In Paris 1

It's taken me a little time but I'm determined to catch up on my very late blogs!


Having established our arrival in Paris, I guess some info is needed about being there.  Paris is always Paris (and yes, we'll always have Paris and I love it in the springtime and I'm still waiting to drive through it in a sports car with the warm wind in my hair .......... shame about the age of 37!).  It was great to be there and also to experience it a tad on the chilly side but with the great advantage that brings, of it not being completely overrun by other touros.


It was hard to know where to start, having "done" lots of the major crowd-pullers such as the Louvre, D'Orsay, Eiffel, L'Orangerie on previous visits.  In a way that took the pressure off and Deb and I decided that a lot of our fun this time would be drawn from just being there and cruising the cafes and the restaurants in our patch in the Marais - absorbing Paris through our pores (and alimentary canals).

Now this is a TV

One of the things that really struck me this visit was that the strength of the $Oz seemed to make Paris relatively cheap and you didn't need a third mortgage to eat out at reasonable places, of which there are a plethora in the Marais.




One of our first visits was to the Musee des Artes et Metiers which had been strongly recomended to me by a work acquaintance, just around the corner from home and, while it was good, it wasn't earth shatteringly great. The good things were the kitchenalia, glassware and the section on cameras, radios, TVs, watches etc.  There was lots of beautiful pottery, ceramics and glassware too.  One thing I'll say for though - it's not foot-numbingly big so you can take it in without wearing your legs down to the knees!

Beautiful in the Gardens

Later that day, we wandered around the Luxumbourg Gardens but it was really a little too cold to enjoy much.  I guess one should be impressed by the existance of such a long serving symbol of democracy (the French Senate sits in the formerLuxumbourg palace) but I thought the best thing there was some of the sculpture.


Next stop was the Montparnasse Cemetery, which I had somehow convinced myself was where Oscar and Jimmy were buried.  Wrong again.  Still a nice wander until the chill penetrated a little too deep here.

Mmmmmm

One of the few things we had planned for Paris was our anniversary/my birthday dinner at Restaurant Astier, just a 10 min stroll from our little apartment.  It had been recommended by a fellow food blogger of Deb's called David Lebovitz and his judgement was impeccable.  You can read all about it on Deb's blog (debsravingrecipes.blogspot.com) but the service, food and wine were terrific ( I had a veal terrine, magret de canard followed by a beautiful vanilla creme dessert.  We struck up a conversation with our very propinquitous neighbours at the next table, who proved to be from Dusselldorf and the conversation never stopped.  A great night.

Getting There

The preparation seemed like a hundred marathons run in succession over months and months, but we finally limped over the finish line and crawled onto a plane somewhere in the early hours of a Canberra morning.

The idea of a house swap with a family from Alsace in eastern France was brilliant but both Debbie and I probably underestimated the amount of work it would take to actually turn it into reality. Our problem was compounded by the diminutive size of our house, which meant that we had to dismantle our second bedroom office to turn it into a kids bedroom for our French "swapee" family, but it also made us realise that we had deferred (avoided?) a whole lot of maintenance tasks around the house for rather too long.  That took care of our weekends for a very long time.

Nevertheless, it was done and we were on the plane, having indulged ourselves in Japan Airlines premium economy so that we might arrive somewhat less compressed in Paris than travelling cattle class.  I'm six foot tall and eighty odd kilos, which is pretty average these days, so I can't imagine how somebody with a bit of real height and body mass fits into those terrible economy class seats.  I suppose you endure for the reward at the end of the flight, but we couldn't face that prospect this time.  We scooped up a bit of a bargain from JAL in the middle of last year, but it's still a a fair bit more than the bargain economy fares that the strong Aussie dollar has been delivering lately.

It was money well spent, however, and we arrived in Paris somewhat less the worse for wear than on previous occasions.

Despite our principal objective being Chatenois, a small town in Alsace, it went without saying that Paris would be our first port of call.

The Mean Streets of the Marais

As usual, we booked an apartment in the Marais and but this time really hit the jackpot location wise.  It was a nice, comfortable but otherwise unremarkable apartment (the four flights of stairs was part of our fitness campaign), but a step outside the door dropped us straight into the Rue de Bretagne, with an almost unlimited choice of boulangeries, boucheries, charcuteries, patissiers, bars, restaurants and cafes, as well as being a short hop from a couple of Metro stations  (Arts et Metiers and Filles du Calvaire).

We also discovered much to our delight that Les Marché des Enfant Rouge was on our doorstep - a very cute covered market that had us instantly ooh-ing, ah-ing and drooling.  It was almost the first thing we discovered, and provided us with an instant hit of essential supplies as well as French luxury food.
  
Parfait!

                                                                                    

A chance encounter on the metro