Paris Day 4: Macarons, Museums, and Sparkling Towers

I have some really great memories of the Paris Saint Merri Ward from my internship in Paris and from surprising my brother in the church courtyard with a huge bear hug in 2010. So, when Brandon and I headed toward the church building, we were looking forward to meeting some of the members and getting a spiritual uplift. True to form, we rode our Velibs to the church. I had wisely chosen to bring a pencil skirt for my Sunday outfit, so biking around in that was a real joy.
Church was lovely. The Saint Merri Ward is full of locals, study abroad students, interns, and tourists. I love how they involve the visiting students in the sacrament program. Some attempt to give their talks in French, broken though it may be, but they had a translator for the English-speaking student who gave a talk on this particular Sunday.
After church, I was anxious to shed my pencil skirt for something more bike-friendly, so we returned home and ate some lunch. Our quick trip home turned into quite the awkward hour. Our Japanese host Azusa was with her friend Shimizu. Azusa introduced us to Shimizu and told us that the apartment owner would be coming by to do some quick maintenance. She asked us to pretend we were close friends of Shimizu, even though Shimizu didn't speak English...What we pieced together over the next strange hour was that Shimizu was renting the apartment from a Japanese-speaking Frenchman. She was then subletting it to Azusa who was sub subletting it by allowing renters through airbnb.com. Clearly the owner was unaware of any of this. Awkward.

Next stop: my favorite free museum in Paris--Musée Carnavalet in the Marais. I love this building architecturally, and I love that the inside is such a mishmash of objects. It's a Parisian history museum, and I always notice something else strange and new when I go. The gardens are beautiful, too!

Once we left the museum, the weather was insane! It would rain cats and dogs for half and hour, then switch to bright, sunny skies for a half hour. It switched between these opposites ten times before finally deciding to stay sunny. It was our last chance for Brandon to experience Paris, so I took him to one of my favorite Parisian churches (Saint Germain l'Auxerrois) and then made him bike all the way to Opera Garnier so that we could frequent the Pierre Hermé shop and eat macarons on the Opera steps.

Saint Germain l'Auxerrois

I don't know if Brandon will ever forgive me for making us spend $10 on four strangely-flavored, small macarons. But we had a great time listening to the street performer who was singing pop songs in about five different languages. We enjoyed hearing him sing made-up, jibberish "English" lyrics of American songs.
Even though we didn't take a tour of the opera house, I made Brandon come inside and admire the splendor of the opera's entrance as well as the statues of musicians like Handel and Bach.

After that, we biked our way back to the 1st arrondissement and then to the Champs-Elysées. For those of us unwilling to spend $500 on a shirt, the Champs-Elysées does lose a bit of its classic lure. But there are always great street performers there, and Brandon loved watching them bring in audience members for a dance competition. We walked our way up to the Arc de Triomphe and admired the memorial.

 

We then picked up some bikes and rode the downhill streets toward the Eiffel Tower. We'd visited on our first day, but Brandon hadn't yet seen it in all its glory--sparkling. We didn't ascend the tower--our opportunities to do that were on cloudy days where we would have missed the spectacular view. More importantly, though, Brandon is not a fan of heights, and I forever ruined the possibility of him wanting to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower when I told him that the top of the tower moves in the wind. It's only five inches, but still enough to kill any desire he had to walk up 19 stories of stairs.
We got to spend quite awhile at the Trocadéro, admiring the view, people watching, and avoiding salespeople like the plague. We were also asked to be in a video being made as a surprise for someone. So, SURPRISE, whoever you are!

After watching the sparkling tower (I never get tired of that view), we biked the four miles back home. The bike path that follows the Rive Droite is so great. You pass wonderful bridges, the Tuileries, and  the Louvre. Paris is magical at night.
On our bike ride home, we had to switch bikes and make a pitstop (at McDonald's of course). We accidentally left our tripod next to the bike stand, and when we came back not five minutes later, it was gone. Someone in Paris is now the proud owner of the tripod we bought specifically for that trip. In the morning, we had to prepare for our departure. We said our goodbyes to Azusa and lugged our suitcases through the metro and on the bus to Orly Airport. We happened to depart Paris when the Orly Airport was doing a social media project called #iamtheguest (whatever that means). They took our picture which was later put on the airport facade as part of a huge collage. Pretty cool beans!