Paris, je t'aime!

Ah...is there anything better than wandering through the streets of Paris taking in the marvelous sights as the sun slowly sinks in the late afternoon turning everything golden? That was my thought last Saturday afternoon, my last full day in Paris, as I wandered across the Place de la Concorde, over the Seine, and on the few blocks to my hotel.

Well, maybe I should back up. My readers will wonder what has happened to me since Guys Fawkes Night. Well, my dear friend Cassie, came for a week's visit which included a weekend in London, two days here at Hogworts, I mean Harlaxton, and four and a half days in Paris. Since Cassie had something of an unfortunate trip to Paris last April where she was subjected to a friend's unfortunate teenage and college-age children, I promised that if she came to visit me this fall, we would go back to Paris and have a proper visit there...eating our way from the left bank to the right. And so we did!

I am including a rather odd assortment of pictures only because my camera battery died while I was there and so we took more pictures with Cassie's camera. I'll add an extra photo entry when I get copies from her.

We decided to hit one museum per day and aimed for those that neither of us had yet visited or those that were somewhat unique. The first morning was spent at the Musee d'Orsay which houses the massive collection of impressionist art in a former train station. The architecture of the building itself was definitely worth seeing as was the sculpture gallery. I know many of you enjoy the impressionists but they really aren't my cup of tea. One can only see so many water lillies after all. It was remarkable to see some of the many famous masterpieces by Renoir, Degas, Manet, Monet, etc. But I think I can pass on these guys for awhile now. Much more interesting was the Musee Carnavalet in the Marais. This museum is dedicated to the history of the city of Paris, beginning with prehistoric artifacts all the way to the present. Housed in two adjoining mansions, the exhibits here included roman carvings, medieval statues, furniture, paintings, watercolours, drums, banners from the Revolution of 1789, and on and on and on. It was remarkable and well worth time time to wander from room to room. The only down side to this museum was that it lacked a logical flow. The prehistoric and Gall0-roman rooms were at fartherest point in the museum from where you begin for instance. Also, because one of the mansions is built with four interior garden courtyards (you can see two of these in the pictures above), you can't easily follow one set path. Invariably you have to recross your steps or miss entire rooms. But all that aside, it was a marvelous museum...and blissfully empty of tourists.

In addition to les musees, Cassie and I were dedicated to eating every hour or so. Okay, not really but it did seem that way. I took her to the old Jewish quarter along the rue des Rossiers, which Jim and I had discovered on our visit in 2003. Pardon the half eaten food in the second picture but you can't believe the luschious apple and poppy seed strudels that were on offer in another of the Jewish bakeries. These pieces are about two to two and a half inches thick and to die for. At the bottom of the picture also in the box is a piece of a kind of cake, soaked in a honey syrup! YUM!

From the rue des Rossiers, we moved on to the strangest museum we had ever been in before: the Musee de la Chasse et la Nature-an entire museum dedicated to hunting and taxidermy! Now this wasn't a big museum but wow...what a strange set of exhibits. Each of the rooms was dedicated to a particular kind of quarry. There was the wild boar room, the stag room, the fox room, and also rooms for horses, hounds, birds of prey, and even a big game room. In each room was a small assortment of art and decorative objects relating to the animal in question. So as you can see, there is a stuffed wolf, a Flemish tapestry, pottery, and paintings. In each room there was also something akin to a 19th century library case, with small drawers that you would pull out to see poems about the animal, a plaster cast of the animal's tracks, and, get ready, a sample of it's poop! Who knew that owls had bigger turds than stags or rabbits? Cassie and I laughed so hard we could hardly stand up!

You can see Cassie having fun with the stuffed stag. When we walked into the horse room, Cassie wondered if they would include samples of horse poop. I said I didn't think so since these cabinets really were for quarry animals that could be tracked from their droppings. My mistake. There, on the floor (!) behind a four-foot tall replica of a horse, with saddle and bridle, was a pile of horse poop. And we paid money for this!
In the big game room, there were close to a hundred heads up on all four walls. Under them, also on all four walls, were cabinets full of hunting weapons and guns of various eras. Once again, this was not an overly visited museum though there were some interest objets d'art on display.

Did I mention we had glorious meals while we were in Paris? I enjoyed a wonderul dinner with Cassie and my Harlaxton comrade Beth, at a restaurant in the Marais. I had the best frogs legs I have ever eaten (tiny little things cooked perfectly on a bed of greens) as a starter, followed by medallions of veal, and a delicious petit chablis. On another occasion, I enjoyed a cream of scallop soup, served with slices of fresh scallops and small discs of potatoes that you slid into the creamy broth followed by crisp roast duck. But the piece de resistance was our last meal. We went to a bisto across the street from the hotel on rue de Bourgogne, called the Bistro du Palais. The young man who owned the place and the chef were from the Dordogne region in southwest France, near Bordeaux and so gave us that kind of cuisine. I started with a plate of foie gras d'oie, about the size of your fist, on a bed of greens, with eight toast points arranged around it. Even if you spread the foie gras an inch thick there was still more of it than the toast so I was forced to just pick up a fork and knife and eat the rest that way! They served a lovely sauterne-like wine, called Monbazillac, with it which just made me want to melt! The main course was a huge fillet of venison, served on a gratin of thinly sliced sweet potatoes, and covered in a rich red wine and cranberry sauce with chestnuts around the edge of the plate. Truely remarkable!

Of course there was plenty of less formal eating every day as well. We discovered the french macaroon...nothing to do with our coconut versions. These are two small discs of flavored meringue filled with a thick similarly flavored cream. They are soft to bite into and then the flavor just explodes in your mouth. We tried vanilla (think the taste and texture of the richest vanilla ice cream you've ever had), chocolate, pistachio, orange flower, raspberry, and probably one or three other flavors as well. We decided Pierre Hermes had the best though Laduree (both top of the line chocolateurs) was close.

We also enjoyed our share of baguettes, included ones stuffed with gyro meet, lettuce, tomatoes, and onions...croissants and pains au chocolate...a small crispy tart au pomme...a tart au champignons (sauteed mushrooms inside puff pastry), crepes, an apricot tart, and probably alot more that I can no longer remember! I include this picture below of a tank of sturgeon swimming happily outside a shop offering...guess what...caviar, though we didn't go in to have any sadly.

Well there you have it folks...a brief run through of the highlights of last weekend's Parisian adventure. It was a lovely time most of all because Cassie was there to share it all with!

As we crossed the street, I turned and saw this lovely church at the other end of the boulevard. I couldn't resist taking a picture of it. It is the Church of Saint Augustin. Again, isn't the light just breathtaking?

Au revoir, for now, mes amis!