A Weekend in Paris, October 2007

We arrived at the Hotel du Ministere tired but excited.  We had to wait a few minutes for our rooms, but the lobby is so nice that it didn´t really matter.  Wish I had taken some pics.  Had a beer which was a nice way to recharge for the unpacking and the day ahead. 
We took a stroll through around the neighbourhood, to Place de la Madeleine and looked in to Baccarat - beautiful! - and down rue Royale where I looked into the second store in my plan - Boutique Lalique.  Stopped at a restaurant/bistro on a small street off Royale called La Village for some heavenly foie gras and a glass of Beaujolais.  Started by ordering a beer but this is Paris!  Red is the way to go.  Didn't shop anything - the prices in this neighbourhood are a bit out of my range!


In the evening we went to Buddha Bar where we had a table reserved.  The place is beautiful but gives a new meaning to candlelight dinners.  We had to read the menu by lifting the very small candles on the table or using lighters we had with us which took some time, and we were unable to see anything we were eating.  We had excellent sushi for starters and Australian beer meat (can't remember the name - kobe something) and tuna for main course.  The kobe meat was not really worth the money but the tuna was very good.  After eating we asked the waitress to reserve a table for us in the lounge.  She told us that it was unnecessary as it was nearly empty so up we went.  The lounge was packed and after a small wait we were directed to a table that was already taken so we left rather irritated, but had a drink at our hotel instead which was much cozier anyway.

We didn't have anything planned for the second day so decided to take a stroll to the Marais district.  We picked up a sandwich at one of the many bakeries on the way and ate while we walked as so many people around us were doing.  Delicious, just as almost everything we ate while in Paris.  After two hours of walk through streets filled with very expensive antique shops we realized that we were walking in the wrong direction and took a cab to Place des Vosges - a must see according to our hotel receptionist.  We were not disappointed - the garden is beautiful and you get a real sense of history as you walk by the houses.  We took a wrong exit out of the park and stopped at one of the cafés to look at our map and drink some café au lait.  Seems everything over there tastes better.  The small streets on the way from Place des Vosges to the Picasso museum are filled with small art-galleries, one of whom had cartoon-like paintings by a french pop-artists whose name I can't remember.  One of his paintings was from Café de Flore which the salesman told us to add to our list of must sees - which we did later that night.  To my regret, I didn't get the name of the gallery either.  Then, we got lost for the third time while trying to find shops in the area.  We found Marche des Enfants-Rouges but ended up in some whole sale streets close to Rue de Bretagne.  Beautiful handbags - but wholesale only.  Goes to show that it pays to plot your direction before leaving the hotel.

The evening wasn't planned either so we took the advice given earlier that day and headed out to Café de Flore.  We didn't get there until around ten so we weren't very optimistic about getting a table anywhere, the café seemed to have mostly after-dinner guests so we walked up rue St-Benoit past some very crowded restaurants until we saw a Lebanese restaurant called Assanabel that seemed to be half-empty.  Lebanese in Paris - why not!  It was a small and cozy place with few tables.  We let the chef choose some variety of food for us and the gourmet party began.  One dish after another, some strong - some sweet, some delicious - some too strange to eat, but with a selection like that we just turned to the next dish if one wasn't to our liking.  We also had some Lebanese beer and wine - and were quite astonished to see at the end of our meal that we'd forgotten to drink the beer which had been rather good.  Definitely one for the history books - even took some pictures of the half beer glasses to mark the occation.

Afterwards we sat down at Café de Flore for drinks - had the Flore coctail which was quite good and one of us had the best Irish coffee we've tasted.  All in all a very enjoyable evening - until it came time to go home that is.  There is a taxi station right outside the café and yet it was nearly impossible to get a taxi.  The station was full and more people were arriving every minute (seems almost everything closes at 1 am) but the taxis were not showing up and some even drove past empty.  Looks like taxis are not the way to go in Paris during the evening.

                                                                                        First, brunch at a corner bistro - next, Montmartre. 
We took the train to Place des Abbesses found in our travel book, that train station is amazing.  I advise taking the elevator - am not quite sure how I survived the stairs which seemed to go on forever before we finally saw the light and felt a breath of fresh air.  Not something you need before tackling the hills. 
This was to be the day of the Montmartre Grape Harvest Festival where we hoped to see the area around Sacré-Coeur including French people.  We tried to take the least strenuous rout to the church - avoiding steep streets as much as we could and discovered to our delight that the area is full of quirky shops filled with all sorts of fun things.  When we finally got to the church we were quite laden with shopping bags but it didn't stop us from adding to them.  There were rows of stalls selling wine and delicatessen from all over France - sold by the bottles, glass, kilos, and piece.  And the place was crowded.  Painters, musicians, french, foreigners, old, young, and everything in between.  We walked between stalls, tasted plenty and bought some but mostly we just enjoyed the festivities that were going on around us.  Unfortunately, the wine from the area was finished - was hoping to get a bottle of that although I have no idea even if it had been for sale.  If there is a next time I will make sure to take the whole day off to spend at the festival.

We had made a reservation that evening at a Michelin restaurant - the Lasserre - and had been looking towards that all the trip.  It is very formal, but excellent service - excellent food - and the wine was great as well.  I wish I knew the name of any of the courses I ate that night but I really couldn't understand any of it.  We simply ordered a variety dish and it was delicious.  A course of six or seven small meals that seemed to arrive one after another throughout the evening. 
Later, we took a taxi to Café de Flore - again.  I had seen an ad at one train station or another promoting a jazz festival and was really keen to go.  Unfortunately, no one seemed to know anything about it and we arrived at the café just before it close and were told that mostly everything closes at that hour.  To avoid the terrible taxi line we took a stroll around the area and found a bar were English rugby fans were celebrating their victory from a match earlier in the day.  Having joined the celebration for a while we decided to walk towards the hotel and try to catch a cab on the way.  It was one of the worst decisions ever.  We somehow ended up at the Louvre - not quite the direction we were heading - and didn't find any taxis until we were nearly at the hotel at which point I had taken off my heels having decided that being cold was better.  Could have wept from joy at seeing that taxi and bribed him quite shamelessly into abandoning his current assignment. 
Taxis or high heels are quite definitely not the way to go in Paris.