I recently was in France – unfortunately, not for vacay, I did have to work. Fortunately, I was able to make it to Paris twice – my extended family lives just outside Paris (about 20m on the RER) – so going into Paris isn’t a big hassle. It was a short visit, but it was a nice reminder why I love this city. So, naturally, I’ve put together a list of my 10 favorite things about Paris, France.
- Le Metro – Probably because I don’t take public transportation on a daily basis, but I LOVE the metro system in Paris (you probably think I’m crazy now, if you didn’t before). There is a metro stop nearly everywhere you go – unlike London – and you can get pretty much anywhere. Where else on a metro will you have crazy musicians or gypsies with portly babies begging for change?
- Le Tour Eiffel lit up at night – so beautiful, so romantic
- Crepes in the 5th – nothing, nothing beats a nutella crepe from one of the many crepe stands in the Latin Quarter
- Lu – not really Parisien, more like a French thing. Lu is probably the French equivalent of Hostess, but they put out much better snacks. A recent find of mine were the Pockitos – a shortbread type cookie bar filled with chocolate. Another good one is the Chocolate Oursons – yellow cake shaped teddy bears filled with, yes, you guessed it, chocolate.
- Walking – the only way to really see a city is to walk its streets. No matter how tired I am, I find walking Paris is…energizing. Especially at night. We took a lovely post-dinner walk from the 7th, along the Champs Elysses, through Place de la Concorde, Place Vendome to Opera.
- Fresh baguettes – you haven’t tasted anything until you’ve had a FRESH baguette from the boulangerie
- History – the city is just teeming with history
- Croissants/Pain au Chocolat – sorry, I just can’t seem to get away from the food!
- Picpus – I just think it’s fun to say.
- Steak Frites
I know that this doesn’t even come close for some people. What are your favorite things about Paris?
taken from pont de l'alma
Not quite a birthday weekend in Paris, but it sounds a lot better than, working remotely from France for one week and I happen to be in Paris for my birthday. Fortunately, or unfortunately, with the internet/WiFi/VPN one is able to work anywhere.
So, yes, I am managing to work, what makes it difficult is a clingy-jet lagged child. Finally, after 4-5 days, she’s not so clingy and is playing well with her cousins. She’s looking up to her cousine, wanting to do things like her. For example, this morning, her cousine was granted a spoonful of nutella post-brekkies. Next thing I know, Mads wants “like cousine”. Ugh. A spoonful of nutella isn’t what I had in mind for her brekkies, since she only had hot chocolate. I suppose anything goes chez grandparents.
an assortment of saucisson...
Friday evening, I managed to take the RER from Le Pecq to the 7th to meet S, family & friends for dinner at Chez L’Ami Jean. L’ami Jean is a tiny Basque restaurant in Paris’ 7th arrondissement and definitely not a place for vegetarians.
We started with plenty of saucisson, two small casseroles of pate campagne, some jambon, and a jug, yes, a jug, of cornichons. There were so many options on the menu, S & I made it easy on ourselves and ordered the menu for two: cote du veau. For some reason, I had scalloppine on my mind, so I was a bit overwhelmed when a small cow was presented on our platter. Our meat was accompanied by sauteed spring veggies and the most sinful mashed pureed potatoes I’ve ever had! Unfortunately, I’m not one to say non to dessert, so I opted for strawberries, but I did get to try the drinking chocolate that someone ordered and regretted not getting one of my own.
Chez L’Ami Jean
27 rue Malar
75007 Paris
Dinner was followed by a lovely walk from the 7th to Opera – passing such sights as Pont Alexandre III, Place de la Concorde, Place Vendome, Longchamps, John Galliano, Cartier, Hotel Costes, Buddha Bar and the like and a late RER train ride home.
Come Saturday evening, I was too tired to make the trek for a Parisien birthday dinner, so we opted for dinner in Saint-Germain-en-Laye at La Feuillantine. It was a small restaurant, charming and chic at the same time and food was SO good! Turns out Saturday was a popular night for birthday celebrations – 3 other people were celebrating their birthday, too! I guess, La Feuillantine is the place to go for your birthday. We started with an amuse buche of pureed lentils and chorizo (yum!). Followed was foie gras cooked in a vanilla-mushroom cream sauce for S and a feuillantine (puff pastry) with green & white asparagus, grapefruit, and prawns, with, of course, a citrus cream sauce for me. It was here that I noticed this was the second resto to serve us non-white flour bread – which was nice, seeing that I probably met my carb intake for the year in the past couple days. Our entrees were just as tasty – yes, there’s more! – lamb shank (I think) with couscous and fish baked in parchment with baby spinach, proscuitto, fresh goat cheese and a (salty, for me) thyme au jus. To finish, an Ile flottante on green matcha and a chocolate-raspberry dessert. (Sorry, no pictures of the food here!)
