Paris. It's about time.

So, did I mention that we took a trip to Paris? :-)

So rewind with me back to September.  We departed from Daytona on a Saturday and flew through the night, landing at Paris a little after 6 am.  We've learned from previous transatlantic trips that John just cannot sleep on the plane, so this time he used some of our Starwood points to book a room at the Sheraton hotel in the Charles de Gaulle airport.  We went straight there and took a two-hour nap and a hot shower and left much refreshed.  I initially thought it was a silly use of our points, but it made all the difference in the world in our first day--we were so much less fatigued.

So we took the train from the airport into Paris, and dropped our luggage at our hotel for our first two nights (the Westin Vendome, near the Louvre, also a hotel stay on points, love those points!).  Then we went out to sightsee.

Our first sight was unplanned--remember this hotel from The Bourne Identity?

The Louvre!  We'll come back later. 

Our first destination was Saint-Sulpice.  You might know the church from The DaVinci Code (remember the Rose Line scene?), but I was in a hurry to get there to see if we could make it to the Sunday organ concert.  The organ dates back to the eighteenth century and is supposed to be one of the most magnificent organs in the world.  If you come at the right time, per Rick Steves, you can climb up and watch the organist play.  We didn't quite make it in time for the concert, but did get to hear the organist practicing afterwards.

We were getting hungry at that point.  Since we were in the St.-Germain-des-Pres neighborhood, I offered John the choice of lunch at one of two famous cafes:  Les Deux Magots (a haunt of Hemingway and Sartre) or Cafe de Flore (a supposed fave of Picasso's).  John decided the first one might translate to "two maggots", so he picked Cafe de Flore.

Wine at lunchtime?  Mais Oui!

There was also quiche and a salad for me, and a croque monsieur for John.  He declared it the most expensive grilled cheese sandwich he'd ever eaten; I told him he was paying for the fact that Picasso's rear might have warmed the very bench he was sitting on. :-)

After that, we headed back across the Seine and walked through the Tuileries Gardens, enjoying the scenery...

We stopped at the Orangerie Museum to pay respects to Monet's Water Lilies.  The canvases are hung along the walls of an oval room, with natural light from skylights--beautiful.

Afterwards, we started the Champs-Elysees walk (from our Rick Steves guide) in reverse.

The Place de la Concorde:

That's the site where Louis XVI was beheaded.  The obelisk is from Egypt (3300 years old!), but was carted to that spot in the 1800's.

A first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower!

We took a slow stroll up the Champs-Elysees, stopping to explore different stores.

I was hoping for an afternoon tea stop at Laduree.  Unfortunately, the tea room was closed for construction, but we were able to snag some macarons from their temporary pop-up shop.

How pretty!  And delicious.

After a few more stops, we made it to the Arc de Triomphe.  We climbed the steps to the top (which was hard!  I blamed our jet lag.) and took in the view:

Sacre-Coeur and Montmartre above, Champs Elysees below.

Check out these swanky roof-top gardens:

We made it back down to street level in time to watch a military ceremony akin to our Tomb of the Unknown Soldier ceremonies (and thank goodness for iPhones, otherwise we wouldn't have known what was going on).  At that point, we were exhausted, so we headed back to the hotel for an early bedtime.

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Day 2 started with a conundrum--where to get my caffeine fix?  I've started bringing Starbucks Via packets on trips (the flavored ones that come presweetened) so that I'm not dependent on in-room coffee makers, and that worked perfectly in London because the hotel rooms all came equipped with percolators.  I was hoping Parisian hotels would as well, and the airport Sheraton did, but the Westin did not.  I called down to ask for one our first evening--after some back and forth discussion, I managed to make it clear that I needed some way to make some hot water.  "Oui, madame!"  After a knock on our door ten minutes later, I was presented with an elegant china teapot full of hot water.  Lovely, but I had a feeling that the water would no longer be hot by 6 am the next morning when I actually wanted a cup of coffee.  I ended up drinking the hot water straight (I had a bad head cold during the trip, so it did wonders for my sinus congestion), and the next morning I discovered that those Via packets will dissolve in hot water straight from the tap.  Good to know. :-)

After I was fully caffeinated, I pried John out of bed (he doesn't do coffee) and we set off for our planned agenda of sightseeing.  When we walked out of the hotel, we discovered that it was pouring rain, which was a real bummer because we had a LOT of walking scheduled.  We stopped at a cafe on Rue de Rivoli and fortified ourselves with chocolate croissants, and then headed for Notre Dame.

