Paris!

Oh Paris. What a couple of days it’s been. It has only been three and a half days, but it feels like so much longer.

We’ve been staying with Erica. This has been so wonderful. She and her roommate Etiana have an apartment in a great location in Paris, and staying with them is awesome. Erica is full of good suggestions for food, walks, streets to explore, parks, etc etc. And we’ve gotten to spend some time with her on a few evenings as well.

Monday, September 11

Walked down Rue Mouffetard, as recommended by Erica. It’s a very cute Parisian cobblestone street with cute little food shops lining practically the whole thing. We got a crepe at Au P'tit Grec, a well known and very good Greek crepe place. They were HUGE and WONDERFUL and we ate all of both of them, leaving us feeling very content indeed. We also saw a bowling alley at the end of the street, which we made a mental note to go to at some point during our Paris stay. Nolan has just said a few days before that he wanted to do an activity at some point while traveling, like bowling, or ice skating, or going to an arcade. Bowling alley it is!

It was pretty crazy after that, just casually walking around Paris with no real plan for the day, and then deciding to make a slight detour to…oh you know, go see the Pantheon and then Notre Dame. Especially for Nolan, who has never been to Paris before, ending up at these incredible and extremely famous places on what felt like a casual, relaxed day was kind of dreamlike. Monisha noted to Nolan after we went to a cathedral in Belgium that as incredible as they are, all cathedrals kind of look the same. But Notre Dame is an exceptional one.

   

For dinner, Erica showed us her favorite Pho restaurant. It’s a 15 minute walk from her house, and within 3 minutes of ordering, steaming hot bowls of delicious Pho were put in front of us. Funny, day 1 in Paris and we’ve eaten no traditional French food. (The crepe for lunch was very much not traditional lunch – yes it was in a crepe, but definitely more Greek style). But Pho was perfect, especially with Monisha getting over her sickness.

Oh! We did eat Berthillon coffee ice cream on the Seine! It’s famous or something and it was delicious, and maybe that counts as traditional French?

Tuesday, September 12.

After a late start to the day, we heading to a cute street called Rue Cler. Here, we collected ingredients for our…

Eiffel Tower picnic! We tried to guess how many people were taking a photo of the Eiffel Tower at any given moment. We decided on…a lot. We walked around the bottom and admired it from great viewpoints, and didn’t feel sad at all about not waiting in the very long lines to go up it. It started raining slightly, so we headed for the museums. 

First and foremost, Monisha wanted to take Nolan to her favorite museum she’s ever been to, L’Orangerie. We get there, and...closed on Tuesdays :( Sad, but fortunately Musée d’Orsay is a five minute walk away and Monisha’s second favorite museum in Paris. So we go there, and just as we get there, it starts pouring. Great job, us! By the way, one of Erica’s very common expressions that she says in a distinct way is, “Great job!” We both like it a lot, so we’ve picked up on congratulating each other with “Great Job”s over the past of days. Okay, back to the museum. Both of our favorite parts were the Van Gogh and the late Impressionism (particularly Claude Monet and Renoir) sections. Van Gogh has been Nolan’s favorite artist for awhile. But now he’s one of Monisha’s three favorites as well.

That night we cooked dinner with Erica! We made sweet potato hash with fried eggs and fresh bread with cheese, and Erica made a fennel, orange, and avocado salad with sesame oil dressing. What an enjoyable evening. It was really cool hearing about her life in Paris, about differences she’s noticed and encountered in Parisian culture. And we ended with some yummy treats: a half coffee/half chocolate éclair and two macaroons (pistachio and raspberry) from a local bakery.

Wednesday, September 13

Wednesday turned out to be quite rainy.  In the morning we decided to take another of Erica’s suggestions and check out the Marais district.  This is a good place for people watching and it has lots of tasty food.  We stopped by a patisserie, and got two fantastic little pastries.  One was a pistachio chocolate roule and the other was this delicious little chocolate covered hazelnut crème filled thing. The latter was the most delicious sweet we’ve had all trip. 

After pastries we went to an Israeli food restaurant, Miznon, for lamb, and cauliflower pita sandwiches!  During our meal we solved a math riddle: using only +, -, *, /, and (), and the numbers 3, 3, 7 and 7, how can you get to 24? No trickery involved, and you must use each number exactly once.  Really Monisha solved it and then hinted Nolan towards the solution.  

  

After lunch and math we headed towards a well recommended crepe place for a sucre-citron (sugar-lemon) crepe in the rain!

  

In the afternoon, we sat in front of a café and watched people and talked about what kinds of habits we want to have when we start work.  We also talked about not playing Ultimate anymore. It’s strange, but both of us feel pretty done with the sport.  And we’re excited to try new things like rock climbing or tennis. 

And in the late afternoon… We went bowling!  It was a great rainy day activity.  Both of us are really quite poor bowlers, but we’re pretty evenly poor so the games were close.  The last game came down to Nolan’s final frame. He had to get a spare with two pins left standing, and he did! And then he needed to get at least 5 on the last ball, and got 7!

In the evening we went to another of Erica’s recommendations: a more fancy French restaurant called Cam40 that’s just a five minute walk from her apartment.  The food was fantastic, as usual.  Practically all of the dishes featured one of Monisha's favorite foods. Though the photo doesn't show it, the appetizer with tomatoes is actually tomatoes over burrata cream. And the main courses were a lamb dish and a duck dish (two of Monisha's three favorite meats).  Although the duck dish looks more impressive and we expected it to be the better of the two, the lamb over couscous was the real start entree.  We decided to split a bottle of wine over dinner to celebrate our first date night in Paris :). 

So yes, Paris has been wonderful! And we're not done with it yet :)

Monisha with a pain au chocolat from Maison Landemaine