Plucky Survivors See Europe Day 25: Dijon to Paris

My last day of driving for a while was through the rolling countryside of France.  Not a lot of traffic, except I did get stuck behind a logging truck for a minute and I thought, “Has ‘Final Destination 2’ taught us nothing?”

I had to put almost a full tank of gas into PluckyMobile… at 2,26 Euros per liter, which works out to be about $9.73 per gallon.  Total bill: $169.14.  Yowza.

What should have been a three-hour drive from Dijon to Paris became four hours as accidents and terrible traffic once I got to the city slowed me down.  Navigating through Paris is yet again an entirely different beast from any of the other cities I’ve been in so far.

Berlin is orderly and civilized.  Rome is pure chaos.  Paris is “I have absolutely no more F’s to give and I don’t care what you think about it.”  Bicycles, pedestrians, and taxis seem to be in charge and that left me slamming on my brakes and cursing many times as I tried to avoid hitting whichever of those three suddenly appeared in front of me.

With PluckyMobile safely nestled into another microscopic parking garage, I wheeled my luggage about a block to the Hotel Dandy, located right where the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th arrondissements converge, about a five-minute walk to the Louvre and Notre Dame.

Side note… this area looks like trash on Google Street View.

But since they drove down here, the entire area has been completely redone with cafes, stores, and restaurants and the hotel itself is lovely.

My room has a balcony looking directly at a church across the way. 

I ventured out in the 106-degree heat – more records broken today – and walked through Les Halles, a former market now shopping center and metro station, next to Eglise Saint-Eustache Catholic church.

The destination was a restaurant recommended by the staff, Le Nelson’s.  I had a fantastic cheese plate with a delicate brie, a decent cantal, and another absolutely mind-blowing bleu all from the Auvergne region of France.  That paired very well with the chicken Caesar salad that was loaded with warm chicken, hard-boiled egg, and fresh tomatoes.  I was in heaven.

I came back to the hotel for a work call, some relaxing, and some cooling off, then headed back out around 7:30 thinking it might have cooled off a little.  I was wrong.

A quick subway ride took me to the 7^th arrondissement, very close to the Eiffel Tower.  Or at least I thought it was.  Turns out I was about a mile away and so I hoofed it in the heat.  I got there at 8pm and it was still 102 degrees.  I didn’t go up in it – couldn’t have if I wanted to.  The Tower and other major tourist attractions have been closing because of the dangerous temperatures.

Some Googling led me to the nearby Restaurant Arnaud Nicolas, a restaurant where they cure and cook their own meats and also sell cuts of it if you want to take it home and do it yourself.  I had the house made sausage with mashed potatoes and gravy and a salad.  I’d like to say that I’ve never had a sausage that good, but I’m sure some of you would make a dirty joke out of it so let’s just say it was a fantastic meal and leave it at that.

From there, I hiked back to the place I got off the subway at the Dome of Invalades.  It was originally built in the 1600s as a hospital for aging and disabled soldiers and included a church, which remains to this day the tallest in all of Paris.  Napoleon came in around 1800 and said, “I want that” – not uncommon for the man at the time – and turned it into a military complex.  He was entombed under the dome in 1840.

The dome is now a tourist attraction and at night it transforms into Aura Invalades, an incredible immersive experience that uses laser and 3D image projection to cover the interior surfaces with light, movement, and depth.  The 50-minute show is a visual feast and once again the pictures don’t do it justice.  I highly recommend this for your next trip to Paris.

An Uber ride back to the hotel proved what I said earlier about drivers here having no more F’s to give.  My driver turned left from the right lane across three lanes of traffic including a bus and didn’t blink an eye.  I may have soiled myself.

Tomorrow is going to be another hot one, but I’m determined to get out and experience as much of the indoor parts of Paris as I can.