Livin' Like a Parisian

The flight from Seattle to Paris was pretty uneventful after a small 40 minute delay leaving Seattle.  

Duane and Tari's flight from Minneapolis sounded just as uneventful when we met up at baggage claim in Paris.  Both flights landed early.  Our flight arrived after Duane and Tari's and ours landed around 8:15 am Paris time.  This was perfect as this gave us all day to Live Like a Parisian!

We arrived at our hotel, Grand Hotel Leveque (yes the same one we stayed at on our previous trip) around 10:30 am.  Knowing our rooms would not be available until later in the day we dropped our luggage off and hit Rue Cler in search of lunch.

Lunch!

One of our goals on this trip was to immerse ourselves in the city since we did majority of the tourist items on our last trip.  What better way to immerse then to purchase items on Rue Cler for a picnic and enjoy our findings at a local park.

What better place to picnic but at the park near the Eiffel Tower with the Tower in the background?  Even though it was a pretty warm day in Paris (high near 90) the park was a popular spot for both locals and tourist to have a picnic lunch in. 

Both couples had brought along some picnic items like blankets, cutting boards, and cheese knives.  We picked up meat, wine, some cheeses, and, of course, the required baguette on Rue Cler.  It was quite the enjoyable lunch until the rain came....

Our relaxing picnic was interrupted by a brief rain shower.  Luckily, we were almost done with our picnic by that time so we quickly picked everything up as did the locals and stood under a tree until the rain stopped.  It was quite funny as every tree had several groups of people standing under them and then once the rain stopped everyone went back to their plans in the park.

 

Since we were almost done with our picnic anyway, we figured it was a good time to move on once the rain shower ended.  I would like to say the rain cooled the temps, but unfortunately that was not the case.  It was still warm and humid after the rain.  We stopped to take the required "Couple in Front of the Tower" pics before leaving the park.

Since we still had about three hours to spend before getting our rooms we decided to sit at a bistro on Rue Cler, have a bottle of wine, and people watch.

By the time 2:30 rolled around we were all ready to be in our rooms and take a short nap. We made our way down the street to our hotel and Kelly made her first gelato/sorbet stop. It was a four scoop afternoon, Coconut, Caramel Butter with Salt, Pistachio, and a new flavor Lemon with Red Balsamic Vinegar.  The Lemon with Red Balsamic was wonderful!  The lemon gave it a tart citrus flavor while the Red Balsamic provided a fresh balance to cut some of the tartness. Jamie had his usual three boules (scoops). This time, he went with his usual chocolate and then tried Mojito and Tiramisu.

After taking our naps, we met outside the hotel for dinner at 6:30 pm.  With no real dinner plans, we walked the neighborhood around Rue Cler looking for a restaurant inspiration.

Along our journey, we saw an interesting carved door.  The building appeared to be an apartment building now, but it would be interesting to see what it's original intent was, because the door was decorated with a lizard and corn on the cob.  Kelly said that it was too unusual not to take a picture of it.

Dinner!

 

Our wandering led us to La Fontaine De Mars, which was only a few blocks from our hotel.  Luckily they were able to seat us for dinner even though we did not have a réservation (a reservation).  We were given the choice of eating outside on the side walk or eating upstairs.  No one wanted to make that choice as the upstairs could be a 50% chance of air conditioning, but it also could be a 50% chance of being hotter than hell.  As we stood there and looked at each other, Tari bravely said "Upstairs".

Tari is a brilliant woman!!!  The upstairs actually was air conditioned!  Not by American standards, so you weren't freezing but it was definitely cooler than outside or as we found out later, the inside first level of the restaurant.

We had a great corner table overlooking the street as we ate.

 

For our appetizer we shared escargots and foie gras.  Both were wonderfully done.  If the appetizers were this good we were in for a treat for our main courses!

Main Courses

 Jamie had the Canard (Duck) Confit with roasted potatoes and "curly" lettuce salad.  It was perfectly done, nice and crispy glazed on the outside but tender and juicy on the inside.

 Kelly had the Duck with honey glaze, polenta, and haricot verts (green beans).  The duck was prepared medium and almost melted in your mouth, the honey glaze complemented nicely and the polenta was purhaps the best everyone at the table had ever had.  The polenta had just enough spice to give it character and the texture of it was almost perfect!

 Tari had the Sunday Plat du Jour (Daily Special) of Roasted Chicken with Mashed Potatoes and Gravy.  Just as with Jamie's duck the chicken was roasted so the outside was crispy but the meat inside was tender and juicy.

 Duane had the Cassoulet, a typical French dish normally served in the winter, even though it was 90 degrees outside.  They had quite the presentation for the cassoulet, they actually brought it to him in the original baking casserole dish to present to him before taking it back to plate it and bring it back out.  Duane said it was a perfect representation of a true cassoulet and worth getting even though it was so warm outside.  

Dessert!

After the wonderful appetizers and main courses, one would think dessert would not have been an option.  But when in France, it is hard to pass up dessert, unless you are Tari.  Duane chose to have creme brulee.  Jamie opted for a glass of 10 year Port and Kelly was the winner in ordering the Mille-feuille.

The Mille-feuille is a wonderful puff pastry made of "thousands" of layers of very light puff pastry layered with a custard then dusted with powder sugar.  This dessert was huge, but SO GOOD!!!  Both the custard and pastry was so light it was like eating sweet air.  With a little help from friends, the entire dessert was eaten.

After Dinner!

After we finally stopped eating and drinking, 3 hours later, we decided to take a walk to see the Eiffel at night and allow the guys to stroll with a cigar.

During the evenings the Tower actually sparkles for the first 5 minutes of every hour.  Last time we were here we missed seeing it, so it was on everyone's bucket list this time .  It is hard to see the sparkles in this photo but the spots you see to the right are the reflection of the twinkling lights.

 Paris has interesting ways to get around.  This is a covered Ped Bike that we had to get a picture of since it was lit up like a  Seahawk Football. 

As the night drew to a close, the boys finished their cigars out front of our hotel while Kelly took in the views from their rooms balcony.

  

Wine of the Day:

For all of our wino friends we will do our best to display the daily wine intake at the bottom of each blog page.  For our first day we shared 6 bottles.  Two during our picnic, one while sitting on Rue Cler and then three during our outstanding dinner.

Lunch: 

The best was the first one, a Sancere.  The second one we bought on a recommendation.  I think it was safe to say that out of the 4 of us no one liked it.  It was too piney.

Break on Rue Cler

This wine was a recommendation from our waiter and it was a good one.  Not only was the wine light and refreshing on a hot day it had a cute little gnome on the label.  How can you pass that up? It was so good, we actually ordered another bottle.

Dinner:

For dinner we started with a great white that was again recommended because they were out of the white Chateaunef de Pape we had originally ordered.  This one was so good we had two!

With our dinner we had a very good 2004 Malbec, it paired very nicely with all the main courses.

  


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