What a wonderful start to my thirty-something-th year!
Though the time was nice, I was excited to see Mads after one week away.
When we finally met up, she buried her head in grany’s arm and then ran into mine, saying, “mommy!” Then, as she always does, she told everyone that this is “mommy”. She had changed while we were gone, for one, she was speaking & understanding French – amazing!
fishing for duckies @ jardin d'aclimatation
Feeling unmotivated to shop (I know something must be wrong with me), we decided to take Mads back to the Jardin d’Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne – she had gone earlier in the week with grany & granpy. Okay, this place is a kid’s heaven…I don’t think we have anything quite like it here in the Bay Area – not to my knowledge at least. It’s a mix between a petting zoo, the Children’s Playground and a carnival or county fair, but permanent. Mads ran around like crazy, checking out the animals, fishing for ducks. She seemed really intrigued by the mini-dragon roller coaster.
Before we knew it, we were packing up, including all the loot miss Mads received for her birthday. Luckily, I had packed my Longchamps tote and we were able to throw toys, books, and other miscellaneous items we collected on the way, like the double sized Nemo beach towel that we couldn’t leave the Disney store without. Yup.
We said our goodbyes at the airport and waited to board our flight home. Surprisingly, the flight was not full and we managed to have a whole row to ourselves. Mads managed to nap after takeoff and before landing.
Before we knew it we were home safe & sound…though I was hoping for cooler weather as a Bay Area heat welcomed us home.
This turned out to be a longer post than I had anticipated, so I’m breaking it down into digestable posts.
I know exactly when school is starting when my weekday driving routes are more congested than usual and it takes me more than an hour to get to work.
So, yes, Kellybean and family are back from vacay and back to work/daycare today.
Our flight to Paris was, for the most part, uneventful. Mads did scream and throw a tantrum for the first 30m of the flight, but all was well after that. She made friends with the toddler sitting next to us, managed to eat most of the toddler’s pretzels and even managed to sleep in a way-too-small bassinet provided by AF. (Sidebar: for the money we paid for these airline tickets, the very least Air France could have done was provide a newer plane with a coach section that includes individual and on-demand movie screens. Plus, the quality of their meals has gone down.) We noticed that even our flight path to Paris was impacted by high fuel prices – instead of making that nice big curve that takes you over northern Canada and Greenland, we flew straight through, over the Midwest (MN, IL, MI) and then turned right at France. Needless to say, the flight was bumpier than usual.
We arrived in Paris just in time for a late lunch of cheese, bread and rillettes. (Perfect!)
We spent the next few days getting over our jet lag and prepping Mads for a week with grany & granpy sans mommy & papa. We took her to Parc Corbiere in Le Pecq – complete with large grassy fields, your usual playground equipment and with resident bunnies, donkeys, chickens, geese, ducks and goats.
hi canards!
Our first baby-free evening, we dined at Restaurant La Gare, in the posh 16th with S’ family and friends. Highly recommend it! My scallops were perfect as was the molten chocolate cake. It was late when we left the restaurant, and off in the distance, I could see the Eiffel Tower lit up in sparkly blue lights. Sigh. F*** all the clichés, Paris is effin’ romantic.
The day before her birthday, we had a wonderful family feast, celebrating 3 birthdays! (Mads and her cousin Leo share the same birthday!)
On her actual birthday, we took Mads on her first RER trip into Paris. Of course she fell asleep in the stroller in the train, but when she woke she was strolling down the Champs Elysees and we were looking for a place to lunch. After lunch and a stop at the Disney store on the Champs Elysees, we walked towards the Jardins des Tuileries. (Lesson learned: don’t wear sandals when walking thru the Jardins des Tuileries as your feet will be SO dirty and dusty!) We stumbled upon a carnival type event and eventually found something that Mads would enjoy: a trampoline. (She refuses to go on a carrousel – refer to our Mpls trip.) It took her a few moments to get warmed up, but once she saw the other kids going “bouncy, bouncy” she was all over it!
We continued our walk towards the Louvre and then along the left bank of the Seine. We found a crepe stand and snacked on a nutella crepe in front of Notre Dame. Decided that we had enough walking for the day , we made our way to the nearest Metro station and headed back home. Sounds like a wonderful 2nd birthday, if you ask me.
