My Love

Oh my goodness... Paris is unreal. City of Romance for sure! People are everywhere gazing at one another, kissing, giggling... It's impossible to not follow suit! Our hotel is adorable in the center of Montmartre. We are in the John Lennon suite & it is very pink & gold! Our window opens wide & has a cute wrought iron railing so we can lean out & watch the craziness happening at all hours below! we can see Sacre-Coeur which if I had not copied down the spelling would of spelled it Sockaree-Ocure, but it is apparent I have no clue here. I find it a bit humiliating to be in France & not even have a polite amount of French to speak. We decide to walk up towards Sacre-Coeur & grab dinner along the way. Only a block up the hill from our hotel I am swept away with the endless adorable shops & cafes & people sitting around speaking their beautiful language drinking wine & mojitos in every direction. It is so cute! We wandered from cafe to cafe trying to find some recognizable foods on the French menus posted outside each until settling on one. We shared a bottle of wine & the staff warmed up to us as the meal went on, but I can tell we are an annoyance to be in their city trying to make them speak English! Oh well, what can we do at this point!? Haha. We say Merci as often as possible to show we are trying. ;)  So now we get directions to walk on up to Sacre-Coeur. Ugh, it is not far but the hill is steep! Its a mixnof steep walkway & about 80 stairs. My legs were on fire & we stopped & laughed calling ourselves fat lazy annoying Americans a time or two. But when we got there it was so worth it! The building is beautiful, but what was cool is that hundreds of people sit on the stairs of it drinking & singing & visiting. Guys walk around w/ cases of Heineken & Eiffel tower trinkets & laser light toys harassing you buy. We had one guy who was amused at us & came by asking nicer & nicer each time. His last attempt he says, "change your mind please!?" in his sweetest voice that made us both laugh. There is a gorgeous view of all the city from there & the Eiffel Tower did its twinkly diamond thing while we were up there & it was so unreal I decide we will not go see it until tomorrow night as I want the twinkly experience up close!  On the walk down the hill we pass a large group blocking 1/2 of the stairs singing together as one guy played the guitar. An old French guy came along & joined in belting out a French song at the topof his lungs that had the whole crowd rolling in laughter. We laughed too but had no idea whathe was singing about. :) we stopped at another cafe for some more wine closer to the bottom of the hill & enjoyed watching the locals harass the vendors who harass everyone else. Musicians stop & play for you & then gruffly beg for a tip, guys sell flowers & junk. One tried to sell us a giant plastic palm tree with parrots that lit up & played some island jinggle! People here are hilarious! One of the waiters would tell each of the vendors that his customers (a couple of regulars I assume) wanted to buy whatever it was so they would stand & beg them until giving up while we all laughed at the annoyance he was causing. One wonderful first night in Paris.