The way up and down the hill to the church is lined with scammers that try to fit a cotton bracelet around your arm and then charge you for it. I barely missed them on the way up – one of them grabbed my arm and I had to shake it off violently. This put me in a bad enough mood that, when it happened again on the way down, I actually got rough with one of them.
I consider this my “Underground Man” moment (c.f. Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground). I was filled with a feeling of rage and the burning desire to have justice done. A couple was walking in front of us and one of the scammers stopped the female and was trying to prevent her from moving around them. I walked up and shoved the thief right out of the way. To a person thinking more clearly, what happened next was predictable, and we were probably lucky to get out of there unhurt. What was worse was that afterwards the deed felt pointless and stupid, rather than triumphant. Anyways, in the future I will try harder to let things like this go, knowing how fruitless and unrewarding intervention is. At least I didn’t go spend a fortune on a nice outfit first J
Next we visited the infamous Pigalle (nicknamed “Pig Alley” by WWII GIs), which is Paris’ red light district. We were there in the middle of the day, though, so we were only hassled once about tickets to private entertainment. The guidebooks say that at night this can get quite aggressive. Pigalle also hosts a variety of cheap goods in gift shops, as well as the café front featured in the movie Amelie. We went into this café for lunch, but it turned out to be a ripoff – the front was used in the movie but a stage was built for the inside shots. The inside of this café looks nothing at all like the one in the movie. There isn’t even a tobacconist! The food is outrageously expensive as well. We ordered a “croque madame” which is supposed to be a ham sandwich with an egg inside or on top. We got basically an open faced toasted cheese and ham with no egg (which technically makes it an open-faced "croque-monsieur"). It tasted great, but not good enough for the price. If you liked the movie and you’re in Paris, take some pictures outside and move on.
Those who know me well would scarcely believe what we did next. I got a haircut in Paris! I don’t know any French, so all I could do is give the guy my state ID and point to the picture. The shop we went to was gender separated, which was unusual to me. Only men cut men’s hair, and only women cut women’s, and the areas were divided by a wall, so that there was almost two separate shops. The guy did an excellent job, one of the best I’ve ever had, and for a price comparable to what I pay back home. He even used a razor on the nape of my neck instead of close clippers like they do back home. That was a little unnerving when I figured out what that scraping feeling was J
Finally, we went to a market and bought an éclair, another traditional French dessert. This one surprised us by being cold on the inside, but it was still tasty.
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