These birthday boots for walking...

My birthday celebration was fast-paced fun with lots of walking! All the walking was well worth it. The day started with a walk to find the perfect cafe for my birthday breakfast with Alicia (Thanks, Alicia, for treating me to breakfast!). I end up choosing the long leisurely read cafe from yesterday. It's so cute. After breakfast, we walked to the Salvador Dali museum, Espace Dalí. I love his surrealist art and find it very afrofuturistic-esque. It was a small museum focused on his sculptures. I visited the Dali museum in Florida last summer, which featured his grand scale paintings. I realized from this museum in Paris that there's a lot of layers to this artist's genius. Very inspirational.

Was going to make my Dali face but he was chill here, so I was chill.

A sculpture version of one of Dali's soft watches.

I spent my birthday morning in the Dali museum reading about the surrealist and his work.

Some of his quotes from the quote wall: My most beautiful memories are those of the future.

Dali was inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice. Very cool.

Interesting little short on display in the museum. 

My ride or die. This chingona made my birthday fun!

Then, it was time for the Seine river. Being a planner, I booked all of my tours in advance of coming to Paris, but so far, every tour planned has turned into a "see, what had happened was..." adventure. So what happened with the Seine River tour is I walked for hours trying to find the place to redeem the stupid (if I had energy to divulge upon the run around the appropriateness of this adjective would be clear) voucher for the tour. This tour was going to be one of two tours I'd hoped to do in one day (impossible). The second tour was going to be the hop on/hop off bus tour. The plan was to do the Seine river 1-hour cruise and then spend the rest of the day at least hopped on the bus. By the time I found what I thought was the place to redeem my voucher, I found out the place has two locations and the only location to redeem the voucher was the Eiffel Tower, which was a half hour away (see what it's stupid...and that's just a fraction of the story). Lesson learned to check the redemption points for all this prepaid stuff or just wait until I get here, now that I know about how much the tours cost. Long story short, I hopped on the Big Bus (after several more minutes looking for the Big Bus bus stops...note to self to do the Open Tour Bus next time (way more easily identifiable stops) and headed to the Eiffel Tower boat stop.

Once I got there, I noticed that another boat company I'd read about on the web was right next door to my intended stop. They give free tours and a glass of champagne on your birthday. At this point, I'm like: a) redeem voucher b) free champagne free tour c) both. Of course, I went with the free champagne one and made another note to self to look for birthday specials when I travel before I book anything.

Beautiful sunset view on the Seine River

When I finished the champagne tour, I was completely satisfied, and the line at the other company looked like one for a ride at Disneyland.

On a boat in boa drinking bubbly on my birthday

So, this moment with my purple feather boa and free bubbly involved a lot of electrolytes usage to make happen. By the time all that was done, it was time to eat falafel and say good night. I wanted to meet back up with Alicia and her friends, but, alas, there's tomorrow. And tomorrow, friends, is the culminating event for my Paris trip: the Black Paris tour. I'm so excited!