Our best idea in Paris: to stop by a grocery store and pick up a baguette, a jar of orange-honey, a bunch of grapes, some brie, and a bottle of red wine (with plastic cups! can't forget the plastic cups!), and then lay out a blanket in front of the Eiffel Tower to enjoy our feast, drink our wine, and take in the Eiffel Tower as the sun went down. But our best memory in Paris came en route to the Eiffel Tower after our trip to the grocery store: we were walking down a sidewalk in an abandoned alleyway (less sketchy than it sounds -- more, like, a side street that just happened to be uninhabited) when a mysterious door opened and a group of young French men poured out onto the sidewalk, gathering all around us. A few of them grabbed me and a few of them grabbed Jenny (physically grabbed our arms, linked theirs with ours, etc.), laughing boisterously, singing loudly, and skipping along the sidewalk with us. Let it be known that Jenny and I are both cautious, careful, and intuitive, and we don't carry personal myths around with us, believing that no harm can befall us. All the same, our reaction to this very strange and somewhat surreal turn of events was to laugh hysterically -- so hard we could not speak. We let them more or less carry us down the sidewalk toward the Eiffel Tower laughing and squealing and trying to get our wits about us when Jenny finally shoved them off of her, I shoved them off of me, and Jenny firmly announced: "And that's the end!" They obliged, retreated back to the illusive door from which they came, and we continued on down to the Eiffel Tower wiping tears from our faces and asking to one another, "Did that just happen?" It had just happened, and it was the precursor to one of the weirdest, most magical nights of the trip.
(And of course we got some ice cream for dessert).
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