Like the Cake...

Today's Itinerary:
  - Groceries
  - Walk to the Opera Area
  - Dinner
  - Night Light Bus Tour

...The Free Internet is a lie. Everywhere is the city there is a public WiFi signal called "Free WiFi". Seems promising that we'll be able to get around places with some help.

Nope, the Free Internet is a brand of a service provider here. Like if Time Warner had the word Free in its name, and then broadcast a signal across all of the city. Once you get signed on, the browser asks for you account and password for your internet account.

Oh well, I was not expecting to have the internet, so now things are back to baseline.

Today, we had a slow start to morning. Leisurely listened to music and drank coffee, while in through the windows, the sounds of construction punctuated our ambiance. As relaxing as that was, we eventually decided to venture out to the grocery store and pick up some supplies.

Luckily, the store is about half a block away, and we made it without major issues (outside of the smoking children). Once at the store, I was most impressed with the electronic tags on the shelves. When we were kids, we helped mom barcode all the books in the library to put things on the computer system, I wonder what it would be like to digitize a grocery store.

Groceries in hand, we also made it home without getting lost too. This is the last time today we will be able to say those words. We had an evening bus tour scheduled, so we spent the afternoon googling walking directions to and from our place. Mom got to use google maps for the first time, but somehow we both ended up with a different set of directions to the same location? Mom has better handwriting, so we used those directions, complete with multiple steps that were "walk on this street for 4 meters". I tried to highlight those little bumps in the picture of the map. Needless to say, directions like this made it hard to recognize if we were heading the right way... Most of the time we were not.

About halfway through the journey, we pit stopped at a place called "Jet Lag". It seemed too appropriate to pass up. We got an appetizer to snack on that consisted of toast with different spreads, and it was pretty good. The toast didn't hurt the roof of my mouth, which is the measure of well made toast. Add in the drinks we shared, and this stop was exactly what we needed to complete the remainder of the trip.

Once arriving at the pick up location for our tour, we had some time to kill. We purposefully left hours early expecting to get lost. With our time we went and sat in the Tuileries Garden, which we happened to stumble across as we walked down the street. There were beautiful fountains littered throughout the grassy area, with seating around each one. So much seating, it wasn't hard to find a place where we could park for a while. Around us a family with a bunch of kids lost their balloon in the fountain, and some old men played a heated game of bocce.

We moved on to dinner, and found a place down the way that had outdoor seating and live jazz music. It turned out to be more Italian food, or pasta at least, but was soo delicious. Mom was excited because we tried a Kir Royal (which is some liquor mixed with champagne). It was an excellent pre-dinner drink, sweet and crisp. After testing each other's food, we both decided the other's was better and swapped dishes. 

Dinner wrapped up with just about the right about of time to get to the tour pick up. Well, about 30 mins early, but we walked over there anyway. The outdoor seating left us both frigid, and Mom decided to sit in the tour shop while I walked around a little bit more. I was going to wander farther, but I got distracted by something I saw on the TV inside one of the bars I walked past. As I was staring and trying to figure out what I was seeing, the bar tender waved at me and I felt obligated to walk in. 

As I walked in, we said some pleasantries, or barely enough for me to say hello and order a beer. What I didn't recognize was the bar tender was speaking at me in Italian instead of French (a local patron filled me in). Apparently my short hair and white jacket looked Italian. BOOM! Fashionable! A couple other women walked in, and the bar tender started mixing shots for everyone. What I didn't expect was that this included me as well. 2 rounds later I had to leave to catch the night bus tour. I'd definitely walk back inside that place again, if there is time.

The bus tour itself was nice, but what made it enjoyable were the groups of people that sat around us. Behind us was an Irish couple out for the wife's birthday, and in front were some girls from LA that thought me and mom were both about 30 something. They kept giggling at the jokes I muttered, then told mom she was a good and trustworthy person (but not Steph Maule). We saw a bunch of famous stuff, and then caught a cab home finally.

I hit 10,000 steps just as we stepped up to the taxi stand, so you could say we even accomplished something on our journey (besides making some friends and seeing famous stuff).