Tahiti 🇵🇫 bound 🏖🌞 ~ Part 4
Well, today was what to be the high point of our entire trip… We were returning to Bora Bora after 35 years. We were Read More ...
Norwegian Fjords & Paris – Part 12 Paris
We had an early breakfast and said our farewells to the crew that had taken such good care of us the past two weeks.
We caught the Thalys high speed train from Amsterdam to Paris Gare du Nord.
It was packed to the gills. There were few passengers wearing masks in such close quarters. We kept our masks on the entire time.
When the trains are full (as they pretty much always are), not only are the passengers packed in each carriage, but there’s always a scrum for the luggage storage area. We got on and stowed our bags (1 with the Apple airtag) and enjoyed traveling to Paris in just over 3 hours at speeds of 180 mph.
Instead of getting up with the other 86 people in our carriage to make for the exit we took our time disembarking only to arrive at an empty baggage rack. 😱
Your mind goes through maybe we stored them in the next car or the other possible scenarios…. But alas they were nowhere to be seen.
We got on the quai and started looking for a member from Thalys when I said to Joe. Look on your iPhone to see where the bag is with the “Find My” app.
He opened the app and it took a while to draw and he said it’s near the street but because I saw it wasn’t moving it probably wasn’t stolen.
Joe selected “take me to my AirTag” and started walking towards the station. The guidance arrow immediately told him to turn around and the bag was 15 feet from him.
He followed the directions to reboarded the car following the app it told him to walk down the aisle and son of a gun if someone hadn’t taken all of our bags out of the luggage storage area and shoved them in the overhead of the carriage to make room for their own bags!!
Can you believe it? We were going to buy another tag for our 2nd checked bag before we returned home!
I can’t tell you what an empty feeling we had standing in the Gare du Nord without our 3 bags.
Maybe we should contact Apple with this story.
After being reunited with our bags we headed out to the bus that would take us directly to in front of our hotel.
There was no way I wanted to take the metro with all our bags.
It was also fun to see all the changes and what a lot of construction is going on.
This is the old Felix Potin building just down the street from our little hotel. It was under renovation the last time we were here.
It’s stunning. We’re guessing it’s apartments above.
Of course first … well, actually 2nd, on our list after getting croissants and goodies from the Boulangerie across the street was a Monoprix stop.
Since it’s August and so many shops and restaurants are on annual congée’s 🤨 for pretty much the entire month, a lot of our favorite places are closed and the museums special exhibitions are on pause.
This time we’re going a little slower and enjoying the fabulous architecture in our favorite city.
So many times we’ve been here we’ve been rushing to and fro and didn’t take the time to appreciate the beauty of this magical city.
Our friends Patty & Eric, turned us on to these specialty jams by La Chambre de Confiture. They have 4 stores in Paris and we made this our first shopping store only to read they were closed on congées. We went across town to the one in the Marais that was open and restocked after 3 years.
The photo of the side street in the Marais is quite a rare scene as usually the streets are crammed full with people.
(That’s not a display on the counter in the photo ☺️, she is 1/2 way through packing our selections.)
We then headed over to the Apple Store in the St. Germain Marché to purchase another Apple AirTag for our checked baggage for the return flight home.
~ August 10th ~
Wednesday was a trip down memory lane. We took the RER A commuter train (now air conditioned!) to our old port in Cergy.
We wandered down to the port and there we saw our old barge in its same spot.
The Australian couple that bought it changed her name (happily for us) and added lots of “stuff”.
Appears she’s been well used which pleased us but, for us, is seriously behind in varnish and painting maintenance. Yikes! Are the Clampets in residence? 🤨
Because of the heat we’ve been going out for a couple of hours and then coming back to the air conditioned room for a rest and dumping our goodies and heading out again.
We stopped at Georges Larnicol this afternoon for a couple of their famous kouignettes and went across to the Starbucks for coffee to go with them.
One has not lived until one has eaten Georges Larnicol’s (MOF – Meilleur Ouvrier de France” or “Best Craftsman of France”) kouignette.