Soaked and frozen, we finally reached the cathedral and joined the mass of people squeezing into the entrance.  We went from rain and commotion outside....

...to cavernous quiet inside.

Beautiful.

The rain lightened by the time we exited, so we toured the gardens and I snapped a few water-spotted photos:

We huddled in one of the straw huts during another downpour, then made a fast run toward the Left Bank and the Shakespeare and Co. book shop.

We spotted a drowned rat on the way.  I knew exactly how he felt.

We climbed through the narrow stacks and steps in the book shop, and admired the Lost Generation memorabilia:

And then walked down Rue St. Severin...

....until we reached Sainte-Chapelle.

Inside?  The most gorgeous stained-glass chapel:

We also stopped by the Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette was imprisoned prior to her death.

Place St. Michel...and a sunny sky!

Our guidebook recommended stopping for lunch at charming Place Dauphine, so we did.  We had a choice of a few restaurants lining the place, so we picked La Rose de France.  I communicated our order to the waiter entirely in French, and was so proud of myself--until I realized our waiter was American.  Kind of made it seem like less of an achievement. :-)

John ordered a hamburger, and here I think I should issue a public service announcement that if you don't like raw beef, you probably shouldn't order meat at all while in Paris.  I don't mind a bloody steak and like my burgers pink on the inside, but even I had a hard time consuming John's burger.  It was cooked just enough to brown the outside, but the middle was still cool and raw.  I think he just pretended it was beef tartare and went for it. I had a really yummy salad--greens, apples, tomatoes, pine nuts, and toast with melted goat cheese on top.  We both had wine to help kill whatever E. Coli might have been lingering in the burger.

After lunch, we headed back to the Right Bank, with a photo stop on Pont Neuf:

For the afternoon, I dragged poor John on the foodie tour of Paris, courtesy of David Lebovitz's blog.  We stopped at E. Dehillerin and I pretended I was Julia Child, just shopping for some kitchen gear:

After much deliberation and drooling over the copper pots, I left with a funny cookie-cutter, cannele mold, and pastry scraper.  From there, we made stops at Mora, G. Detou, and La Droguerie.  (That last one is a craft shop, not a David Lebovitz recommendation, although I'm sure he would recommend it if he knitted.)  I left G. Detou with sucre a choquettes (that later delayed my suitcase through TSA for a day--who would think an unmarked bag of sugar chunks would be suspicious!?!) and an industrial sized box of high quality chocolate.  My kind of souvenirs!

We wandered down Rue Montorgueil, which is often the site of a lively market, but not on Monday afternoons.  We did have fun browsing the shops, and taking in the scenery:

We skipped dinner in favor of hot chocolate and dessert at Angelina near our hotel:

For the evening, we went on a tour of Paris in the back of an old Citroen.  This proved to be a really fun way to get an overview of the city and to see the sites by night.

Our driver took us all over town, and it was fun getting to talk with him.  He was a Paris native, so had interesting information about the city and some good dining recommendations.  He stopped a few times so I could hop out and get pictures:

From the top of Butte Montmartre:

Sacre-Coeur:

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While planning our trip, I decided I really wanted to take a cooking class while in Paris.  I booked us into a market tour and cooking class with La Cuisine, after lots of analysis of online reviews.  So on day 3, we headed for Marche Maubert in the 6th arrondisement and met up with seven other tourists (American, Canadian, and Australian) and our chef/guide, Justin.  Justin was another American ex-pat; he came over for culinary school, stayed to work, then ended up marrying a Frenchwoman.

We spent about an hour going through the market, with Justin offering commentary on the market setup and how French cooking and shopping differs from our supermarket culture.

