Dear Paris, I take back all the unfavorable things I wrote about you in my previous post and would like to say “I’m sorry.” You are a lovely, albeit bustling, city that has so much to offer in the way of history, art, beauty, culture, and fashion. But you need to work on your bathroom problem before you host the Olympics next summer.
The very last day of our trip was one of our favorites. Scott’s YouTube research paid off and one of the travel vloggers he had come across had clever suggestions for things to see and ways of beating the crowds at various monuments and points of interests. The YouTuber advised checking out the 18th arrondisement of Montmarte which is a tall hill on the northern side of Paris. It is home to the Sacre-Coeur Basillica (the Basicallica of the Sacred Heart) as well as to the Moulin Rouge.
By this point in our trip we were public transit pros so our travel of course went off without a hitch. Just kidding. The Paris metro ticketing was ridiculously complex and not at all user-friendly, so much so that they had actual human attendants stationed at the ticket kiosks to help guide your ticket procurement. A kind human attendant helped us buy the proper tickets and pointed us in the right direction of Montmarte. From there it went off without a hitch and we arrived in the beautiful and quite hilly neighborhood.
First order of business- potty time. I found a small cafe that allowed the use of its facilities and was fully prepared to buy something in exchange but they just had a jar near the bathroom and suggested leaving some change but stated that it was not mandatory. I dropped a euro in and was thankful for the generosity of the little cafe! Next order of business- finding a market or grocery store to buy things for the picnic lunch we had planned in a little-known park on the backside of Sacre-Coeur. We found a few things to put together for our picnic as well as a bottle of French red wine. We were accustomed to having free disposable utensils at our beck and call back home so we were strategic in our picnic purchases to find finger foods since disposable cutlery wasn’t offered and we would have had to purchase it. Luckily they sold cheap corkscrews that were roughly a euro. Scott lamented the fact that we didn’t have travel cutlery- he keeps a set of plastic plates and cutlery in his truck for occasions just like this. (He made a note to find and order travel approved sporks for us to keep in our backpacks and they were waiting for us when we got home!)
Picnic purchased, we climbed up the steep road and 300 steps that deposited us at the base of Sacre-Coeur. The basilica was positively crawling with people- tourists, panhandlers, and obnoxious street vendors selling the same cheap tacky light-up Eiffel tower trinkets in the middle of the sidewalks and walkways that we had encountered the previous day. With the basilica at our backs we took in the expansive view in front of us and it was breathtaking to see all of Paris spread out below us. The city seemed to go on forever. We walked around the outside of Sacre-Coeur for a bit and admired its architecture and statues. The outside of the basilica is a distinctive and stark white color, owing to its construction out of a certain type of limestone that when exposed to rainwater exudes calcite giving it its characteristic appearance.
We made our way around to the backside of Sacre-Coeur to find the tucked away little park that the travel vlogger had recommended and it did not disappoint. It was secluded and had very few people which was amazing considering the throngs of people swarming around directly on the other side of Paris’ second most visited attraction. We found benches under vine-laden arbors and unpacked our picnic. The first snack we decided to try was a bag of chips that were “saveur chevre et piment d’esplette” flavored. When I had bought them I had surmised from the label and the wording that they were cheese and pepper flavored which sounded intriguing. They surely were intriguing as well as disgusting. It turns out chevre is French for goat cheese. Neither of us were fans and Scott ended up leaving the bag out in case any homeless people perhaps wanted them. I bet no one did. The rest of our picnic choices were yummy and drinking a bottle of French red at a Parisian picnic at the base of Sacre-Coeur certainly qualified as doing the thing you’re supposed to do in the place you’re supposed to do it. The soft green lawn of the park called for us to nap on it and we enjoyed a post-picnic and post-wine siesta under the watchful eye of the Sacre-Coeur that towered in the background.
(Sidenote: Something fun to do in foreign countries is to look at all the different flavors of chips they have. When I was traveling in Asia a few years ago, I discovered that they had an affinity for zany seafood flavored crisps which I found hilarious and I brought back several tubes of Pringles in wacky varieties such as shrimp, crab, and seaweed to give away at my family’s Dirty Santa gift swap.)
