Dancin in France - Part 4 - Paris Day 2

It is hard to get out bed when you ache...
and this is your view from bed

Day 2
We woke up bodies aching and sore, not recovered from our tromp through the "small" city of Paris. Today was supposed to be "Hemingway Day" - a day we wandered around, drinking, meeting people, and reading in our local neighborhood. I wasn't so sure how it would work out with my body in its current state. BF managed to get me out the door to grab an espresso and croissant at the brasserie across the street. While there I mentioned a flea market that was "only" a couple miles  north of our apartment. I suggested we head there on Day 3. Why not now, he asked. So we wandered into Puces de Saint Ouen - 10 miles of shopping with over 2,000 shops.  We didn't have it in us to log another double-digit mile day but we wandered around enough to be amazed. I picked up a few gifts but engaged mostly in amazing window shopping.

One of my favorite shops at the flea market...letters!

We walked back to our apartment and I straight up passed out. Around 4 pm, BF was ready to get our Hemingway Day on and I had digested enough advil to motivate me to get moving again.

What made this day truly magical was a very important lesson for all of you. Know your local bartenders! We have a friend, Matt, in the bar industry in Boston. He gave me a list of cocktail bars to visit while in Paris. So after a warm up beer at one of our local brasseries, we started to hit up the list.

BF starts our Hemingway Day channeling his inner "Papa"

We wandered to Pigalle, where our recommended list of bars noted two different bars. We stopped first at Le Lipstick, a little bar with outdoor seating. Sadly, the outdoor seating was under scaffolding for some kind of construction so we moved quickly next door to Glass.

Glass

At Glass we met Aaron, a young bartender from Hungary. Glass was empty because apparently it is open past 2 am, when other bars close at 2, so it gets the late, late crowd. And they have hot dogs. So we had Aaron to ourselves and he spoke English. This meant we got the inside scoop on more places to visit in Paris. While there, a group of Americans came in from the bar across the street. They were also from the bar industry (they knew Boston bars/bartenders!) and stopped in to get hot dogs before heading back to their bar - which was our next stop. We chatted with Aaron a bit more then headed across the street.

This next stop was Dirty Dick. Yep. You read that correctly. Dirty Dick is a tiki bar, in Paris. Yep. You read that correctly. Dirty Dick is owned by a California guy who got a French girl pregnant and moved to France so he opened this bar. Yep. You read that correctly. Here we ordered more delicious drinks and chatted with our new friends from the states. We needed to leave before our drinking got out of hand (tiki drinks go down sooo easy) so after one drink we made our way to Lulu White.

Lulu White is a New Orleans theme bar. Again, it was a sparse crowd. To be fair, we started our evening pretty early. Anyway, there was a lovely British bartender at Lulu White and she was thrilled to chat us up and offer more suggestions for places to visit. We had a couple of drinks there, got lots more local spots to visit, and made our way out the door.

Our last stop for the evening was Artisan. Artisan was recommended by both Aaron and the bartender at Lulu White. Here we took our time to drink, by far, the most delicious drinks of the trip. Alex, the bartender, was very friendly. We paired our drinks with food. I ate my first beef tartare - it was SO good! We also discovered that Alex lived in Boston - in Dorchester no less - for a couple of years. He worked at a French restaurant and gave us the name of the guy there to look up when we got home.

Our Hemingway Day in Paris was lovely. We felt at home and not so touristy. Bopping around for 5 hours eating, drinking, and chatting with a bunch of expats was just the way we wanted to spend a day in Paris.

Montmartre and Pigalle are super

Lessons Learned
1. Always get to know your local bartenders (Thanks Matt!)
2. Hemingway knew what was up. Spend a day wandering and reading every once in awhile.