Sausages made from every animal you can think of:

We sampled some donkey sausage.  Not bad.  I preferred it to the foie gras we also sampled. :-)

Dried fruit!  John bought some mango:

Justin pointed out that, unlike American markets, the French ones are not necessarily about local produce.  Most produce comes into a central market outside Paris, and then is distributed to the neighborhood markets.  Some of the produce comes from quite a distance--to illustrate, he pointed out these sweet potatoes...

...and said that recently he had seen many imported from the United States, specifically the Carolinas. I thought that was pretty cool, being the descendant of a South Carolina sweet potato farmer myself. :-)

Fingerling potatoes, known as ratte (literally, rat potatoes!):

Stingrays!  Wish Will had been there to see this:

Our chef took a quick poll of likes and dislikes and came up with a lunch menu, and did some quick shopping for the ingredients.  Then we walked back to the cooking school.

We took a break for hot coffee and tea to warm up while the cooking team did some quick prep work.  We all chatted with one of the owners of the school (an American, who started the venture with her French husband), and made the fun discovery that she has family in Ormond Beach.  Small world!

Then we headed upstairs to the kitchen to get to work.  We prepped the vegetables for roasting:

And made some cute cherry tomato garnishes:

And assembled figs with almond cream for dessert.  Here they are, ready for the oven:

Justin seared some duck breast and pork chops (for those with objections to duck), and made a caramel-soy sauce, then let us have fun trying to plate everything.

My Eiffel Tower plating, with a tiny piece of duck (I admit it, I was scared):

John was one of the conscientious objectors, and went with a pork chop instead.   The duck wasn't bad, but I preferred the pork, too:

I think John totally beat me in the plating!

Dessert was my fave:

We enjoyed the fruits of our labor, along with baguettes and good wine and cheese.  John thought this was one of the highlights of our entire trip, and I left wishing I'd also booked myself into the macaron class.  Next trip!

We rushed back to the hotel as fast as our stuffed bellies would allow, so that we could check out and move to another hotel.  We only had enough points for two nights, and, honestly, could not afford the regular rates in that Westin.  Insane.

When planning the trip, John consulted a friend about where to spend the rest of the trip.  John took that recommendation and booked it...or at least, he thought he did.  In a lucky mistake, John confused the hotel that our friends stayed in (Relais St. Honore) with the hotel Relais St. Germain, and booked the latter.  (John disagrees exactly who did the confusing, Steve or himself, but whatever.)  We thought something might be up when we realized the hotel was not at all where we thought it was, but didn't find out that we ended up there totally by chance until we got back home.

Lucky for us, Relais St. Germain was absolutely fantastic.

We ended up with a second floor room overlooking the triangular Carrefour de l'Odeon.  The bathroom was absolutely ginormous by European standards, and there was a percolator in the wardrobe.  I was in heaven.

Dour little guy watching over us:

View from our window:

The three windows over the restaurant belong to our room.  See John waving?

We didn't pause for long...just dropped our bags and hitched across town as fast as we could, because we had Eiffel Tower reservations and didn't want to be late!

View from the bottom...

...and from the top!

Look!  Missy's only 6175 kilometers away:

We made an exciting discovery at the top...our favorite British treat was in the gift shop:

Fortified by Smarties, we headed back down.  We took the scenic route back to our hotel, stopping at the Dome de Invalides.  The highlight was Napoleon's Tomb, which was as understated as you might expect it to be:

We also stopped at the Bon Marche department store--the interior decor was worth the stop, and we had fun browsing.

For dinner, we took our driver's recommendation from the previous night and walked down to Relais L'Entrecote.  This is a steak frites chain with a few locations in Paris.  We'd read online to expect quite a wait, and when we arrived the line was already stretching down the street.  We queued up and steeled ourselves for an hour's wait, when the maitre'd walked the length of the line and asked us something in French.  We started fumbling for our dictionary, when the couple ahead of us in line nicely translated that he wanted to know if we'd be happy to sit outside.  There were heaters, so we couldn't say "Oui, monsieur!" fast enough.  We were seated, did some charades and lots of nodding to our waitress to order dinner, and sat back until this arrived:

Yum!  There's not much choice at this restaurant--it's salad then two plates of the above.  You choose your wine and dessert and that's about it.  We loved it!

