Exploring Paris by Foot and by Food

I write this post while sitting in a wine bar in Bordeaux, France. Two amazing glasses of Medoc red wine in front of me waiting to be tasted, and as these posts take a while to put together I'm sure a few other wines will pass over my table as well.

Alena and I have spent the last 2 weeks in Northern France. We have visited Verdun, Reims (Champagne), Fontainebleau, Loire Valley, Bordeaux and of course Paris. We have had such an amazing time and have been so busy I haven't had the opportunity to post about each place. This post will be about my experience in Paris while I will add other posts about the other places as soon as I set aside some time.

A brief update until then: Alena's French is improving greatly, mine is not; I have learned to drive stick and we have safely traveled across France with no major incidents; we have been lucky to have tasted many wines so far (I plan to write a whole post on our wine tasting), many have been above expectations, with others tasting quite unusual and a few just bad; we have had a great time exploring the historical aspects of the places we have so far traveled; and we have continued to try as many local foods as we can as we travel from region to region.

But, with no further a-due I will get back to our time Paris and the amazing experiences we had there.

PARIS

The first thing we did our first morning in Paris was to take the metro to the Luxembourg Gardens and walk through all the flowers and sculptures.

It was a truly beautiful day, so I sat for a while and looked over the gardens at the Tour Montparnasse. It is a notorious skyscraper that Parisians and critics abound love to hate. I personally thought it was not an uniquely ugly building nor did I think it was a stain on the beauty of the city, but Alena tells me I am in the minority on this one.

After walking through the gardens and around a few neighborhoods in that part of Paris we had built up quite a hunger. So we started what would become an almost daily ritual of buying some cheese, a baguette and a bottle of wine for lunch. We walked to one of Alena's favorite bridges in the city to enjoy our lunch overlooking the Seine. We were not sure if you were allowed to drink in public, so we kept it classy and drank straight from the bottle, not removing it from the pink plastic bag in which it was sold to us.

We somewhat quickly devoured our baguette and polished off the whole bottle of White Côte de Rhône before heading off to walk the Tuileries. We did a lot of walking in Paris, averaging 7 miles per day!

I am behooved to mention that we also enjoyed our first pastry that day, a chocolate eclair. I was most excited to visit France for the wines, Alena for the pastries.

With a storm approaching, the lighting and wind was perfect for an impromptu photo shoot in the Tuileries.

I tried to take a picture of Alena next to this beautiful fountain while she was looking smoking hot in her black dress. The fountain must have thought so too as right as I took the picture the water sprayed out crazily and soaked her!

Got to love the spunk of the mannequins in Paris.

(Photo credit to Alena - she is proud of her pano skills)

We stayed in an AirBnB in Paris so that would have a stable home base to explore the city from. We were lucky to find a great room in an apartment owned by a lovely women. It was a prime location in the 10th Arrondissement, near a metro station and walking distance to Montmartre. We even had roof access with this amazing view!

We took advantage of our great location by walking to Montmartre one morning.

It's a beautiful cathedral on the tallest hill in Paris with an amazing history dating back Roman times, with its modern history relating to its popularity among artists including Monet, Picasso and Van Gough.

We walked around the two famous graveyards in Montmartre. The first one was dedicated to artists of the neighborhood. It was quite a peaceful place to take in the historic significance of the area. This monument was dedicated to a young painter who grew up in Montmartre and died serving his country in WWII.

Had our first crepe! The man made it fresh right in front of us. The technique was superb and great fun to watch. I almost ordered a second just to see him do it again.

I think we did more than just eat while in Paris, but if we did it wasn't much more. A typical meal of baguette, cheese, meat, fruit and pasties (this included the best pastry I may have ever had - a fresh almond croissant in Paris). For some reason kiwis are cheap and everywhere in France, which is fine by us as they are great snacks.

We visited Notre Dame and I was super impressed by all the carvings on the outside of the church. It was the most beautiful church we have visited from the outside as the architecture was so grand, the carvings and gargoyles on the facade were so intricate and the flying buttresses were unlike anything else I'd seen. I thought it was super cool.

As our trip has now included visits to at least 15 different large churches, I consider myself adequately experienced to fairly judge their impressiveness. Given this, I thought that walking through the inside of Notre Dame was a bit disappointing. Yes it is grand and there were some very beautiful stained glass pieces, but it felt so stuffy and dark inside and there are so many people that it really took away from feeling and beauty that I got from other large cathedrals we visited. There was also very little descriptions of the relics and the history of the building compared to other significant churches. The picture shown was my favorite stained glass wall in Notre Dame, it was a beautifully colored depiction of many of the Catholic saints.

