Il me reste qu'une semaine...

... and I feel like there is so much more I want to do here. Two days are given over to not being in Paris, and one is needed for packing, so really there are only 4 Paris days left. One month wasn't enough. Must. Chill. Frantically.

Plus I'm out of Nutella and I don't think I can finish a whole jar in a week.

Yeah, who am I kidding?

Look! New posts!

I've put up posts and pictures of my trip to the Loire Valley and my trip to Mont St-Michel. The pictures from my week of the museum pass, including the rest of the Loire Valley pix, will take a bit longer to go through. I'll let you know when they are up.

There are a few other posts about daily life and the exciting thing that happened on top of l'Arc de Triomphe sprinkled in as well.

My Mont St-Michel pictures are here:

Mont St-Michel 2010

In which Physicsgirl finds heaven...

I had read about the magical macaron in my guidebooks and on the Girls' Guide to Paris website, and I confess I couldn't see what the big deal was. I knew it was nothing like the North American macaroon, a dense, chewy concoction of coconut and meringue (which I rather like, but YMMV). A Parisian macaron is basically two flavoured almond meringue cookies sandwiched together by a flavoured cream or jam -- kind of an upscale, lighter Oreo. Little did I know...

It turns out that last week was just a warm-up...

I knew that I wanted to see Mont St-Michel. It's a UNESCO world heritage site, and more importantly, it plays a role in the 1940's espionage novel Assignment in Brittany by Helen MacInnes. The scene where the hero is saved from discovery by the dangerous Nazi being sucked into the quicksand near the mount left quite an impression.

In which our intrepid heroine gets to see a bit more of Brittany than she expected...

It was supposed to be a very simple plan: train from Paris to Rennes at 2 pm, bus from Rennes to Mont St-Michel at 4:40 pm, check-in at 6ish, dinner at around 7, wander off to see the village at around 9 pm, take spectacular photos of the mount lit up at night around 10 - 11 or so, then back to the hotel to sleep the sleep of the just.

Something Robert Burns said springs to mind all of a sudden...

Statistics

In the last 10 days...

Number stairs climbed: About 2100*
Number of "great views of the city"**(Paris or otherwise): 10
Number of museums/churches/monuments visited: 20***
Number of times I thought I was going to fall to my death: 4****
Number of times I did fall to my death: 0
Holes worn through the sole of a boot: 1
Minutes spent waiting in line: 60 (40 of those at Notre Dame, 15 at Versailles)
Kilometres walked: Lots (sorry, lost my pedometer in Amsterdam)
Number of pictures taken: ~ 1290*****

*Chartres: 300, Notre Dame: 400, Arc de Triomphe: 284 (+60ish to get to and from the underground passage), Panthéon: 300 (aprox - can't find the exact number), Louvre: 150(est.), other museums/monuments: 350 (est.), Parc des Buttes-Chaumont & 19th: 250 (est.)
**"Great view" usually means from a very high place. That you must climb many stairs to see. Except at the Pompidou Centre, where there are escalators.
***Chartres Cathedral, Chenonceau, Cheverny, Chambord, Versailles, le Grand Trianon, le Petit Trianon & l'Hameau de la Reine, Louvre, Musée d'Orsay, Notre Dame Bell Tower, Crypte Archéologique, Conciergerie, Sainte Chapelle, l'Arc de Triomphe, l'Orangerie, Hôtel des Invalides & Eglise du Dôme (Napoleon's Tomb), Musée Rodin, Panthéon, Musée des Arts et Métiers, Pampidou Centre.  I did pop briefly into Notre Dame itself, so that should be 21.
****Three of those times were at Chartres.
*****Yeah, it's going to take a little while to put those up.  Fortunately, there's a longish train ride on Monday and Tuesday.  Of course, there will be many more photos by Tuesday...

It's not the fall...

Spoiler (mostly for Aged P who will have completed that sentence in her head and begun, well, not quite panicking but panicking's slightly less anxious cousin): yes, somebody fell from l'Arc de Triomphe, no, it wasn't me, no, I didn't see it, although it must have happened right after I left, and happily (?), they got off with a concussion and broken ankles.