Category: Paris

We are standing in Le Bon Marche, possibly the world’s first department store designed by Gustave Eiffel, when there is another Morgan Freeman sighting. This time it is made by a store security guard. My sister has approached the guard to ask for directions to the escalator, but before she can ask, he has leaned in real close and whispered, “Ahhh, Monsieur Morgan Freeman,” looking in my father’s direction. April bursts out laughing. He’s befuddled by the reaction, certain that he’s discovered our secret. It is the second time someone has “recognized” my father as Morgan Freeman, once before at the Louvre. Now, my father believes that everyone he catches looking at him thinks he’s Morgan Freeman. We’ve all decided that it is the red Martha’s Vineyard hat that he keeps pulled low on his head. He looks like he wants to be inconspicuous so he’s drawing more attention to himself. We’ve also come the conclusion that Parisians must be big fans of Morgan Freeman or they see very few grey-bearded black men. At least we know who my dad can be for Halloween this year. What do you think? Could the man above be Morgan Freeman? Reply in the comments below.

I’ve suggested that we visit Le Bon Marche on Rue des Sevres because it is another typical Parisian shopping experience with clothing, shoes and accessories accompanied by a massive grocery store. Le Grand Epicerie is indeed the grandest grocery store we’ve ever seen. We enter at the candy and sweets section, mouths agape. Petit fours, chocolates and the beloved macarons beckon from a large glass case. Just beyond the sweets are fresh baked breads and pastries and we point to each imaginging how good they must be. Whole legs of reddened lamb and racks of beef hang within the meat section also known as the charcuterie. We spot fresh fruits and vegetables in the center and my mom spies a hard-to-find vegetable that she’s tasted before. It’s a pale green cauliflower-looking vegetable. Depending on who you ask and where you are it is known as a Romanesco cauliflower, brocoli or cabbage and the variety of names may be a reflection of its hard-to-pin-down taste, according to my mom. My dad stocks up on a coffee that I brought back from my last trip to Paris and gets a couple of bottles of Bordeaux, his favorite wine in Paris.

Not only can you shop for fabulous gourmet-quality food in Le Grande Epicerie of Le Bon Marche, you can dine in, too. There is an outdoor cafe and even a champagne and caviar bar. We decide to have a late lunch at one of the indoor cafes. My mom and I have a Chinese chicken salad and my dad has a salade nicoise, while April and Steve decide to sample some of the prepared foods from the market. We can’t help but draw comparisions between this place and the Wegman’s grocery stores taking the DC area by storm. My mom sums it all up by saying, “This place makes Wegmans look like a 7-11.”

 Before our trip to Le Bon Marche, we shop even closer to our hotel in search of trinkets to take home and happen upon Josephine Baker Place, marked by a sign just blocks away from our hotel near Boulevard Edgar Quinet and  Boulevard du Monteparnasse. Later research reveals that Monteparnasse is the first place Josephine settled in Paris and the restaurant La Coupole, which we’ve passed several times, was one of her favorite haunts. The small square was given Josephine’s name in 2001 and recognizes not only her life as a performer, but also her philanthropy and service in the French Resistance during WWII. History really is everywhere in Paris and in places you’d least expect. It’s really cool to know that we may have been walking in Josephine’s footsteps all along.

 

Our trip to Paris ends with a dinner cruise on the lovely Seine. We’ve crossed the river several times during our stay, moving from left bank to right bank and back again, so we are excited to get a chance to experience the city from the water. Our boat is scheduled to depart at 9 pm and we arrive at about 8:45, only to find that our boat, the Capitaine Fracasse, is not where we expect it to be at a pier at the center of the Bir Hakeim bridge. Steve takes the opportunity to capture the City of Lights at night and all the activity on the Seine. Massive tour boats filled literally to their tops troll the Seine flooding it and everything in its path with almost blinding lights. We wonder how the people living in gorgeous, and presumably expensive, apartments along the river can live with the constant light displays. Our boat finally arrives and, thankfully, it is more understated than the big tourist boats we’ve seen. As we board, we are greated by a song that defined Saturday nights in the 80s. “Love…exciting and new…come aboard. We’re expecting youuu….” That’s right. Love Boat. It’s so hokey, we can’t help but smile. All during our trip we’ve been paying attention to the music we hear as we dine and for the most part Parisian restaurants play Motown and R&B like it is Musak. At Les Botanistes, formerly known as Le Gorille Blanc, they had Aretha Franklin in heavy rotation, while Bistrot Vivienne had the best mix with everything from Curtis Mayfield to Prince.The music on our dinner cruise gets oddest mix, moving from “Love Boat” to a strange rendition of “Amazing Grace” to a Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes playlist, featuring a young Teddy Pendegrass. Odd music aside, we are impressed with the variety of food and drink presented. My dad and I order red wine, while Steve orders white, and the waiter comes back with full bottles of both. We’ve also had fruity rum cocktails to start. Our main courses of salmon and duck, seem pedestrian in comparision to interesting appetizer and dessert tastings. The fois gras is topped with a raspberry gelee and the crawfish may be our favorite. Dessert has a little something for everyone with a melon and basil-flavored soup, chocolate hazelnut tartlet and raspberry and cream covered macaron. But the real highlight of the cruise was the stunning view of Paris from its deck. We pass the Eiffel Tower shimmering in gold light and recognize other sights we’ve seen along the way. It’s a cool, but clear night and the perfect setting to say farewell to a truly lovely city.

