I met Juli at 10:30 at the St. Placide Metro exit, and I dragged Gina and Don with me. We all wanted to eat first, so we headed to Creperie du Clown by the St. Sulpice Church, which Gina had read about in the Rick Steve's Paris book. It didn't open until noon, so we went to grab coffee and croissants, and did a little shopping while we waited.

Creperie du Clown wasn't as scary as it sounded, with mercifully little clown and circus paraphernalia. And the waitress wasn't wearing clown make-up or walking on stilts or anything. All the crepes had circus names though, and I ended up with a lion tamer crepe, which was pretty much a hamburger on a crepe with an egg on top instead of in a bun. I love fusion cooking, but I'm not sure if I trust this Rick Steve fellow.
July is the monthe for soldes (or sales for you gringos), so Juli wanted to check out the Bon Marche. "Bon Marche" means "good prices" in french, though Sister Marie-Joseph said it wasn't that "Bon" or "Marche" anymore, and they were having some good sales. It's also the only department store on the Left Bank, and a little old fashioned in the sense that they still have a toy section and a bookstore along with the St. Laurent and Chanel.

From there we headed to Montmartre to Sacre Coeur. We took a different metro line than the one I took last year with my sister. This one left us closer and with less stairs to climb, but the trade-off was that it was a heavy tourist area and we had to fight our way through the crowd to make it up the hill. Gina even got accosted by a street vendor who kept telling her "Be nice, I'm from Africa" while he was trying to sell her a bracelet. She was like "What?"

After visiting the church, we walked a little around Abbesses, which is really pretty and more like a neighborhood than our area. It's also the part of Montmartre were they filmed some of Amelie. There were lots of cobblestone roads, stairways, and a few gardens where you could actually step on the grass.

Nobody wants an angry nun, and, as we had forgotten to sign out for dinner, Don, Gina and I headed back to the dorm and I made plans with Juli to meet her later for second-dinner. Some things don't change.