Paris - Day 3
Massive day lined up today. Monet in the morning, punk rock in the evening 🤘​
First, the usual hotel breakfast before heading towards Point Nuef for a river cruise. We get the metro and pop our heads up at a flower market. The sun is shining but it's not too hot. We do a loop across a couple of bridges and past the markets before having a quick coffee.
We board the cruise ship and off we go. The cruise guide is reeling off facts with a bit of a tounge in cheek. He explains how much the locals are dreading the Olympics in a few weeks because the metro is already crazy busy.
We get another few shots of the Eiffel Tower and head back. Definitely worth it. A pretty city with some cool facts; more so than the equivalent Berlin version.
Time for some art. Off to Musée de l'Orangerie. We are starting to notice areas around central Paris with lots of scaffolding and fencing going up as they set up for the Olympics. It makes getting to some things a bit trickier.
The main attraction of Musée de l'Orangerie is Monet's waterlillies. 8 separate paintings set up in 2 rooms. They were very impressive, but you need to see them from a little way back to appreciate them. But you can't, because people...
The other attraction was by a guy who literally just does white square paintings. The less said the better.
We are wanting to get some stuff together for a little picnic, maybe in a park. We strike out on the first market location we try; closed on Sundays. And no luck at the next; already packing up. But we got to see some new parts of town. For example, at the Bastille monument there is a big paralympics experience setup, with wheelchair basketball, blind racing etc. Lots of skateboarding going on and a big brass band of about 15 people busking.
We settle for a bakery and a Fran Prix (trendy-ish supermarket) to get some baked goods and prosecco. We head to Canal Saint-Martin, which is apparently where the locals hangout on weekends. It definitely seems to be the case, everyone lined up on the banks of the canal, soaking up the sun, music playing. We park up and have our little picnic and do some people watching before heading back to the hotel.
We get ready quickly and head back out again. We're off to see Jeff Rosenstock which is located basically at the other end of the same canal we were at for the picnic.
Out here there seems to be a lot going on though, in terms of bars and restaurants. The waterway is much bigger here and people seem to be hiring little boats with a motor and cruising around.
We have a couple of drinks and do a bit more chatgpt French history story telling before wandering over to the venue.
We notice a pretty big crowd all sitting down watching the EU election results coming in. We order some food and immediately hear the band kick off next door. We scoff the burger and run in. Small venue but super cool and the crowd are into it straight away.
​A great show, very intimate. We head back next door to debrief over a beer. Courts gets chatting with a girl who has a set list. Her name is Veronica and she is a paralympian (triathlete) from Italy, here for a competion, but also a big Jeff Rosenstock fan, among lots of other good bands.
We chat until the venue closes and they kick us out. Good timing because we spot Jeff and his band packing up around the corner so we go and say hi. He was incredibly friendly and let's us know Australia is on the cards for this tour.
The three of us (Veronica sticks on because her flight home is at 6am, so she's planning on heading straight there) head to another pub close by for more chats until that place closes.
We were approached by a lot of homeless people asking us for money as we are having a beer outside and when the pub shuts and kicks us out we quickly realise this might not be the best part of town to be hanging around without a plan at 2:30am. It's now a constant stream of people asking us for money, plus a bit of a fight on the corner.
We are anxiously waiting to make sure Veronica gets an uber OK then praying ours comes quick. Thankfully it does and we head home. Another massive day. Could be a slow start tomorrow we think.
