Babymooning in Paris: Part Two

Part one here!

Let’s hop back to it and see what my rusty memory can recall from the trip months later…

The next morning we woke up early to head over to The Chapel of the Miraculous Medal for Mass. It was so surreal being there where St Catherine Laboure’s incorruptible body lays at the alter where Mary appeared to her.

Next to her houses the heart of St. Vincent de Paul and on the other side of the alter is St. Louise de Marillac. Outside and all throughout the chapel are plaques that say “Merci” for what I am guessing are all the miracles and answered prayers attributed to there.

We bought a big pack of medals from there so if anyone wants one, let me know!

Afterwards we went and got coffee at Honor Cafe in Paris 8, super bougie area. We walked around and saw the Luxor Obelisk on our way to Musee de l’Orangerie.

Monet’s Water Lilies were not overrated at all and definitely worth any line you might come across to see it. We spent a good amount of time circling the oval shaped room admiring this masterpiece. I also had to include this painting of fruit by Raoul Dufy because it is so cool.

We had a super busy day ahead, so we left and headed over to the Arc de Triomphe. 250 steps later, we got to the top which was amazing. We also found an elevator at the top that we could of used but alas… too late.

We decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower which ended up being way farther than we eye-balled from the top, but along the way we came across a cute farmer’s market and picked up some strawberries to eat at the tower. We also ended up walking past some other places we didn’t have time for like the Palais de Tokyo.

The Eiffel Tower was so beautiful, way bigger than I imagined. We decided we didn’t really care to go up it, so we bought some sandwiches and ate in the park below. There were a bunch of people going around trying to sell souvenirs which was super annoying and bothersome, so we didn’t stay long before heading out.

That evening we headed over towards Le Marais where we had dinner reservations, but not before stopping at this ice cream shop on Ile Saint Louis called Berthillon (we ended up coming back here 3 times on our trip so it’s worth it).

After that we stopped by this amazing shop called Merci where we picked up so much stuff to bring back home.

While walking around we found this hole in the wall Mexican place called Candelaria that we realized was recommend to us! We popped in and it was so worth it. We ended up stuffing ourselves with frozen margaritas and chips and salsa that when it was time to get to our reservation at Au Passage, we weren’t that hungry and felt underwhelmed by it.

I don’t remember the rest of that night really (thanks margaritas! jk jk), but the next day was our last day in Paris before heading out to London so we tried to take it easy while still cramming a bunch into the day. We headed out to Montmartre, home to Amelie and a lil ol’ place called Sacre Coeur. After going up another, idk 100 steep stairs, to exit the Metro we took the funicular up the rest of the way to the basilica.

The mosaic is insane. I could have spent hours taking it in. The way it is positioned makes you feel simultaneously tiny and meaningless, but also completely overwhelmed with Jesus’ loving arms outstretched drawing you upwards.

A block over is this really cute restaurant called Hardware Society where we grabbed brunch. It was AMAZING.

We walked around and explored Montmartre more, shopped a little at APC, scoped out The 2 Windmills from Amelie, and made our way to the Moulin Rouge which was such a let down to see. If you go, totally skip this.

We were pretty beat from the day plus days of walking so much but we knew we still needed to check out the Louvre, but did so completely exhausted. The Louvre is absolutely massive and we spent a few hours there and probably only saw MAYBE 15-20% of it.

This painting, The Return of Marcus Sextus by Baron Pierre-Narcisse Guerin, was probably mine and Daniel’s favorite one we saw at there.

Afterwards we headed back over to Le Marais to check out Clamato since we couldn’t get a reservation at their more illustrious location, Septime. But Clamato was bomb. We feasted on elderflower + strawberry daiquiris and pollock croquettes which was my jam. So, so good. We’ll have to make sure we get in to Septime next time we go.

We explored a bit more and noticed that we kept coming back to the Seine. So interesting how this river draws people to it.

I’ll stop part 2 there before we head out and explore London. Stay tuned!