Rick Steve's Historic Paris Walk

What a day! We downloaded Rick Steve's audioguide for the Historic Paris Walk and set off to the Île de la Cité. Among the sites we learned about during our walk today were:

Notre-Dame

(it took 2 centuries to build!)

Point Zero

(the center of Paris, the point from which all distances are measured)

Archaeological Crypt

(a journey through the history of Paris)

Mémorial de la Déportation

(a memorial to the 200,000 French victims of the Nazi concentration camps)

Île Saint-Louis

(an uppity residential neighborhood, which is also the home of Berthillon gelato)

Berthillon's chocolat amer gelato is the most chocolate-y, richest ice cream I've ever had!

It's a definite must-try for the chocoholic!

Sainte-Chapelle

(beautiful Gothic church architecture filled with stained glass;

built to house the Crown of Thorns)

Palais de Justice

(local government building)

Conciergerie

(housed prisoners who were sent to the guillotine - including Marie Antoinette)

The Seine and Paris Plage

(on summer days, tons of sand are hauled in to cover the roads and create beaches along the river)

After finishing our history lesson for the day, we headed to Le Kong for an early dinner. The best part about our meal was the bread and butter that came before our meal. omg! It was the best butter I've ever had in my entire life. Whenever I go to a restaurant, I almost always pass on the bread and butter (unless I'm having the garlic rolls at C&O's, the pumpernickel at Cheesecake Factory, or the cheddar bay biscuits at Red Lobster). Today though, I ate almost the whole baguette by myself!

We just learned that there is a massive underground shopping mall just below our feet... literally, it's less than a block away from our front door, and we didn't know it was there this whole time! The "Forum des Halles" has a movie theater, coffee shops, and shopping galore. My favorite was the bookstore. We wandered around for a bit, and I was mesmerized by the cookbooks section. They had entire cookbooks on macaroons, french cooking, and so much more!!! Too bad everything was in French or else I might have spent all my money there!