The only downside of our indulgent Parisian picnic was the side effect of the red wine- it meant we (mostly I) were in need of a potty. Lucky for us there was a Sanisette in the park. Sanisettes, as I mentioned in the previous post, are France’s elaborate answer to a portable toilet. They are large and hut-like, big enough for an entire family to occupy, and have automatic doors. Inexplicably, they have an automatic wash cycle that occurs after every single use, evidently triggered by sensors in the bathroom floor detecting that no one is standing inside. However, there are horror stories of lightweight people, mainly children, being hosed down when they were trapped inside the contraption because they were too light to register on the sensor. While I can appreciate clean facilities (who doesn’t like to go inside a freshly emptied and hosed down Porta-potty rather than the alternative… day 3 Porta-potty at a horse show in August…) the whole process is quite inefficient because the cleaning cycle adds about a minute and it is not as though there are a whole bank of these things- festival style, so the queue becomes quite backed up and when you gotta go, well, you know the rest. I might have been an ugly American while standing in line for the Sanisette and informed everyone that Scott and I both would be going in together NOT because we were up to any funny business but to help everyone else out to speed up the rather inefficient process that is the clean cycle of the Sanisette. Thanks for coming to my toilet tirade TED Talk. Should you see me in person you are welcome to ask me about bathrooms in Europe but I advise you don’t. You’ll get an earful.
We decided to walk through Montmarte and use a different Metro station on the way back to get a feel for the neighborhood and I’m glad we did. Especially because it was downhill. We enjoyed taking in the sights and flavors on the way back- the macarons that we got were fantastic. This time our Metro navigation was actually pretty smooth and we made it back to the hotel for a shower before dinner and our Seine night cruise.
The dinner that we had was perhaps the most memorable of the entire trip. The service was outstanding (I made a point to find the manager before we left to tell him how pleased we were) and the menu was a comprehensive guide of “what to eat in Paris.” We had French onion soup, cantaloupe and ham, beef bourguignon, the most beautiful apple pie we had ever laid eyes on, and creme brulee. The restaurant overlooked the Seine and the colors that were created by the sun starting to dip lower in the sky cast a surreal light over the city. It was the perfect last meal to have on our trip. (The owner’s roving little white Westie terrier that stealthily prowled around under the tables accepting any morsels diners were willing to share was the cherry on top of our dinner experience, or at least mine.)
It was just a short walk to the dock that our Seine night cruise would be departing from and we hit it right during “golden hour”- the light was stunning and gave the city a nearly magical feel. Again, the perfect way to end our trip. We got tickets for the last boat cruise of the night and hopped onboard, eager to see the city from the vantage point of the Seine, and to be mesmerized by the illuminated Eiffel Tower sparkling which happens for the first five minutes of every hour on the hour.
The views didn’t disappoint. We were able to see the intricate details on all the bridges that cross the Seine and hear their history; each bridge was unique in its architecture as well as its origin story. Seeing many of the monuments at night was enjoyable, as we have learned from our friend Rich that usually the best way to appreciate a monument is at night, and he is spot on. I am not typically a sappy or overly sentimental or romantic person but there was something about being in Paris, on the Seine, and watching the sparkles glittering off of the Eiffel Tower, alongside my favorite person in the whole entire world that made me feel some feels. I had thought I was impervious to the appeal and romance of Paris, but it turns out that neither of us could resist her evocative charm. 
We felt a little less romantic about our 4:30 am wake up the following morning and our taxi driver who we had scheduled for a 5:30 am pickup had none of the appeal of the sparkling Eiffel Tower. The cab ride to Charles de Gaulle took nearly an hour as the airport is located quite a ways outside of the city. The international terminal was nice, if not a little pretentious and over the top (the stores in the terminal read like a list of who’s-who’s of luxury brands), and we were excited to find benches that allowed us to actually lay down fully and take a nap prior to boarding. The flight back was smooth and Customs was mostly uneventful although for a nerve wracking moment I thought that the beer cheese that I had bought in Amsterdam was going to be pried from my tight grip by the Customs agent, but it turns out it was fine. I would have eaten the whole damn wheel of it right on the spot had he told me I couldn’t take it. When we landed in Greenville, we were thrilled to be met and picked up by my parents. We talked their ears off on the way home, regaling them with tales from our memorable adventure.
