Paris = Best Weight Loss Program Ever

I am currently spending more time in my apartment not asleep than I have since... I think ever. Maybe Thursday night. Katherine and I are just beat. Our weekend was awesome and involved lots of walking (which is becoming a theme...). The thing about being a young person in Paris is that if you want to avoid bankrupting yourself in a week, you're going to be doing a lot of legwork and not a lot of eating. I'm quickly learning that this is not a bad thing.

Saturday started lazily enough-- Katherine and I slept late and then met up with a couple of friends and explored the area around Sacre-Coeur. 

Yay! Beautiful day! It's really really high up on a hill so I also took pictures back out of the city.

Now, more pictures of Sacre Coeur!

This was actually of the guy on the lamppost juggling the soccer ball. He was freakishly strong and muscular.

Ok, so this one isn't of Sacre Coeur. It's of Geoff and John in front of the awesome public use, free toilets that they now have all over the city. That tank is for one person. It's super inefficient (there's a shocker for a French design) but it self-cleans in between each person and gives you more space inside than you could ever need. And you can look at a metro map while you wait forever.

Cimitiere de Pere Lachaise. It's huge. 

Beautiful WWII memorial, one of a couple in this cemetery for the French killed by the Nazis-- this is for concentration camps, but there's another for soldiers. 

Oscar Wilde's grave. You're traditionally supposed to kiss it with lipstick, and you can see that many people took advantage of that...

...myself included.

I love this quote-- it's apparently a paraphrase of something he famously said. "It's most important to live-- many people are content to exist."

Morrison's grave.

Proof that it's Morrison's grave....

Too much cemetery walking. Nap time!

After the cemetery, we bought supplies for a picnic. It cost us about 3 euros apiece.

The picnic's participants! Minus Katherine, the photographer, and Harvey and Rachel.

As the sun set, we walked up to the top of the random big hill in the park. The view of Paris is awe-inspiring, but my attempts to photograph it were not perfect.

After this, we went back to our respective homestays for a bit and then met up to go to an English bar called Le Frog et le Rostbif. It was a lot of fun! We watched the end of the US Open semi-final with Federer vs Djokovic. The outcome was poor, but the company was good and pretty much made up for it. We got home around 2, and slept late. Our mom came in this morning and told us she was worried that we didn't come until this morning-- apparently she peeked into my room at 6 AM and didn't see me. We assured her we were there. Anyways, after we finally got ourselves going, we decided to go to Clignacourt to meet a couple friends and go to the flea market. What we didn't know was that the flea market here was a city unto itself. I couldn't really take a picture to justify it, but it was HUGE. I didn't buy anything other than my first nutella crepe in Paris (!!!) and some water, but it was fun to wander around and a bit nerve wracking-- it was super crowded and seemed ripe for pickpockets. After the market, Katherine and I wandered through the park right by our apartment. I took some pictures of it because it's absolutely beautiful and big and yay!

It's a big reflector like the bean in Chicago! Makes me miss home a bit... :-/

Tonight we'll just go for dinner somewhere quick and easy and go to bed early. Class at 9 AM tomorrow, and it's been quite the weekend...