Woke late this morning (11 am) after a long night out . Diane woke up at 10:30 and have at 12:30 .. so a slow start to the day

Today is my moms and my brothers birthdays.. so sending them a shout out !

I love you ma , love you billy !

Diane gabe and I did a 5 mile run through the city to wake up.. we headed back over to notra dame .

The. Ran past the hotel de Ville and up into the Jewish section in search of the best falafel

The. Took a long walk home weighed down by goodies from the delicatessen

We got home, showered and met our friend for a metro ride to the Luxembourg Gardens

The. Back to the hostel to collect folks for. Dinner

A few of us went out for Ethiopian.. others went to a Venezuelan place .. not sure about everyone else

Heading out of the city tomorrow morning

More from the road

Nite all, nite Sam

-me

Got home at 3am last night so blogging in the morning .. if waking at 11:30 still counts as morning . Church bells woke me up.. more Hannah and Olivier wedding fun today

I have the Joni Mitchell song ‘free man in Paris’ going through my head

.

I was a free man in Paris ,

I felt unfettered and alive

nobody was calling me up for favors,

No one’s future to decide …

What a great feeling.. (slight hangover notwithstanding:-)

We had a great day in the city yesterday …. my best ever here and I’ve been in Paris more times than I can remember . I think it was being here with so many friends and having a few native guides and translators.

Diane and I began the day with a 4 mile run down to Notre Dame and back.. it was so weird seeing it so damaged

Right around the corner,We found a cool market that was just selling birds

We got back just I. Time To get ready for the bachelor and bachelorette days. The girls were going off wine drinking and we were headed to the catacombs and then out beer drinking

The line to the catacombs was over an hour… So we bought some food and beer

The catacombs them selves were pretty crazy… Stairs leading way deep into the lime stone quarries below Paris… In the 18th and 19th century many old church yards were emptied and the bones brought down to ossuarys Below. The tunnels were just enough to stand up in… There were miles of tunnels lined with neatly stacked leg bones and skulls… There’s somewhere between two and 6 million bodies interred here

Only 200 people are down there at any one time to prevent crowding

Gabe visited the gift shop and found this perfect addition to his duck collection

I found this perfect addition to my crêpe collection

Next we all metroed up to a jazz festival in the Northwest part of town

There we ran into more of Olivier’s friends..

Including Matthieu who Has the same hat as I do and oliviers brother in law Alexey and his daughter Lisa

And there we drink more beer..

Then we stopped at a restaurant on the boat at one of the canals and drink even more beer… At this point the waiters were telling us to keep it down… I guess we were being too noisy

On the way to the next restaurant and next place to drink beer we ran into these guys that were fishing scooters and shopping carts out of the canal. Barry and Devon helped

When pleasure of the day was discovering these outdoor pissoirs . They would never fly in the United States… Because you’re out in the open but man are they convenient

Then we’re walking with more beer drinking

The. A snack

The. Another bar .. this time pastis

The. A midnight walk to a mysterious meetup

The surprise was that Matthew had reserved a karaoke place with the girls who’d also been out all day

Karaoke was sooooo fun.. and more drinking

Then a rather wobbly walk home at 3 am

Now another day in this crazy city

More tonight

Nite all, nite Sam

-me