On a rainy day we took a walk through the Latin Quarter. We found this amazing cheese shop to stock up on more essential meal items: goat cheese and camembert cheese.

One night we walked around the gardens and to the Eiffel Tower. We had seen it during the day, but it is so spectacular at night.

We were sitting in the park just enjoying the view when all of a sudden it started sparkling like crazy. Alena and all the other women in the park screamed then ooohed in unison. It was hard to blame them as it was truly an awesome sight.

I spent the better part of a day at the louvre, with Alena meeting me part way through. This was at the medieval wall that formed part of the moat when the Louvre was originally a fortress. Pretty sweet to basically stand in a castle moat.

I planned to get to the Louvre right when it opened at 9am but I was delayed by some Paris cops who were checking metro tickets. We were buying tickets 10 at a time as they were discounted and in order not to mix up my used and new tickets I would throw them away after entering the metro station. Unknown to me you are supposed to keep them. So I got stuck with a $40 ticket for not having my used metro ticket with me. Pretty lame. But I did still get to the Louvre early enough to see all the Italian paintings before the crowds, including the Mona Lisa and this naked dude here. I am pretty sure he's reaching for a fresh almond croissant.

Alena's favorite moment was seeing the Code of Hammurabi. She was shocked when she saw the sign saying it was here. And for real she started to tear up when we actually walked up to it. We are all lucky Alena's tears didn't get on the rock as they could damage the ancient text. I was not quite as taken by it as she was, but gosh was it crazy to see it actually standing there in front of me. No glass case, just the real thing right there. It is really a very amazing artifact.

We saw some pretty amazing ancient artifacts in the Louvre including cuneiform writings, Roman sculptures, ancient Islamic tile work and some beautiful carvings from Mesopotamia caves and The Code of Hammurabi!! We were highly disappointed that they close the Egyptian and MesoAmerican exhibits on Fridays!?! (I love those two ancient cultures so I was super bummed) Overall I thought the Louvre was an amazing experience and I give it 2 thumbs up! (This might be the oldest thumbs up ever recorded)

After museuming it up all day we spent the evening outside watching the sunset over the Seine with more cheese, bread and wine! During our trip we passed a lot of time playing rummy. We have running totals of games to 1000. If you want to know the record so far ask Alena.

Another badass shot of Alena keeping it classy in Paris. We felt very Parisian out there playing cards and drinking with the locals.

After half a bottle of wine and a few winning hands of rummy I did a little victory dance in the setting sun.

We decided to end our night with a trip to the Hemmingway Bar. I didn't realize it was in the Ritz Carlton in Paris. Which was beyond fancy. Had to take a selfy in the gold lined mirrors. It was a crazy cool experience to be in the Ritz and to be at the Hemmingway Bar with the amazing memorabilia and photos of him. One warning though, we didn't look up the price of the cocktails before we arrived, and as we had built it up in our minds and then waited on the waitlist for a table to open up we were not going to leave once we looked at the menu and saw that all drinks were 30 euros each!!! Although I think we may have almost eaten our money's worth of the complimentary snacks they kept bringing us. It was definitely worth it in the end as we had an amazing night and a truly unforgettable experience. If you are a fan of Hemmingway, then I would certainly budget in a visit to the bar for your trip to Paris.

On our last day in Paris we made a return trip the Luxembourg Gardens and watched the kids sail these tiny sail boats around the small lake in the middle of the gardens. Alena's favorite, the seahorse, got marooned near us, so with no little kid with a stick nearby she set it off again for a trip across the gardens.

Alena insisted that before we leave Paris we had to get the famous hot chocolate at Le Duex Magots. I love hot chocolate so I was easily convinced. I am glad we did not go the first day in Paris because I would have blown our food budget by getting a cup of this heavenly drink every day, maybe twice day! It was truly the best hot cocoa I have ever had and I am dedicated to replicating the recipe when I return home. To make that experience ever better, I am reading Movable Feast, by Hemmingway, while in France and while we were at the Magots I was reading the part where he goes there for a drink. Those moments of recognition were exactly what I was hoping for from reading that book while in Paris.

Our last supper in Paris was a feast of left over goodies and half drank bottles of wine before we were set to wake up early to rent a car and drive to the Champagne region of France. We enjoyed our time exploring Paris by foot and by food; and I was glad I had such an amazing guide in Alena to make sure I saw and tasted the highlights. Our time in Paris seemed brief, but it was just enough to hook me and get me excited to return the dive deeper and see a bit more of that magical and delicious city.