There were so many flavors to choose from. We’ll eventually have 1 of every flavor before we leave. 🤤 They offer both sweet and salé (savory). Savory don’t interest us like basil, rosemary ick. Sweet they usually have Carmel beurre salé, salted, chocolate, pistachio, raspberry, orange, hazelnut and so many more as they rotate the less common ones.
We renewed our Navigo cards for a weeks worth of transports. Their app has gotten superb, and MOST of the busses are electric or hybrid with air conditioning.
We rounded out our trip down memory lane today at our favorite Japanese restaurant Hokkaido. Seems like it was all the young kids working tonight and the elders have left on congées.
One of the august benefits is that there was that there wasn’t a line and we got seated immediately at the best table next to the Dyson fan and close to the kitchen action.
In minutes we were feasting on our traditional order — Yakisoba menu with gyoza and Yakiudon. Kirin beer was on tap. Our food was just as good as we always remembered.
We walked through the Passage Choisil to get to the bus stop for our return to the hotel.
~ August 11th ~
Today was another day of wandering to various spots that we had on our list and just enjoy Paris.
The forecast was for hot again but by the Seine it was cool enough, especially out of the direct sun.
There is always construction going on in this city.
Last time we were here, the Conciergerie was enveloped in scaffolding. It’s now beautifully restored.
We wandered over to the Nôtre Dame construction site to read about the progress of the restoration from the fire on April 15, 2019.
All around the construction site was these super well done informational panels that described the work that was underway.
It’s only in French but the cartoon style drawings kind of explains what’s happening.
The front looks in pretty good condition and there are stacks of those containers that are mobile offices. They had a map of the layout of them… it’s like a little city from workers cafeteria, to showers, to daily meeting rooms, and then offices of all the departments of workers involved… engineers, designers, architects, carpenters, stone workers and many more. Sadly the photos had the sun reflecting off of them so the quality isn’t that great.
We had the time to just sit and study Nôtre Dame because we weren’t dashing from one place to another.
What first caught my eye was the 2 sets of rope hanging over the side. 🤔
Look closely in the photos and you’ll see climbers attached to them. They had lights and were inspecting who knows what.
They worked together and swung across the pillars to inspect all around the area.
Super close up of inspectors. I said to Joe “this was definitely a job for me!”
Climbers on the left. The photo in the middle of the bottom row shows the reinforced buttresses, and how high the scaffolding is on the rest of the structure. The extended view in the bottom right shows the entire side of the structure with the massive crane that is working on the project.
We’re not sure if it’s August and so there aren’t that many cars or if the bikes, and scooters, which are everywhere, have reduced the traffic in the city.
Velib now has electric and pedal version bikes as well as e-scooters.
Plus the city has taken out lanes in the streets and made them bi-directional bike routes.
This is good and bad news for Paris. The e-scooters are being used on sidewalks causing problems with pedestrians, the users are speeding excessively causing dangerous incidents, plus when the users/renters are finished with their rental, they are not returned to a parking/charging station like the Velibs but cast aside on sidewalks and in gutters.
Stevie, Joe’s brother sent us an article about the trees in Paris. The photo on the right above is a black locust tree is 420 years old and the oldest in Paris in Square Rene Viviani (near Shakespeare and Company bookshop).
Samaritaine department store has a wonderful history. The department store is 151 years old. When we were in Paris in 2005 the city closed the department store due to structural issues.
It remained closed with the future in doubt until 2015 when restructuring of the complex began. It finally opened last year.
They’ve done an incredible job with the restoration. Basically it’s an open space with hugely exclusive boutiques and the 9th floor had multiple dining venues that overlooked the entire complex. The vendors displays were amazingly artistic. It was like visiting a gallery vs shopping.
There was even a space that showed Samaritaine’s advertising on the TVs with the period appropriate telephones from the 60’s and 70’s.
They maintained the original iron riveted core of the structure, the massive stairways with their glazed ceramic tiles under them.
From Samaritaine, we wandered over to the Les Halles area. When we were last there the entire area around Église Saint-Eustace was completely torn up. Now it’s wonderfully transformed to a large open park area next to the modernized Les Halles shopping complex.
