Moving on Up - trois jours.

As I had said in my day one and two posts about Paris (check the links if you missed lots of pictures and recapping!), we stayed close to Montmartre in a "charming" (read: small and tiny and bare bones) apartment, though since it was our first apartment, we didn't really know what else was out there in our price range (and it was still more space than a hotel). When it was time to move south of the Seine (to Montparnasse), we were pretty happy to be leaving the area - though not so happy to have to schlep our bags down the six flights of spiral stairs.

It turned out that our host couldn't check us into our new home until 19:30, so we had a lot of time to kill and ended up just wandering along the area we'd be staying in, until we realized that wandering with big ass suitcases/backpacking backpacks was not very productive. We ended up finding a wonderful cafe called Les Frangines where we wandered in, I asked (in French, obvi) if they had food and open tables, and were able to grab one by the window. We were told, "Pardon, nous n'avons pas la viande en ce moment," (we don't have meat at the moment), which was pretty perfect for us, so we ordered the raviole avec fromage trois (three cheese ravioli) and a cheese plate, as well as two beers ("petite ou grande?"... "grande, merci beaucoup" - obviously).

Fromage et pain.

Mmmm, raviole.

From Edwin's perspective:

Bière grande

It was wonderful to just relax there (with reliable Wifi, yay!), and we ended up spending hours (and getting a little bit tipsy) while there.
We finally moved into our apartment (only on the second floor - so US third floor! Major treat), and instantly fell in love with it. It was absolutely perfect, and the most tremendous upgrade from our first place.

As gorgeous as the apartment was, we didn't spend too long there - our sights were set on going to the Eiffel Tower that night, which was only (said Edwin) about 3 miles from our apartment. No big deal at all - we're both runners, so we could certainly make the hike there while walking (famous freaking last words - we were wearing boots and had sprinted to the supermarket the day prior just to buy jam and drinks, so we had totally over exerted).
The walk was gorgeous, and it's so funny to see my progression of pictures - apparently I didn't think I was ever going to see to Tower, because I take pictures that keep getting closer, and closer, and closer.

And I LOVE how they lit it up once night started to fall - it was the perfect welcome to the Tower, and was so absolutely surreal.

And then I started to realize that we were actually there, at the Tower, that I had seen pictures of for forever - it's such a weird feeling.

They were doing construction work, but it was still so cool to see even the work that was going on.

After the Tower, we ended up hightailing it back to Montparnasse (passed the Tower), to find an open wine store (I kept called the little corner stores "bodegas," which goes to show how French I actually am), which we did after the woman who owned the store unlocked it and let us in to buy our two bottles (we ended up going back there every night, just because of that).
The night ended with FaceTime-ing Edwin's family (my parents have Galaxy's, so no Facetime - and they forgot to connect their Skype, ugh), drinking a bottle of wine, and watching futbol in French.

(Please note that this wine was the equivalent of $4, and it was the best ever).

Have you ever had a very surreal traveling experience? Please share! :) xox