Good Mexican Food in France

Burying the lede here. 

We did the thing you're supposed to do while in Paris. We went to Notre Dame. They have a weird reservation system where they release 10k-15k tickets "a few hours" before the date and they are good for, but the window is like three days (counting the day of) and they get nabbed about as fast as Washington State park camping spots do. Suffice it to say, we got in but we had to go in with the rest of the unwashed masses. Thankfully the line to get in went pretty fast so it didn't end up being that big of a deal. It was less of a pain emotionally than the line I'll talk about later. 

So, we woke up, did the wake up things, and got some pastries and a coffee and made it to Notre Dame. 

An extra pastry because Libby can't pass up rhubarb

The line to enter Notre Dame was long but not full of terrors, so we got in pretty quick. Libby and Janet loved it. I (Tommy) merely liked. It's free to get in and in my humble opinion, per square foot, is as packed as Westminster Abbey. I enjoyed the chapels that had an Art nouveau/neo-medieval style (think the book art in Disney's Sword in the Stone if you're familiar). It's VERY clean inside, but, and this might be my inability to explore it the way I'd like,  it didn't wow me or affect me the way some other cathedrals have. I'll hand this off to Libby and she can add her feelings. She'll use less words though. Maybe you'll like that.

Libby here, yes mom and I really enjoyed Notre Dame. It's so sparkling bright inside, pictures don't do it justice!

After Notre Dame we split up and I went to Museê de Cluny: Musée national du Moyen Âge while Libby and Janet shopped and wandered Paris in the hot. Museê de Cluny is probably most known for the tapestry series known as the Lady and the Unicorn. It's a series of tapestries depicting the five senses within the context of five large tapestries. 

Beyond that there is a huge number of items from the Medieval time period they have laid out more or less in chronological order. The items are lavish and exquisite with amazingly fine detail work in ivory and wood to works in cold with a similar amount of detail and care. 

While Tommy was looking at tapestries, mom and I shopped and had lunch with Notre Dame as the backdrop.

After I finished up I made my way to the restaurant Libby and Janet were at and had a salad and Aperol spritz. We then went to a much worse line than Notre Dame's. We went to Sainte-Chapelle. Our reservation time was for 4:30, and there were three lines. One for non-reserved non-ticket holders--essentially for folks that needed to buy tickets. It was empty. Then there was a line for every hour on the top of the hour from open to close, and then another line for the bottom of the hour every hour. So essentially there was a A or B line and the time meant nothing. We didn't get in until after 4:30, but it was worth it despite the annoying process. Libby and Janet both forgot what Sainte-Chapelle was famous for, and were a little disappointed when they walked in the first level because it amounted to to a shop in the lower chapel. I thought it was really pretty.

Sainte-Chapelle is a thirteenth century chapel that took a blistering ten years to construct. Louis IX built it.  originally to house relics of the passion (which are now housed in Notre Dame). It's most known for its significant amount of thirteenth century stained glass. It's these magnificent windows that brings all the boys to the yard as it were. 

It really is hard to convey how bright and colorful the windows are with pictures but we'll do our best. 

For dinner we continued our tradition of finding a Mexican restaurant to try. We found El Guacamole! There was a Google review from someone in San Francisco that thought it was good so, as is tradition, we tried it out. It was pretty good but the salsa needed some serious help. Not as good as Milan (nor even close to COA), but it was pretty good. 

Tomorrow Tommy is off to the Louvre. Libby and Janet will go wherever the wind blows.