A trip to Paris isn’t complete for Lisa without a visit to the Dehillerin kitchen supply store. It was so fun to see the size of the copper ware they have. Oh, la, la to have a massive bank account.
When we were still living in Paris … there was an article in Le Figaro about this new down and dirty kebab place.
He opened only for lunch (like 12-2), was take away only, and offered 2 different kebabs.
You lined up and ordered at the cashier and moved along and walked out with your order and a bag of fries.
They’ve now grown to 3 locations and a little larger selection of kebabs. We ate at the one Montorgueil by Chatelet.
I had the Farci (spicy) and Joe had the Kegré. 😋
I noticed that Joe caught a group of men on my right with their phones and blue food delivery bags. They had their electric bikes parked at the curb and were waiting to grab online orders. This street has loads of restaurants. Food delivery is huge business in Paris (bottom left photo).
Our friend Eric raved about this place that makes chocolate mousse. You buy it by the percentage of cocoa.
I’d rather have a super flavorful fruit sorbet which is much more refreshing in the heat. But Joe seemed to have enjoyed it though.
Tonight was dinner at one of our go-to favorites… Le Reminet.
It was super hot and as you can see no air conditioning so we started with Aperol spritzes.
We usually make reservations via Le Fourchette (The Fork) because they offer a promotion of anywhere from 30%, 40% or 50% discount on the a la carte menu as long as you order 2 courses each. So we order 1 appetizer that we share, each choose a main course, and order 1 dessert which we also share (though that usually is much more difficult). 🙄
For our (shared) Appetizer we chose the Spanakopita starter was not only beautifully presented but AMAZING! Their plates they serve on add an extra dimension to the experience.
For the main course I chose the eggplant (shown on the black plate) and it was so creative and delicious. I had the eggplant and it was so creative. The little black feathery strips on the top are fried strips of eggplant skins used to garnish the dish. It was again amazing.
Joe had the pork belly with the chard and horseradish apple sauce. So unique and beautifully presented.
The dessert, oh the dessert! It was the lavender crème brûlée with melon sorbet. The seeds on the sorbet are roasted melon seeds. They added a roasted pumpkin seed flavor. To die for. This was truly difficult to share equally.
~ August 12th ~
Friday we went to Property Caillebotte in Yerres about 45 minutes by suburban train from Paris. It’s more of a massive park with buildings around the grounds. One doesn’t go in to the home, but there are a number of outer buildings that either serve as exhibition space or a cafe.
We adore Caillebotte’s works of art and never managed to take the time and effort to visit his property that inspired so many of his works.
The grounds were well kept with lots of trees and grassy areas for picnics and places for children to play.
There was even a tiny chapel with flowers surrounding it. They’ve maintained the ancient glacerie (asian pagoda structure on rocky hill) which kept ice and food stuffs cold.
Before dinner tonight we popped in to the Eglise Saint Germain des Près. It looked like they had recently restored the interior. The blue ceiling was breathtaking.
It’s August, so it’s Moules (mussels) from Bouchot. Mussels from Bouchot are the much sought after sweet mussels from Brittany. So we headed to a chain restaurant that was doing a special on moules des Bouchot.
Of course starting with Aperol spritzers.
What a better way to end our 2nd to last day in Paris than with a caramel beurre salé crêpe in Saint Germain.
~ August 13th ~
Today, we thought, would be “A day at leisure”. Since our go-to creperie was on annual congees we scouted an alternate. We made reservations for tonight 🤞🏼
We then wandered over to the Tuileries to check if we’d be able to get in to the Orangerie as tickets were sold out online.
We were told that we could go right in …we’ll do that Sunday (tomorrow).
Many people take the photo of the pond with the water fountain and the Arche de Triumph in the distance (upper block bottom right), but they are not aware of the significance of the monuments in the far distance.
The monuments are lined up starting with the obelisk at the Place de la Concorde, that lines up with the Arch de Triomphe, which lines up with the arch at La Defense, and all the way out to an arch in Cergy and is called the Axe Majeur.
