So, after spending some time at Montmartre/Sacré Coeur, Matt and I headed back to the Metro/RER (I never knew which subway I was on) to make our way back to the hotel. By the time we made it back to the area of our hotel, we still had about an hour before we could check in, so we stopped at a local deli. Once again, I left it to Matt to place my order for me, but the guys behind the counter seemed pretty friendly & not at all angry that we spoke English to one another (I guess I had this idea that all French-speaking people we'd deal with would be offended & rude to us when they heard English. Turns out, if you put forth an effort to speak French, they're a little more forgiving).
This was my first taste of a mozzarella/tomato baguette sammich, and let me tell you, it was delicious. I don't know what I was expecting, but I was pleasantly surprised. By the time we were finishing up, our eyelids began getting heavier, our bodies feeling worn down.
We headed over to the hotel about 30 minutes early, just hoping we'd be able to check in. Luckily, our room was ready! *sidenote* They put your hotel key on this huge, heavy key chain. Sometime similar to this:
I didn't really get it, and neither did Matt really, but we took it. Even took it with us when we'd go out for the night (well, the first night, at least). I had noticed someone earlier dropping off their key before leaving the hotel. I guess the hotel holds onto it & when you return, you just asked them for the key. This did pose a little bit of a problem for me, as silly as it is, I had trouble saying "43" in French, so I'd usually just say "4-3" (as in the word "four" followed by the word "three"). By the end though, after one of the friendly desk staff explained how to pronounce it, I was able to say "43" in recognizable French (I kept trying to pronounce the 'forty' portion of it how one would pronounce it in Spanish - so that was my main problem).
So, back to the story. We were able to check in to our room, so that made us both happy. We had planned on crashing for a couple hours, to refresh ourselves before dinner.
Now, I had always heard the worst about European hotel rooms (mainly that they are really small), so I was expecting the worst. I was pleasantly surprised at the size of our room. Below are some pictures:
Now, here's the bathroom. Looks pretty normal, I know - however, the tub/shower only had one small window as the barrier between the shower and the rest of the bathroom. I had to be extra careful when showering not to splash water all over the freaking place.
Once we awoke from our naps, we started to get ready to head to Au Petit Riche for dinner. The place came recommended from Matt's parents, who ate there when they visited Paris a few years ago. Again, I was really happy to have Matt with me. With most meals, I'd ask him to look over the menu & suggest what he thought I'd like. Most of the time, it wasn't anything I'd ever try, but I've been trying to do better about eating new foods. I ordered the sole, which is a type of fish. Matt and I split a carafe of wine as well (which actually was a part of most every, if not all, meals we had. Not that having wine with dinner is odd, it just is for us non-wine drinkers).
After dinner, we cabbed it back to our hotel where we dropped off Matt's coworker who had joined us for dinner. She headed to bed, but Matt and I were still somewhat awake, due to our earlier nap. We walked around the area and found a pub around the corner. We enjoyed a few beers there, before retiring home for the night. . . but not before stopping at the local grocer to take beers/booze back to our room with us!
I've included pictures from dinner, beers post dinner & our beer/booze run below:
This is where we bought our beer/booze
This is the beer/booze we bought
1 comment:
woot! ready for chapter 4!
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