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Day 4: Versailles!

Well, first we enjoyed the best hotel breakfast I've ever had, with a big bowl of capuccino, sliced oranges in some deliciously flavored juice, Comte cheese, flaky croissants, chewy baguettes, and ham carved straight from this big guy:

We took the RER train to Versailles town, and a short walk landed us here:

We started our tour in the "Chateau" (the Grand Palace).  The palace was packed--literally elbow to elbow people.  I became overwhelmed with all the jostling, lost my place on the audioguide, and couldn't see much except the ceiling.  John kept looking at me, totally confused as to why I wasn't enjoying it; I think the 13 inches of difference in our heights accounted for our different experiences.  Anyway, if you're a shortie visiting Versailles during high season, I recommend stilts.

By the time we reached the exit, I was cranky and tired of being pushed around.  I practically threw my audioguide in the return bin and did a little fist pump of solidarity with the French peasants.  But then we exited into the cold outdoors, and I had a major change of heart.  The grounds were just beautiful:

View back toward the Chateau:

The Hall of Mirrors runs the length of the palace on this side--can you see the mirror reflections through the windows?

We watched both Marie Antoinette and the History Channel French Revolution documentary before our trip--it helped a lot with keeping the Louis' (and their wives and mistresses) straight.

We walked along the grounds toward Marie Antoinette's Hamlet.

A playground fit for a queen:

We had a lot of ground to cover--and not an entire day to spend--so we started looking for some alternative transportation.  We accidentally free-loaded a ride on the tram (I thought it was like Disney World and all rides were free once you entered.  Not so much.)  Then we found the perfect way to get around the gardens:

It's not so easy to pedal in heels, though!

We lunched at La Flotille, near the Grand Canal.

We took the train back to Paris, and then walked in the rain (again!) to the Louvre.  The museum is open late on Wednesday nights, so we were hoping for lighter crowds.

The Louvre is housed in a huge palace, and it would take days (months?) to see everything.  We decided to use a Rick Steves audio tour we'd downloaded from iTunes to hit the highlights, then go back to anything we found especially interesting.

Of course, we couldn't miss this:

Missing from that picture? About 100 other tourists pressing against the rope and 200 blinding camera flashes.  :-)

While we were walking through one of the wings, John looked out the window and spotted a rainbow. It was gone before I could get my good camera out, but I caught it on my camera phone:

After we finished the audio tour, we went to look at the Napoleon III state rooms.  I'm a sucker for good interior design. :-)

If we ever have another child, I totally want Daddy to build this crib:

I'll take care of the drapes!

We passed through an exhibit on porcelain and table settings of the Napoleonic era.  I find this stuff fascinating, so I lagged behind and watched a long video about all the different food courses.  About 30 minutes later, I realized John was no longer in the same area.  I headed through the exhibit quickly, but couldn't find him anywhere.  I wasn't sure what to do at that point--John's phone had run out of battery power while he listened to the podcast, so I had no way to reach him.  So I decided staying in place was my best plan, and went back to finish looking at the exhibit.  (If all else failed, I figured I'd head for the hotel!)  He ended up backtracking and finding me, but I think we'll make a meet-up plan on our next Louvre visit. :-)

We finally left near closing time, and exited the pyramid into an evening all shiny from the rain: 

We stopped at Cafe Danton for dinner...French Onion soup!  Perfect antidote to the cold evening and my stuffy nose.

Dessert was a buckwheat Grand Marnier crepe from the steamy crepe window at L'Avant Comptoir next to our hotel--yum!

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I left Day 5 to be an "easy day," with only one major museum visit planned.  We started the morning with a run around Luxembourg Gardens:

After quick showers, we headed over a few blocks, in the direction of the medical school...

...to Patisserie Viennoise.  There's an entire chapter devoted to the hot chocolate at this patisserie in The Sweet Life in Paris.  I skipped the sugar but couldn't skip the whipped cream; I didn't take a picture but mine looked exactly like the cup in this article.  Thick, rich, velvety perfection.  And the book didn't exaggerate the narrowness of the sidewalk, either!

