PARIS

Tuesday, September 15, 2010, 12:29 pm we boarded the Euro star to Paris and after two short hours we arrived Gare Du Nord. We made our way to a long taxi cue and waited patiently until our turn to catch a taxi to the Hotel Elysees Ceramic our home for seven days in Paris. We checked into our hotel and took the lift to our hotel room. The room was neat and clean with a really nice bathroom but really small. Because I am rather clumsy I thought we had better change to a larger room so I would bludgeon myself to death in the middle of the night. The hotel was very accommodating and informed us that they did not have a room we could change to that day but we could change rooms the next day.

This leg of our trip was going to be spent with my brother in law Jim, who would be arriving from Vienna later in the evening and visiting friends from San Francisco that spent three months each fall in Paris. After a quick email to our friends to make plans for a visit we went out to explore Paris, the city that we never tire of!

My husband and I fell into our routine, especially in Paris where we walk for awhile, find a nice outdoor café to have a glass of wine and watch the Paris street scene before scouting a nice place for dinner. When we are looking for a restaurant and we don’t know exactly where to go we use all of our senses especially eyes and nose. Our restaurant preference are small places with small menus; I find it hard to believe that a restaurant with a big menu of 50 dishes or less can prepare all of them well. We settled on Zinc Caius Bistro after a long search for the perfect place. Zinc Caius is a compact restaurant with nine small bar height tables. The menu including maybe three or four entrée’s were displayed on a chalkboard affixed to the wall. I pretty good with reading menu’s in any language, however, the owner spoke some English and I can speak a little restaurant French so we were able to order a meal and have a minor conversation. It was pretty cool in London and even colder in France so I wanted a stick to your ribs meal, I ordered the Bœuf (entrecôte) de Bavière, Race Simmental, purée de PDT; meat and potatoes. I can’t even remember what my husband ordered but both of us enjoyed our meal. After dinner we went for a long walk and stopped in a side walk café near our hotel with a view of the arch de triumph for a cognac and to gaze at the City of Lights.

The next day we hooked up with my brother-in-law, Jim who was staying at a nearby hotel. We walked to the Metro, purchased a multi-day pass and headed for the left bank around Saint Michele. You know the drill; we walked, talked, Jim took serious pictures and I snapped anything in sight, stopped for a little lunch and just took in this beautiful City.

One of the things I love about traveling to Europe is that you get a full work out build naturally into your day by walking everywhere and using the mass transit below ground. There are not a lot of escalators in the Paris Metro, we were always walking up and down stairs so if you think that all we do in Europe is eat and drink we do burn off a lot of calories. It’s a much healthier lifestyle than the one we have back home where we rarely use public transportation and we use the car to get around.

Jim was a little exhausted from his trip, it took him 12 hours on the train from Vienna to Paris so after our day strolling the streets of Paris on the left bank he wanted to get a light bite and settle in for the evening. Jim had his sandwich and we went back to our room to rest before going out for the evening; dinner in Paris begins at 7:30pm. Around 8:00 we left our hotel well rested and ready to search for the perfect place for dinner. We must have walked an hour, twisting and turning down little streets and alleyways before stumbling upon MBC restaurant. You must be wondering why we haven’t asked the hotel for restaurant suggestions; we have found after many years of travel that we can do just as good a job finding something we like ourselves.

Side bar: one night we asked the hotel for dinner recommendation and we were sent to Chez Gabrielle, www.chezgabrielle.fr the restaurant had 10 tables, very small and very cute. I had the chef’s menu starting with the froi gra with the balsamic reduction (OMG) followed by the croquet st. Jacque - - wow and the last coarse was a cream brulee (not in a ramekin) with a brandied peach (OMG) and with the bill came truffles dusted in coco this was a fantastic meal!

Ok back to the restaurant we sniffed out ourselves, MBC a small little restaurant with maybe 20 tables decorated with a real urban vibe, graffiti on the wall reminiscent of the graffiti Jean-Michel Basquiat. We looked at the menu with three entrée and said this is the place for us tonight. I won’t go into the details of this fabulous meal but the dessert is worth noting. We had a fresh and candied cherry dessert with black summer truffles. The combination of the sweetness of the candied cherry with the juiciness of the fresh cherry and the contrast of the earthiness of the truffle made for a delicious unusual delightful creative dessert. If you are adventurous with food you must try MBC the next time you are in Paris.