We spent another baby-free night with friends and family with Domino’s pizza (way better options than Domino’s here) and a crazy modern mob docu-drama flick, Gomorra. It was in Italian with French subtitles, so I did my best to keep up.
Before we knew it, S & I were off to Spain…
Added a new favorite link: Paris Daily Photo
To get your daily Paris fix.
So, for Christmas, I bought Sylvain the book: 1000 Places to See Before You Die. I wasn’t too sure if he’d like it, but I bought it anyway since it looked like a fun book to have around. Well, I’m glad I did give it to him…today, while walking through Paris, we stopped and had afternoon tea at the Hotel de Crillon near Place de la Concorde, across from the Jardin de Tuileries. The assortment of pastries alone is enough to bring you back for more – we may go again tomorrow with his mom. ;o)
Today, I woke up late (which was nice), had breakfast and got ready for the day. We *had* a nice day planned: shopping in the 5th, then tea in the 8th, ice skating at the Tour Eiffel, and dinner on the bateau mouche. Well, we accomplished the first two, but since it was chilly and Sylvain was tired, we walked the Champs-Elysees and shopped at Sephora for makeup and products and Petit Bateau for tank tops (yes, in Winter).
Yesterday, we visited his uncle, aunt, and cousins for lunch out in the farther suburbs (near Roissy). It was there that we learned that Sylvain’s great-uncle (the brother of his grandmother), who was a secret service agent for the British during WW2, published his memoires of his service during the war. It told stories of espionage…a behind the scenes of D-day, if you will. I found it extremely fascinating to read this first hand account of D-day. Also, fascinating that Frank, his great-uncle who is probably in his late 80s, could accurately remember so much and add a bit of humor to it. Sylvain was telling me earlier today, that his grandfather was also part of the Resistance in Paris. He was working at a telephone company and was in charge of connecting the calls between occupied France and Germany. Part of his task simply included not connecting the calls or disconnecting them. At some point, the Gestapo came looking for him, but he was able to escape to the South of France, leaving his wife and 3 sons in Paris. (He wasn’t able to reunite with them until after the war was over.) I wish I could sum it all for you, but it would take some time. But, it is a pretty cool story.
Tomorrow, the meteo predicted snow! Keep your fingers crossed!
Greetings from France! Yes, Sylvain & I finally made it to Le Pecq.
We left San Francisco Tuesday 12/21 in the afternoon on Virgin Atlantic. We were pretty excited to fly Virgin since we’d heard that it’s the ultimate flying experience. Yah, probably if you’re flying in “upper” class and not the cattle class that we were seated in. I do give them props for their movie selection. We each had our own screen which made the 9 hour flight more enjoyable. Instead of sleeping I watched Shark Tale, The Motorcycle Diaries, and Saved! The Motorcycle Diaries was by far the best movie; the other I could have done without. We encountered some turbulence over Greenland, but other than that it was a smooth flight. We arrived in London Wednesday morning.
Future note to self: try NOT to take a connecting flight through Heathrow, it was unbearable. We departed the plane and headed towards the British Airways terminal: Terminal 1. We wait 1 hour to go through security…again, to find out that our flight is actually leaving from terminal 4. Nice. We finally arrived at terminal 4 and had a few hours to kill. Sylvain tried to get connected on his laptop, and I took a cat nap. We had a few toastie sandwiches and coffee before we headed to our gate. We boarded the plane and as soon as everyone was seated, the pilot came on the intercom to tell us that our flight had not been given clearance for another hour, but with a slight chance that might change, he had us board the plane rather than wait out at the gate. I guess that was good and bad at the same time.
We finally arrived in Paris at 6.30pm (local time). With the not so good weather and traffic, we arrived at Chez Rebaud just before 9pm. (Eric, Benedicte, Leo, and Leeloo had arrived earlier that day.) We settled down to a raclette dinner – yum! – with a chocolate pear tart for dessert.
After a wonderful night’s sleep, croissants and baguette viennoise were waiting for me. After you have a true French croissant, the croissants back in the US just aren’t the same (or as good). ;o)
By the time we were done showering and ready to tackle the day, it was time for lunch (sigh): jambon beurre (ham & butter) & rillettes sandwiches.
After a coffee, Sylvain & I ventured to La Grande Arche de la Defense.
They had set up a fair of sorts for the holidays. We walked around a bit, didn’t buy anything, but we did have gaufres avec nutella (waffles with nutella).
Ah, and no signs of a white Christmas in Paris this year. Bummer.