If you pinch in you will be able to see 3 of the 4 monuments in line.
The trees are really starting to show signs of lack of water.
We people watched and had our picnic lunch before heading over to the d’Orsay for our 2 pm reservations.
If you’ve followed our photo streams/web site previously, you’ll remember the trouble the city of Paris has had with people attaching “Love Locks” to the bridges.
The locks are very dangerous when they cover a railing like this as the weight of them can create the siding to collapse in to the river… maybe boats are passing many other things.
No matter how much the city has asked people not to do this it’s continued…
Until now…
Just imagine the weight of each of these sections! The city has been cutting the portions away, melting the metal down and reinstalling new railings, only for this behavior to continue.
Pictured above is the solution … with a final lock seller.
It’s super thick glass and actually I think it’s nicer than the wire.
It was such a beautiful day to enjoy the Seine. Not only has the city resolved the Lovers locks it appears they rid themselves of “the ring droppers”. Yay!
These pickpockets would walk forward towards you and pretend to bend down and pick up a ring, while distracting you saying “oh, it lucky blah, blah” his partner was picking your pocket.
We managed to get last minute tickets for the Orsay. Probably our favorite museum in the world.
The timed tickets seemed to work well as we’ve seen the museum much more crowded than today.
Except for on the 5th floor, the impressionists section. That was mobbed. Masks on for us.
No matter how many times we’ve visited and we think we’ve seen the paintings they change so many and it’s like the first time visiting.
The d’Orsay has so many painting in their collection due to the limited display area at the museum only a very small portion are on display.
It’s wonderful to see some of our all time favorites again. Maybe hanging in a different place so when you come upon it, you just sigh.
I wanted to add a little history about the 2 paneled painting (in upper left corner)… Monet started painting a very large scale outdoor luncheon scene very much at the same time as Eduard Manet did. It was such large scale that it was on multiple panels. About 3/4 of the way through he didn’t have money for rent so he hawked the paintings. It was already a bit damaged at the bottom because he was painting this outside. But when he went to retrieve it it was so damaged he had to cut pieces out and this pair of panels is what resulted.
The famous “floor planers” by Caillebotte … in tribute to our visit to Yerres yesterday.
There were also new additions for us to the displays of artists we saw at special exhibitions over the time we were in Paris. Bottom right corner is by Maximilian Luce. We love his works.
Being that our go-to crêperie was on congées (annual vacation), we scoured around our neighborhood and came upon L’Atelier Artisan Crêpier. They have a number of locations in the Ile de France (Paris area) as well as Lyon and Cannes. They also were listed in La Fourchette (the Fork) with a discount promotion when reserving with La Fourchette.
It was fabulous. Too large for either of us to eat it all. Joe had the Paul – Gorgonzola, potatoes, smoked ham, crème fraiche, and walnuts.
Mine was the Bernard – mozzarella di buffaloes, arugula, cherry tomatoes, grilled eggplant, courgettes jambon cru, and balsamic cream.
Love the hole in each to preview.
We ate only 1/2 of our crêpes to save room for the Yvonne dessert crêpe..
Butter salted caramel, carmelized apples and artisan vanilla ice cream
After dinner we wandered past St. Sulpice with the setting sun. The buildings on the street behind look like a painting.
Tomorrow would be our last day in Paris. It’s hard to believe a week has gone by so quickly when we arrived with nothing really planned.
~ August 14th ~
We lucked out and walked right in to the Orangerie even though the museum showed sold out on the advance ticket site.
The special exhibition was spectacular and then we topped off our visit to Monet’s water lilies.
Eight of these enormous panels spread around 2 rooms. The crowd was much less than any other time we’d been there.
Now here’s a first for us. They have a piano downstairs in the Monoprix grocery store and this passerby sat down and started playing!
The photo of Joe’s back is Joe signaling for the bus to stop. Such a civilized way to organize transport.
We walked across the Seine one last time. The clouds were coming in signaling much needed rain this evening.
A visit to Paris wouldn’t be complete without a shot of the Eiffel Tower.