I don’t want you to think that all we did in Paris was eat so I will take a little break from food for now to talk about a fun visit we had to a part of Paris unfamiliar to us, Bastille and Eastern Paris in the 11th district. This area of Paris is known historically as the place where the French Revolution kicked off in 1789. Bastille is not so much revolutionary as creative these days; now the area around the iconic place de la Bastille is filled with shops, music venues and lively bars. Paris’s biggest park, the Bois de Vincennes is also in the area. The column surmounted by the gilded "Spirit of Liberty" on place de la Bastille was erected to commemorate not the surrender of the prison. The Bicentennial of the French Revolution in 1989 was marked by the inauguration of a new opera house on place de la Bastille, the Opéra Bastille, filling almost the entire block between rues de Lyon, Charenton and Moreau. Just south of the square is the Port de l’Arsenal marina where the Canal St. Martin meets the Seine is where we started our tour of the Bastille, strolling the canal me taking amateur photo’s while my brother in law took more professional photos. The battery died on my camera so I took photo’s with my phone camera the remainder of the trip. (Note to self, next time pack your battery charger) We stumbled upon a photo exhibit of toilets; it was so fascinating, funny and in some cases political. After strolling the canal we stopped for a little lunch on a street filled with little boutiques, I could not wait to hit those shops - - I did and I scored a pair of earrings and a shoulder bag. I loved this area of Paris self described as “Bo Bo” Bohemian – my kind of place.

We visited our friends from San Francisco in their Paris flat in a really nice area near the metro, cafes and shops. We squeezed into the lift in their building to take us to the top floor, this was the smallest lift I have ever seen - - it was shaped like a sort of half circle with edges. Before our friends left San Francisco they made reservations for the four of us at Restaurant Spring http://springparis.blogspot.com/, I read about this restaurant a couple of years ago and was dying to go. Our friends had dinned there before and gave the restaurant high praise. Unfortunately, only three of us went to dinner because one of our friends had a little aliment, not serious but aggravating, so she couldn’t join us.

Spring is a small little restaurant that seats about 20, serving one menu that changes every day. The chef Daniel Rose, probably about 31 years old now, is not Parisian he is from Chicago, my home town. This small restaurant has an open kitchen so from every seat you can view the kitchen; a truly fascinating experience. The menu; we started with these little tasty fried balls of potato and cheese - yummy! Next course razor clams, followed by a trout dish served with a cucumber and caviar. The trout was cooked on the plate with a torch; it was very rare and wonderful. The next course was porcini mushrooms with a farm egg in quail and veal au jus, this was to die for! Then there was the duck breast with pomegranates followed by the duck leg stuffed in an apricot and the three small dessert courses starting with blackberries, a yogurt cream and last a chocolate and caramel crumble. I’m talking an awesome meal! It seems like a lot of food and it was but the portion sizes were small. The food, ambience, and the staff were outstanding! The chef visited every table to ensure that everyone was pleased with the meal. This place is like Saison in San Francisco. I will definitely go back again, reservations must be made much in advance and this place is not for the budget minded.

In addition to eating our way through Paris and exploring neighborhoods we took a day trip to Girveny http://giverny.org/ the home and gardens of Claude Monet. I really don’t know what to say about the gardens except that it was so tranquil and simply beautiful; one could certainly see how the gardens inspired Monet’s paintings. Also, you could see some of the scenes portrayed in his paintings. All I could think about while I was in Giverny was how much my friend Joanne would have loved it! I hope you enjoy these pictures taken with my phone on my camera. Although they are not that great I think you can see the beauty and wonder of Monet’s Gardens.

Our last Sunday in Paris was spent wondering the streets, strolling in the park and a visit to the Bibloteque market. I love markets; we thought about buying a rotisserie chicken, bread, cheese, fruit and a few vegetables and having a picnic lunch but decided against it, next time for sure.
My last day in Paris was spent at the Pompidou followed by an afternoon of lunch, people gazing and shopping in one of my favorite neighborhoods in Paris Saint Germain Des Pres. I separated from the boys for a couple of hours to go off shopping on my own. I spent those two glorious hours popping in and out of the boutiques sometime with a little something and other times empty handed.

We had the perfect vacation and I hope you enjoyed my musing about some of the highlights about our trip. Next time we will stay longer and perhaps rent a flat. I fell in love with Paris and I am still in love today - - au revoir!