Sights and Museums of Paris

(December 27th-29th, 2012) Despite being sick, Kim and I couldn't just stay in our apartment.  We were in Paris, after all, and were determined to see as much of it as we could...albeit at a slower pace than normal.  We did many of the standard things...museums, landmarks, walking through the parks.  In retrospect, my advice to you would be to get the Paris museum pass...it will allow you to bypass many of the hour long lines and to save a bit of money on visiting all of the great art museums to be seen, my favorite of which was the Orangerie.  The Orangerie contains a giant exhibit of Monet's water lillies in addition to a number of special exhibits that rotate from time to time. During our visit it was an exhibition of the work of Chaim Soutine.

Our next favorite museum was the Musee d'Orsay, which had a number of famous painting and sculptures, but nowhere near the line and overwhelming scale that the Louvre had.

The Musee d'Orsay felt almost like an old train station with it's towering halls; however, the dozens of sculptures by Rodin dispelled that illusion quickly.

Of course, as you can imagine, there's more to Paris than just art, such as the Arc de Triomphe:

  

The Seine

  

Surprisingly, it's not that much fun to run along the Siene.  Lot's of bridges that you have to stop and wait for the traffic from them to get a red light.  I would've liked it so much better if there was a dedicated, traffic free bike/jogging path...

 

And, of course, the Eiffel Tower.

Shown here are one of the massive legs holding it up.  To get to the top, you have to take a series of elevators, which, like in Pittsburgh, go at a slight angle...

At the top, the winds were horrendous.  In fact, we made it up just before they closed it off due to the high winds.  It was extremely difficult to just stand still long enough to take a photo without being whipped around.  Kim didn't even want to stay out there, so, instead, she spent most of her time at the top in the warm observation room below the observation platform.

But the views of the city were totally worth braving the cold and the wind...

By the time we got back down to the ground, it was late enough in the day that we decided to get a coffee and wait for the sun to set...

So that we could see the Eiffel Tower lit up at night

 

And, of course, we also braved the lines to go to the Louvre

Here's Kim making the customary tourist pose with the Louvre's pyramid.

 

I think that spending an entire day in the Louvre (assuming that you're not sick), isn't enough to even passingly see everything.  There's so much, from classical Greek sculptures...

 ...to Napoleon's quarters...

...the architecture of the Louvre itself...

...and the masses that you have to fight your way through...

...just to see a painting.

Outside the Louvre, the Hotel de Louvre lit up at night.  On the way between the Louvre and our apartment, there was a cooking store that we kept passing every day.  So, finally, one day we decided to stop inside...

Oh wonders upon wonders!  It turns out that this unassuming cutlery purveyor, Dehillerin, is a cooking store that stands above all others.  In fact, it's where Julia Childs shopped.  When we went to check out, the owner very matter of factly asked how we came about to find this place, which is how we learned that we should've been planning our trip around a chance to come here!  We only ended up buying one item...a truffle mold that some of you have benefited from several times over already.  Go check out there website because my words can't do it justice, and I was too awestruck to think to take a photo inside.

Another place between our apartment and the Louvre was the Place Vendôme, which is home to some pretty ritzy shops in addition to the above obelisk.

Of course, the one thing that they don't tell you, is be careful of the wild animals and lions in Paris...

And with this last picture of the moon rising over the street we were staying on, our trip to Paris came to it's brief end.

The Decadence of Parisian Cuisine

(December 26th, 2012) As I'm sure that you all are all too familiar with by now, I've a thing for seeking out highly rated restaurants.  In a city like Paris, the number of options that you have is just staggering, so the easiest way to quickly filter the extraordinarily long list of restaurants into something manageable is to limit yourself to just looking at two and three star Michelin restaurants within walking distance. Normally, a strategy such as this would just be too much, but, I figured, when will I ever be here again?

So, with that rationale in mind, Kim and I set off for L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon. While there are a handful L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon restaurants around the world, the location that we visited in Saint-Germain is his flagship as far as we know. 

We had the potential to get ourselves into a lot of trouble.  The special menu for the day was a set course involving black truffles.  Extremely rare and expensive black truffles.  But, we'll only be here once, so why not?  This attitude led us to having the most expensive dish that I think we will ever eat, assuming that we don't strike it rich somehow: Spaghetti with black truffles:

As simple as this dish looks, the black truffles were phenomenal.  The chefs did a fantastic job of giving you something filling that really accentuated the taste of the truffles and nothing else.  But still, the remainder of our dishes were fairly small, so we had a few small plates to enjoy in addition to this!

Lobster, truffle, and cabbage ravioli.  

 Black Angus, with a shallot confit

St. Jacques scallops and black truffles on a bed of macaroni.

and Sabayon with a chocolate crumble and gold covered Arabica coffee beans.

This was probably one of the most expensive meals that we will eat for a long time, but it was worth every penny.

