Luna De Miel, Day Seven

Glory be and the saints be praised, the boy is back to normal. Taxi driver points out how sad it is that we are leaving Monaco on the one sunny day they've had in the past week. Automated ticket machine minor disaster - picture clearly indicates direction in which you insert your passport for scanning, and yet, you are supposed to insert in the opposite way. Non-existent security line still takes forever because Australian woman in front of us has clearly never flown on an airplane. Husband and wife are not chumps and again are first on board as they game chaotic system. A smelly, smelly man sits by wife on the plane. Only really bad when he lifts his arms - he tends to do that often though. He expresses to us how happy he is to have made this flight - wife feels like explaining that we are less happy. Arrive at CDG again and walk the obligatory mile to the RER. Efforts to use automated RER ticket machine rather than stand in scary line prove difficult as, once again, our cards don't work. Luckily we've been stockpiling coinage and we have 17 euros in change.

We arrive at the St. Michel station and walk to the hotel along the Seine. Arrive at the Hotel Pont Royal at 4:45pm and are told are room might not be ready. Express disbelief at this possibility - unless they tell us some rock band stayed there the night before... nope... not even then. Room ready and wife has a very SATC moment when she realizes that you can see the Eiffel Tower from our hotel room's little balcony.

We can also see the Musee d'Orsay and the Sacre Coeur (way in the distance).

We find our creperie from our last visit and enjoy chocolate (wife) and nutella (husband) crepes. We walk around St. Germain de Pres and have a drink at the Pub de St. Germain on this little alley way that we remembered from the last time. We hear Oye Como Va for the second time in as many days... could this be the honeymoon theme song? Back to hotel. Wife requests a restaurant where she can get good bouef bourgignon. Concierge reminds wife that it is a winter dish, so not too many good restaurants will have it, but he finds one: Chez Fernand. It's packed full of locals (first good sign). Wife orders only wine on wine list they are out of as is her nature, but second wine suffices. Husband orders delicious truffled goat cheese appetizer, wife orders goat tart. Wife thought goat tart would be served warm. Wife was wrong. Wife thinks tart tastes very good, but can't get over the cold goat part of it. Husband, though he took 6 years of French half a century ago, doesn't remember the word for goat (chevre), so he is utterly aghast when, after taking a bite, wife tells him what it is (she thought he knew). Husband and wife share boeuf bourgignon. Wife literally ladles the sauce like a soup - it's to die for. Wife is in Parisian heaven.