soulmatejunkee | Paris - October 6th/7th 2012

Originally posted by

bergergrey at Paris - October 6th/7th 2012 - Nighttime Part 1

It's again completely stolen from Sabine! And it's her POV, it's not me talking about myself as 3rd person *LOL*

We started the night in a Bistro between the Opera and the St. Lazare train station. It was a lucky find because we had taken the bus to do a little sight-seeing without having to walk in the rain.

The Bistro was remarkable in many ways.

it was packed
there was only one waiter running around (but he had everything under control)
the menu was written in many languages. The German one was hilarious. It had something called “Kopf von Salatsoßenschwein.” We scratched our heads and wondered. In English it would have said something like “head of salad-sauce-pig”. Looking at the French menu, a light bulb went on. It was supposed to be pork meat jelly in a sauce vinaigrette
soulmatejunkee decided to have a Hot Dog while I chose a Vegetarian Baguette.

The Hot Dog turned out to be … ehem … special and I decided to take a picture.

Sadly the waiter forgot the ketchup and the sausage was cold. But soulmatejunkee let it go back to the kitchen to have it reheated.

After dinner we headed to the nearest Metro station and drove to the Eiffel Tower. Somewhere in between, a group of French soldiers got in as well and stood next to me. No one was paying attention but I just stared wide eyed at their machine guns. No, I didn’t take a picture.

Anyway, when we arrived at the Eiffel Tower it was still raining. We bought a couple of postcards but the shop didn’t sell stamps. We found a post office outside but it was closed which was hardly surprising, considering the fact that it was 11 pm.

The Eiffel Tower was incredible. Magical.

It was full of lights, hundreds if not thousands of sparkling lights with two headlights spinning around at the top.
The place underneath was full of people and lights as well.

And there was that huge crowd of people where we were standing. But no one gave a s... to each other. You were able to get lost in the crowd.
It was pure magic.

I imagined Brian and Justin in the crowd. It would have been just the right thing for them.

There was supposed to be a dance at the Trocadero as part of the Nuit Blanche but it was cancelled because of the rain. The place was wet and slippery. The dancers would have broken their bones. So we headed back to the Metro and drove to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Metro Station.

Having walked for a while (remember, rain again) we reached the next venue. It was an exhibition at the planetarium. When we walked in, Steffi exclaimed: ahh, the shoes. And it was exactly that. An exhibition of shoes.

While I was roaming the building, soulmatejunkee decided to stay downstairs to talk to one of the attendances who told us that she had studied in Germany. They had arranged the shoes themselves and had to take them away on Sunday morning 8 am. A long night for them.

It was nice, warm and cozy inside the planetarium. And it was dry. So we stayed a while.

Our next designation was the Theatre du Rond-Point (the roundabout theatre) where I stood in line for almost half an hour. Nothing happened. People piled in, stood in line behind me, got tired of it, wandered around, left again, others came in and so on. The description of the venue stated that there was supposed to be a two minute long psychoanalysis. We didn’t feel like being in dire need for something like this and so we decided to leave as well.

We drove to the Town Hall. The place in front of it was packed. We wanted to see the exhibition there (Paris in the eyes of Hollywood) but skipped it. The line of people waiting to get in was much too long for our taste. We went down to the Seine and walked along. The road was turned into a pedestrian zone for the night. A brass band played and people were dancing.