Caserne Napoléon (Napoleon's Barracks) is one of many historic sites in Paris.
After discovering that our hotel in Paris has some of the most comfortable mattresses we’ve ever found, we decided to sleep in a bit and have a relaxed morning. At the suggestion of friends of Courtney’s who frequently travel to Paris, we decided to figure out how to get around the Paris metro (which is thankfully very easy) and visit the neighborhood of Le Marais. Right next to the subway station we found a bright and slightly noisy bistro that had the exact look and feel of being in a movie about Paris, right down to the bit where Courtney ordered a lunch special, was told they were out, tried to get a salad, and was instead talked into ordering the boeuf bourguignon. She let me try some and it was a perfect stew. We tried to order the tarte au citron (lemon tart), but they had run out of that too! I guess everyone in Paris reads the daily specials board before any other menus offered. We got the tarte tatin instead, which I had never had before. It turned out to be a wonderfully tasty warm apple and caramel tart with vanilla ice cream on top. Courtney’s friend said that one of the best parts of Paris is walking around and experiencing the streets and the views, so that’s what we did.
We did some window shopping, we found lots of interesting looking cafés and little food counters, and we found a pharmacie to get some bandaids for my feet when we walked a little too much! We found ourselves across the street from Hôtel de Ville, Paris’s city hall, and decided to check out the huge BHV Marais department store, with six floors of everything from children’s arts and crafts kits to furniture to Apple Watches. We realized it was starting to get a little late, and the very helpful man at the front desk of our hotel had told us where we could do laundry, so we figured it was time to find our way back and get some clothes clean. We navigated the subway again and rounded up the dirty clothes to walk the few blocks to the laundromat. We have set some step records this trip! We figured out the washers easily enough, but the dryers were set to ten-minute cycles, so it took a few tries (and some creative button-pushing by Courtney) to finally leave with our jeans completely dry. At least I can now run washers and dryers in two foreign countries!