Our decadence in Paris was not confined to this one stop, though.  It seems that every corner we turned was a new macaroon shop, a bakery, or something else to entice us.  Not the least of which was Laduree

 

I had never realized that Laduree was more than just macaroons, but they have a pretty good restaurant with an amazing decor

A simpler meal, after indulging at L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon.

The reason we went to Laduree, though, was for the macaroons.  So many varieties, and so much demand, it was as if the staff there that would put your order together were working on an assembly line in order to keep up with the steady supply of people coming in.  I don't think that there's any cookie in the world that beats a fresh macaroon...

Our only other notable trip out to eat was to Le Relais de l'Entrecote. This wasn't for lack of desire or opportunity.  Unfortunately Kim and I were pretty sick during our time in Paris, so we only made it out to a few places, electing to do something simple or at our apartment the rest of the time so as to not upset our stomachs.  Anyways, back to Le Relais de l'Entrecote. 

Once you're seated, you're asked two questions: what would you like to drink, and how well would you like your steak cooked.  This restaurant is known for having only one item on the menu...steak, in gravey, with fries.  And they keep piling it on your plate until you tell them no more.  How's that for decadence?

Christmas in Paris

(December 25th, 2012)  Morning bells are ringing, the tourists are stirring, and...the city is alive and bustling, as if it's just another holiday.  Contrary to the American vision of towns on Christmas morning, where we tend to sleep in, not worry about shopping till at least noon, and enjoy a relatively quiet (at least those of us without young children) morning, Paris was overflowing with people out and about, shopping, sight seeing, eating, and just soaking up the ratatouille of Parisian culture.

We started our day as any other vacation day (once the gifts were exchanged and fawned over of course) by heading out to Rue Montorgueil, which we took down to Les Halles and stopped at the first suitable cafe, La Pointe Saint Eustache.

Following brunch, we strolled through the underground mall of Les Halles, where we learned that even McDonalds in Paris sells macaroons...

Next off, across the Seine to the Ile de la Cite

and Notre Dame

Despite it being Christmas, we got our first unpleasant taste of Parisian culture.  There's a reason why people from France kept telling me not to judge their country by the uncouth manners of the Parisians, and I understand why now.  To enter Notre Dame, you had to wait in line.  It looked like a long line, maybe a block long, but it only took about 15 minutes.  Not bad, really.  But, for some reason, Parisians felt entitled to not have to wait in line, so as you approached the front, there were countless numbers of people trying to cut in front of you.  This, as you can imagine, is the sort of thing to annoy me, even on Christmas.  So, when someone tried to cut in front of us, I politely pointed out the line to him, and told him to go wait in it.  Well, it worked, kind of.  He got in line behind us.  It's a start, I suppose...but the line cutting in Paris was prolific to put it nicely...

 

Inside Notre Dame...

I bought a candle for Dad....it's the one with the Carolina blue sheen, I'd like to think...

After Notre Dame, we started walking South towards the Latin Quarter, stopping at parks along the way...

Then up towards the Mairie

and the Pantheon

In wandering through the sculpture gardens of DC in my youth, I was always amused by the appearance of something like an angry plant monster posing as a metro entrance.  Well, twenty some years later I realize that this is actually what the entrances to the Parisian metro do look like:

As night started to descend, we headed back past Notre Dame

to one of the Michelen star restaurants that we had made reservations at, Le Reminet. Below, our first bottle of French wine in France, Chateau Mac Carthy.

What started out as a nice, quiet evening in a romantic, cellar like dining room, quickly turned into something much more memorable, but not in a good way.  The couple that sat down beside us had similar thoughts in mind regarding the romantic nature of the restaurant.  As you can see in the picture above, the tables are very close together, so there's not much privacy in this intimate dining room.  The guy decided that that would be the perfect time to propose (and she said yes).  I can't blame him for that, but it meant that the remainder of our meal was taken up by a conversation with them that started off innocently enough about him, but soon turned to her hyperboles about how surprised she was and how he must have dropped some serious cash on that ring...at which point it turned into him bragging about the finances behind it.  Yeah...so, it went from cute, to okay, that's nice, but we'd like to get back to our conversation, to seriously? 

Anyways, the food was fantastic, so it quickly distracted all four of us from this conversation...

Chestnut cream with mushrooms espuma and deep fried scallops in noodles "kadaif."  The presentation was incredible, with the bird's nest of noodles topping the delicate chestnut and mushroom soup.

 A thin tart with figs and pears, roast escalope of duck foie gras and galangal caramel.

 

Scallops a la plancha, "venere" rice risotto with emulsion and smoked bacon.

Duck "pot au feu" with poached foie gras and roast duck breast.

Following dinner, we slowly strolled back through the Latin Quarter, now mostly deserted as people had settled in for a Christmas evening,

past Notre Dame, now devoid of crowds, 

past the Hotel de Ville, mentioned more than a few times throughout the course of any of Dumas' novels,

and it's ice rink that was now empty.  It was time for us to turn in as well, we had a few big days ahead of us!