become pros at navigating the Parisian Metro network, so we hopped on board again and rode to St. Michel Notre Dame in order to see the Cathedral of Notre Dame. We actually spent a few hours here. Stacey even listened to a Spanish tour guide and told me a little about what he explained about the cathedral. After the cathedral we walked through the Cemetrie De Montparnasse. It was from this overcrowded burial ground that bones were transferred to the nearby catacombs. After a refreshing lunch at an open aire café, we visited the catacombs. Unfortunately, they were closed this season for restoration.

Even though Stacey and I argued a little, today was quite exciting. The areas we visited today more closely resembled what I had envisioned Paris to be like. The University of Paris, Boulevard de St. Michel and all its eateries, and the Notre Dame area were scenes straight out of textbooks or off of postcards. We also stopped at Val de Grace, a church that was quite indicative of a typical French atmosphere. It laid behind an incredibly huge courtyard where children were playing and running, just adjacent to a quaint little plaza sparsely speckled with newsstands and shops (picture #22 on roll #1.) We also stopped off to enjoy a gyro in what look like a Greek-run marketplace just off the Boulevard de St. Michel. Au Revoir for now!

Ho there. I am back. Even though it is Friday, June 2, I forgot to describe our experience with the gyro-guy in the Latin Quarter yesterday. The fat ridden, greasy lamb meat was nicely masked with a scrumptious cucumber sauce. The shop owner was the stereotypical French entrepreneur, although everything about him suggested to me that he was Greek. It must have been from working with those gyros all the time! But on the way back down St. Michel that same night, he remembered us and made an effort to come out to the street to say Bon Soir when he saw us coming.