From there, we went shopping in the market along Rue Cler:

I picked up some more souvenirs from La Epicerie Fine and La Fromagerie, including some shrink-wrapped Comte cheese for home.  That particular phrase was impossible to find in our phrase book, so in case you need to know, it is "emballage sous vide."  We snacked on baguettes, choquettes, and an eclair from La Crossanterie.

I wanted to walk through the Marais area, so we ended up taking the metro back across town to Place Bastille.

Waiting for the metro--even the waiting area is Parisian chic:

We exited at Place Bastille.  

Me, looking for the prison:

Radiologie!  And Mammographie!  I wonder if they'd offer John a job?

Apparently the French children get to enjoy Dora and L'Age de Glace, too:

Place des Vosges, where I purchased a fun little watercolor painting:

Shopping in the Marais:

We also stopped to sample some fancy truffles and I spent some time in Repetto drooling over the shoes and wishing I was a ballerina. :-)

We also took a quick trip through the Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall, where I finally located the upside down pyramid (mistakenly thought it was in the museum):

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Musee D'Orsay.  We didn't cover it very thoroughly, because the museum was staging a fashion show that made it difficult to navigate the lower floors.  Instead, we headed straight to the top floor and spent our time on the most recognizable impressionist paintings, then admired the architecture of the museum itself.  It is housed in an old train station, so there are really cool views like this one:

That's Sacre Coeur, shining brightly in the setting sun, as viewed through one of the station's clocks.

We had special plans for our last dinner in Paris.  When we checked into our hotel, the staff asked us if we would care to dine in the hotel restaurant one night, only mentioning that the restaurant is "quite good."  We said sure, and said we'd pick a night and let them know.  Well, I decided to Google the restaurant, just to see if we would want to eat there...and found out that the restaurant is very highly regarded and has about a 6-7 month wait list (they make room for hotel guests, however).

Here's a fun article on the hotel restaurant from Food & Wine.  So we didn't need any further convincing, and made a reservation for our final night.  During the day the restaurant has an a la carte menu, but on weeknights they have a fixed price menu, created by the chef at his whim with whatever is seasonally available.  Anticipating some crazy proteins, I told John we should leave the French dictionary in the room, so we wouldn't be tempted to check and see what we were eating!

Once seated, we were offered a basket of hot gougeres--a cheesy puffy pastry that, to be honest, reminded me of getting cheese biscuits while waiting to be seated at The Lady and Sons.  A French chef taking a cue from Paula Deen, maybe?!? :-)

Our menu:

I'm still not entirely sure what we ate, but it was all fantastic.  My favorite was the second course tuna--the sauce was so delicious that I was tempted to lick my plate.  John enjoyed the veal (3rd course) and I had fun sampling all the various cheeses.  I still get tickled when I remember the waiter trying to describe the dessert to us.

"It comes with...you would say...cream of hay."  He enunciated "hay" and repeated himself to make sure we understood.  

I said, "Hay?  I'm not sure that's the right word."  He was emphatic, though, so I just said I was sure it would be delicious, and it was.  When I got back to the room, I plugged "creme au foin" into the Google translator...and by gosh, it does mean "cream of hay."  Apparently that's some kind of foodie trend.  I'm a fan. :-)

Anyway, the entire experience was an adventure in cuisine, and a fun way to wrap up our trip.

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I love to read books, watch movies, and check blogs to prepare for our trips, so thought I'd share our multimedia Paris preparation.

Books:

My Life in France

The Sweet Life in Paris

Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong

A Moveable Feast

(not read specifically for the trip, but also Paris-related: Almost French, Me Talk Pretty One Day, and The Paris Wife)

Blogs:

David Lebovitz

Oh Happy Day

Little Brown Pen

Movies (mostly rented from Netflix):

The French Revolution

Marie Antoinette

The Bourne Identity

Amelie

The Da Vinci Code

Charade

Sabrina

Le Divorce

French Kiss

We also relied heavily on our Rick Steves' guidebook, and I like recording what we do in this little notebook.  It's the only reason I remember the details of our trip five months later. :-)