Django Django Unchained

We've had a bit of a rough time adjusting to the six hour time change, so even after a good sleep, we were both still pretty tired this morning. Nathalie had gone to a local bakery and brought us "pain au chocolat"  for breakfast. We aren't used to having chocolate with breakfast, but it was delicious. 

After breakfast, we left for the Louvre. The temperature was 35°, and we didn't have the patience to wait in line, especially with nowhere to hide from the sun. We hope we can find time to try to go to the Louvre next week. 

Instead, we went to the Carrousel de Louvre, the shopping mall below the pyramid, and found a store, "Maille", a mustard specialty store. You can find their standard dijon in Canada, but here you can sample all kinds of different flavours and combinations, so naturally, we tried all of them. We bought one of their fresh mustards that actually uses wine instead of vinegar. They fill a clay jar right in front of you from a tap that looks very similar to a keg tap. You can see them in the picture below. 

For lunch, we took a short walk to Cafe Palais Royal and shared a cheese platter and a croque-monsieur (grilled ham sandwich, topped with melted cheese) and finished with a black currant sorbet. We're going to be so fat by the time we get home. 

We walked back to Jardin de Tuileries, a beautiful public garden that stretches from the Louvre to the Place de la Concorde, which has a ton of shady spots to relax and enjoy the views. Our views were fairly limited as we soon found some chairs and both fell asleep within minutes. As I said, we still haven't fully adjusted to the time change. 

We had worked up a thirst from our nap, so we found a wine bar off the beaten trail and chatted it up with our servers at the bar. We're impressed by how many people speak English here, otherwise conversations would be pretty short. 

Our server told us that there was a free music festival going on only a short walk away. We actually recognized a few of the bands that were playing, so we went to check it out. It was way bigger than we expected. The stage was set up in from of the Hôtel de Ville (city hall of Paris) which made for a pretty cool backdrop. They had beer tents set up (almost exclusely serving Heineken) but the smart concert goers brought their own beer, which is perfectly legal. Canada could learn a lesson here.

 

We saw Django Django, a British electronic rock band from London, who put on a great set for about an hour and a half. There were more acts to follow, but it had already been a full day for us. 

Tomorrow, we're off to Reims, a city in the Champagne region to check out some wineries and whatever else we might stumble upon. 

Bonne nuit!