Paris
On our last day in Honfleur we were presented with one of
the most magnificent rainbows we had ever seen.
It was a misty/rainy morning and we had just walked to the Seine Estuary
when lo and behold, there was one end of this very large rainbow smack in the
middle of the river, not two hundred yards ahead of us. The other end sank into the hills; we had
never seen an entire rainbow and we were just gob smacked! Since the other
end/beginning of the rainbow seemed to be heading in the direction of Paris, we
hopped in the car and headed that way ourselves.
Our car was equipped with a GPS system, which Cindy mastered
pretty well. The voice (we called her Yvette), in ever so soothing French, had
been pretty good at getting us where we wanted to go. Our plan was to sneak up on Paris from the
southwest; it being a Saturday we thought there would be very little
traffic. Yvette wanted to take us
directly in from the west side of town, which would mean paying a lot of money
for tolls; Yvette obviously has expensive tastes. We turned her off and Cindy took over; she
also has soothing French. Our plan had
two major flaws, one was that it was THE shopping day in Paris where all the
stores had enormous sales and the traffic was absolutely horrible. The other
was a demonstration right near the location of our car rental agency and the
police had the entire area cordoned off and told us to get out of there. That meant having to find a place to park - rather
far from the drop-off site - and wander around looking for the agency so we
could return the car. I’ll not bore you
with details but is was not the most pleasant two hours I’ve ever spent.
Our hotel was a great disappointment! We have been in many Parisian hotels that
were so small that one person had to stay in bed while the other walked to the
desk or bathroom; this was one of those rooms.
We had thought that by using an American chain, Holiday Inn, we would be
swapping more money for a larger room, but it was not to be the case. It was
the most poorly designed room we have ever seen. There was simply no place to
store any clothes, no shelves, no drawers, no nothing. We literally had to live
out of our suitcases. The bathroom was a disaster with ultra-modern plumbing
that was impossible to use if your hands were wet. Hmmm – wet hands in a bathroom? What a rare scenario. If we opened a window the room filled with
smoke from the gaggle of teenage boys who always seemed to be present on the
sidewalk below. On one occasion I was in
the shower while Cindy was getting dressed and in walks a couple with keys and
luggage; it seems that the desk clerk tried to rent the same room twice.
Anyway, the place had no real redeeming qualities other than location, which
took a bit of the sting out of our stay.
Every day we would head to the Luxembourg Gardens, simply
one of the most beautiful places in the world, where Cindy would run and I
would walk and refresh. We would stop at
a bakery on the way home and get some pastry or bread and then head to the room
where Cindy would work awhile while I organized our breakfast. Every day we walked for hours and enjoyed the
lovely weather as much as we did Paris.
We ate well, but Paris has become even more expensive than we remember. However, we didn’t care - for four days, we
would just splurge.
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| Cindy in the Gardens |
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| William in the Gardens |
Our last night’s dinner was without question the very
best. We had noticed this little
restaurant called the Restaurant du Luxembourg on our walks and the menus we
read sounded creative and delicious. The
place didn’t open for dinner until 8 pm so we took a pre-dinner walk, stopped
for some Champagne and arrived at about 8:15.
A husband/wife team runs the place with a darn good cook in the
kitchen. We had a Kir as we read the
menu and we had a very difficult time making decisions since everything looked
grand. We could decide on the wines
right away since they had two of our favorites by the carafe. The white was a lovely Sauvignon from the
Loire and the red was Chateau Moncaillou from Bordeaux, a wine that we haven’t
seen in many years. We finally decided
on dinner and Cindy started with a classic Foie Gras, a simple bloc of duck
liver with freshly toasted bread and a small bit of sea salt on the side. It was melt-in-your-mouth fabulous. I had a Carpaccio of beets with a poached egg
on top and sprinkles of shallot and parsley.
Oh goodness. Next came Cindy’s
second appetizer, in lieu of a main course. It was a simple salad of fresh green
beans and mushrooms, tossed with olive oil and lemon, the perfect foil to my shoulder
of lamb, which was chopped and cooked in a terrine and then inverted over a
circle of mashed celery root and potatoes with baked whole cloves of garlic (8
of them, but who’s counting?). We shared
roasted figs with almond ice cream for dessert and we were in heaven. All night we had been chatting with our hosts
who were delightful and allowed us to muck about in French until we ran out of
words – and then they would jump in with perfect English and give us the
correct word in French.
When the bill arrived I noticed that he had failed to charge
for the carafe of red so I brought it to his attention. He was pleased and surprised and when he came
back with the corrected bill he also had two lovely glasses of Calvados for us. It pays to be honest!
And so we departed Paris and France, well fed, satiated with
museum visits (6) and happy to have had our French fix for the year.
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