We headed out of the hostel and down the route we took the day before with only a few differences. Across the bridge and onto the main island we found a market being set up. We perused a bit but nothing really caught my attention to have a look at. There were quite nice gourmet stalls though, with cheeses and sun-dried tomatoes and other good things. It gave me the idea of having a picnic in Paris when we meet up with Dani, and buying a bunch of good things like those.
Just short of the markets there was a store called Little Tokyo which looked possibly like one of those Japanese stores with all the vending machines. It was closed when we were walking past so we decided to make an effort to find it on our way back.
We walked up through the town and to the main square where the cathedral was. At this time of the morning (about 9 or so) it was empty, quiet and even the shops hadn't set up yet. That was quite a nice little change, having been swamped with loud hordes of Euroteens and much touristy-ness everywhere the eye could see.
It was a bit cool in the morning; the weather carrying over from the previous day, but it soon was warming up and the jackets we brought out with us didn't need much wear as the day went on. We made our way down to the quais where the tourist boats would leave from. We´d planned to get down there reasonably early so we could miss the masses and get a spot on the boat.
By the time we got down there and bought tickets we found that we were actually on the first boat of the day, and it was less than a quarter full when everyone was aboard. The boat was a long, wide but relatively flat craft, with a glass (or maybe perspex) canopy. Quite cool.
The tour lasted just over an hour. It took us around the Lil, past many of things we had walked past the previous day. We saw much of the riverside sights and went through Little France once more. Though, I have to say, it was very cool seeing from this different perspective.
Both of us were a tad tired for some reason, not really into taking many photos (although, we had taken many of those things before). I did do some experimenting with the time lapse video function of my camera. The results were quite cool.
The boat then also made its way up the bit of the Lil that led up to the Rhine. Up that way was all the buildings that made up the EU council stuff (whatever political things they have set up there). These were things that we hadn't really intended on seeing on foot, plus they were far and we probably couldn't get in to see good stuff inside. So, it was nice to have gone up there with the boat.
When the boat returned we egressed and made our way to the Musee d´art Moderne et Contemporare (excuse my French). By this time it was midday and we were hungry, so we sat outside on some steps and ate some self-catered lunch. Then, we made our way in.
The main exhibit we wanted to see was the permanent modern art one. It had some excellent stuff, including Picasso, Monet, Kupka (whose stuff I loved) and some others. There were some really excellent pieces in there.
We then went upstairs to the permanent contemporary art exhibit. I´m not all too hot on a lot of contemporary art. There´s honestly a lot of crap out that people call art. I mean, you could really call anything art. But, when there are random videoed things that look like first-year media students´ pieces, put to eary music, and then displayed in a museum like that; it´s just silly.
From there we started to make our way back. It wasn´t too late in the day but we wanted to catch the folks on skype before it got too late in Perth. On the way back we found a nice little bakery where we bought a medium-sized Kugelhopf (that Strasbourg baked thing) and also a packet of marzipan made to look like fruits.
We also passed a store that made nougat. It looked so damn good. But, we had just spent like 10 euros on other good snacky stuff. We hoped we might make it back there the next morning before we left for Bern.
On our way back we got to that Little Tokyo store. It turned out to be kind of like that great retro game store in Perth, with a huge amount of original cartridges and disks for old game systems, plus toys and memorabilia from games and anime. Nice, but we didn't buy anything.
Back at the hostel we got out Ozy and skyped home. We had a nice chat to the parents and also got to see Jessie and Indie (which was awesome). We also had a nice skype chat to big Steve, to check how his plans were going and to arrange some meeting of travel plans in Spain.
We went to do some laundry (finally) and caught up with drafting blogs, then we uploaded them. It´s nice to be up to date again. And, more nice to have clean clothes once more. It made me think of a list of things you start to appreciate when travelling like this:
Clean clothes
Towels provided by the hostel
Included breakfast
Free wifi (and moreso if it´s in the room)
Kitchen in the hostel
Decent showers
Nice bedding
**stops daydreaming**
We ate some dinner then headed downstairs where there was supposedly a disco. We didn't end up finding said disco, although it wouldn't have been that great since most of the guests of the place were foreign-speaking 15-18s in large groups. Instead, we went to the bar and had pints of a local beer, and chatted to the bartender for a bit. He´s an Egyptian studying in France. Odd combination.
We finished our drinks and made our way to bed by about 11. We wanted an early start for travelling the next morning.
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