Quite An Eggsperience

Upon descending le tour’s archaic elevators, I proceeded to walk across the Parc Du Champ de Mars, past the countless autumn leaves that spoke amongst themselves in many inexplicable tongues of color, and looked back to the Eiffel Tower as though the experience of reaching the top had yet to happen. It was all so surreal and beautiful. A fantastic aspect of travel is upon visiting a place that is particularly memorable or impactful, one can almost travel there, back to those same places within the heart, mind and soul. Almost. While the unique sounds and extraordinary sights can only be fully experienced when physically present, the mere remnant of that is significant enough to last until I can create more recollections to add to my mental memoir on the next adventure... I can still faintly hear that familiar accordion playing those old tunes echoing throughout the Paris Metro.

I then proceeded down L’Avenue de La Motte Piquet and across several busy streets to a corner café where my girlfriend at the time and I decided to stop for some lunch. Now something I learned on this day was that French food has l’œufs, or eggs, in… well just about everything. This doesn’t trouble me a bit, as I am a fan; however my ex-girlfriend is really quite allergic. So basically everything on the menu turned out to, quite literally, be a recipe for disaster. Of all the experiences I had attempting to speak French, I would say I had the most difficulty in restaurants and patisseries. Perhaps more vocabulary would have been useful. Be prepared for understanding terminology for those environments! But I digress. After asking if what we had ordered contained eggs, and the waiter promptly replied “non”, he randomly reappeared minutes later with the biggest egg you’ve ever seen sunny side up smiling at us from the plate. I apologized for the mistake and although he said our applicable plates had no eggs, soon after we departed (and left a rather large tip), I soon found myself travelling with a nauseous wreck. Had it not been for the fact that I was fascinated from exploring Paris, I probably would have felt much worse about the situation, especially seeing as how each picture I took had a shot of her about to throw up over every bridge and landmark along the river Seine.

As we passed l’Hotel des Invalides, the captivating gold dome reflecting the light of the sky, and with my feet shuffling through the fallen leaves, I truly felt I was in an entirely new world. We turned down Boulevard des Invalides and walked past the Museé Rodin, which was incredible to simply know what lay within it’s walls. Rodin’s most famous work, with which people most often associate him, was his sculpture “The Thinker”. It was actually originally to be part of a very large contract for an art museum entitled “Hell’s Gates” that was never completed. The site of the Museé can be found here: www.musee-rodin.fr

Traversing Esplanade des Invalides, the view of Paris is one of the most interesting. The Eiffel Tower can be seen above nearby apartments, the expansive Assemblée Nationale building and l’Hotel des Invalides is directly to the left, and across the river can be seen les Grands et Petit Palais. I kid you not, had I not gone inside myself, I would say the front gates to Le Petit Palais could possibly be a portal into heaven. See for yourself! Inside was an art exhibit (likely a cover to disguise the real portal), and after taking a good look we then carried on down the famous Av. des Champs Elysees towards La Jardin du Luxembourg and Museé Louvre. And this, dear readers, is where I must leave you for now. Until next time!