Le Hotel de Invalides, French Pasteries, and Some Final Tips for Visiting Paris

The Hotel for Invalides. Or, as I like to call it, the Shrine to Napoleon, built by Napoleon. It houses his six coffins.

Sarah: Are you enjoying your crepe Wallace?

Wallace: Yes, Sarah, very much so.

We really were this happy. It's funny what a six week theatre study abroad will do to you...

Our last day in Paris was as all last days in Paris should be: Rainy. It rained and rained and rained and we only had one umbrella, which was made for a four-year-old with a really small head. Ergo, we knew an indoor activity was in order. We opted on the site of Napoleon- Le Hotel de Invalides. I don't actually think it had a 'Le' in front of it, but it sounds French so I threw it in there. It wasn't much of a hotel either, for that matter. And what the heck is an invalide? Napoleon was buried in six coffins, which seems a little obsessive to me, but whatever floats your boat, right? Six coffins would certainly not float a boat. In addition to the coffin we saw several museums that were all attached to the crypt. I am now an expert on trench warfare, meaning I saw some pictures of trenches with tomato plants growing in them. After the museums we ate more French pasteries. Oh man they were good. I bought a loaf of bread and a maple eclair, and I ate them both. Everyday we were in Paris we ate either crepes or pasteries. The French call bakeries 'patisseries', which just seems boastful and superfluous to me. Anywho, unless you have eaten a banana and Nutella crepe made in front of you on a Parisian street, you don't know what it feels like to have Nutella all over your face and extremities, including in your ear and between your shod toes. After I ate one on the littoral Seine I found Nutella in my belly-button. How it got there is beyond me, but frankly I'm glad my belly-button got to experience what my mouth had been enjoying for days. It's just not fair that the exterior of your stomach gets the shaft whilst its darker side delights. Nutella is the 8th wonder of the world; it's rumored you can even see Nutella from space. One more note on Paris, completely unrelated to eclairs, fire extinguishers, or Nutella: The metro system smells like pee because homeless men pee in it. We saw it. We also saw a man who had overdosed on the subway. He looked kind of like how we looked after OD'ing on French phyllos, but with more blood-shot eyes and a lack of neck musculature. Mostly I just wanted to use the word musculature there. If you see stalactites growing out of the Metro advertisements, don't lick them. They are very salty.