Taken 4: Spring Break Bus - Passport to Paris Day 2

On our 2nd day in Paris we declined the optional group excursion in favor of DIYing an itinerary. This can be intimidating if you're trying to do everything because you may never be back but Emily & I knew pretty quickly into that 2nd day that we would be back in Paris, with or without a balance in our savings accounts.

For our free day we wanted to hit the highlights like we did in London. Notre Dame, the Seine, NOT have a horrible experience trying to get a potentially once in a lifetime picture, eat a lot of croissants, visit the Louvre and have a classic charcuterie dinner (mainly because we had the perfect earrings for it).

Early but not too early in the morning, we headed to the metro station. Thank God Emily's phone was working because mine said I had plenty of service and LTE or 3G or whatever but was actually useless when it came to maps (@TMobile). She planned a logical route for us starting in Montmartre and working our way back to the 1st arrondissement for our 3PM appointment at the Louvre.

The first step was putting on fabulous yet comfortable Parisian ensembles. Check. And I don't mean to brag but fashion influencer Stassi Schroeder was spotted in Versailles a month later wearing a similar hair accessory and that can't be a coincidence.

We crossed the street to the metro station and the real adventure began. There was a line to get to the ticket kiosk and we saw someone else that was with our group try and fail to get a ticket. I did try to make eye contact and offer to help but I speak very little French that could even be of service and came to find out later on the trip that she spoke very little English so que sera sera.

We were nervous when we finally made it to the kiosk but it went surprisingly well until...we couldn't get past the turnstiles. I found myself actually missing the ever-present help of the London Underground. I tried using the callbox for help, embarrassing English speakers all over the world with my attempt at "m'aider." A lovely French couple helped us and once we discovered that the issue was you can only get a ticket for so many zones at once, the Paris metro system was a breeze. We were just very far from the center of the city. In American, we were at the 90 yard line and couldn't buy tickets straight to the end zone. We had to get tickets to the 50 yard line first and THEN we could convert those tickets into end zone tickets. Or 2 points? Honestly, football is not my thing.

We got our pics of Moulin Rouge, Sacre Coeur, Notre Dame and the Seine before lunch and stopped in a cute little park to regroup. By then I was feeling pretty confident in the little French I did know. So when we sat on a bench without realizing a girl had her lunchbox on it, I attempted to apologize to her parents. But I mixed up a suis with a se and instead of saying "I'm sorry" I accidentally said "I don't know how to be sorry." Oops?

Overall I found the average Londoner to be more rude than the average Parisian, but faux pas like that combined with me pronouncing it "cwah-sahn" and you really start to understand the whole French-people-hate-Americans stereotype. A lot of that is my fault.

I rebounded from that and headed to the Louvre where our M.O. was once again to hit the highlights. Nike statue, Venus de Milo, bathrooms, a temporary Yves Saint Laurent exhibit that has really informed my own baby apparel line, Yves Saint Infant. We saw the work of 3/4s of the world's most beloved crime-fighting reptiles. We saw the Mona Lisa but were not interested in standing in the long line to see it up close. That's what Google Images is for.

I went a little overboard in the Louvre gift shop, as expected. More on that later. And then it was time to go back to the hotel and get into our fancy outfits for our nice charcuterie dinner. We found these adorable earrings on clearance at Target right before we went to France. What were we supposed to do? NOT go have a fancy cheese board while wearing charcuterie board and red wine earrings?

We stopped for an impromptu photo shoot that would become iconic TBH, and found a place for dinner where we ended up right by a family from Chapel Hill. The cheese was smelly but the bread was free. I wanted to find a chocolate shop after dinner but of course as soon as I actually look for one, they're nowhere to be found. That and my sense of direction is worse than my French. Tres, tres mal.

We also looked for what was supposed to be a great (and free) view of the Eiffel Tower at the top floor of a department store but all we found was this weird, white rotunda with little luxury brand storefronts. Nothing about that location was screaming "free" so we did what we do best, we gave up and went home.