We’ve gotten up pretty early to get to Versailles, exchanging the Metro for the double-decked RER. We aren’t alone, as everyone on the train appears to be headed to Versailles and we unceremoniously pour out of the train on a mass pilgrimage to see if the stories of the over-the-top opulence during the reign of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were true. As we round the corner just beyond the train station, we see that this history was no story. A golden gate shines like a beacon for the river of tourists approaching with cameras unsheathed. We flow right along with them over uneven cobblestones and past a grand statue of Louis XIV, known as the Sun King. He was the first Louis who had visions of grandeur for the chateau and brought these visions to life. His progeny, Louis XV and Louis XIV would build upon his dream with even more eye-popping grandeur.

By-passing the long line forming, I head for the “commented visit” office to book a behind-the-scenes look at Versailles with an English-speaking tour guide. We are really glad for the inside tip from our “travel artist,” Gai Spann, who shared this intimate way of seeing the grand palace. Our guide moves at the speed of light. We have to practically run to catch him, dodging wandering, awe-struck tourists on the way. He starts the tour in a private apartment reserved for young kings Louis XV and Louis XIV when they turned 15. Golden crown moulding depicts playful canines prancing around the room, an homage to the king’s love of dogs. They loved them so much that the ante-room of their apartment was the home of their pampered pooches, known as “Le Cabinet des Chiens.” As we move from one ornate room to the next, we see that the kings weren’t just obsessed with painted ceilings and gold-leaf furniture from the Rocco period, but they had a thing for the newest and greatest gadgets of the time. Louis XV kept possibly the first barometer in his private dining room and a bronze super clock in the aptly named “Clock Room.” The clock not only kept track of time and date, but also noted the stage of the moon on that date; its inner workings displayed in glass. It would be the first official time piece of France. In another room, we see another engineering feat for the time period, the world’s first mechanical roll-top desk. Louis XV wanted a place to store secret papers and commissioned what we know as a “secretary.” A few rooms later, I learn that kings in France had a thing for privies back in the day, just like kings in England, particularly Henry the VIII. The private apartments at Versailles boasts a French-style loo with a floral-designed bidet and an English-style flushing toilet. Two other rooms that catch our attention because of the richness of their decor are a powder blue and gold dining room used by Louis XVI with a gorgeous patterned wooden table lined by alternating chairs for men and women. The chairs for women had extra cushion. A game room just beyond, featured red and gold brocade drapes and chairs for ladies of the court to play, what sounded like high stakes poker. Outside the room was a painting of the Battle of the Chesapeake, a critical battle leading up to the American Revolution, supported by the French. It elicits a squeal of recognition from April and we tell our guide that we are from the states and live near the Chesapeake Bay.

On our way to the last and most stunning stop of our tour, the Opera House, we pass by the Royal Chapel where Louis XVI married Marie Antoinette. It’s one of mom’s favorites. Light pours in from two-stories of arched windows, bouncing off of gold and white marble. A grand organ sits atop the altar. But the Opera House literally takes our breath away with its opulence. Even in dim lighting it shines. Our guide points out a few architectural surprises like the fact that the entire place is made of wood painted to look like marble and the top gallery of the opera house is mirrored with half chandeliers to make the space look larger. The oval-shaped Italian style opera was commissioned by Louis XV for his son, “Le Dauphin,” Louis XVI and on its inauguration doubled as a wedding reception hall for his marriage to Marie-Antoinette. The floor would have been risen to replace its chairs and turned into an open space where guests were invited to watch the royal family dance and dine on this happy occasion. Later my mother would admire the concept of inviting guests to watch the bride and groom eat, rather than feeding the guests, having recently recovered from hosting my sister’s wedding reception.

 It’s the end of the guided tour and we are left to tour the palace on our own with audio guides, leaving our small group to be jostled in the crush of tourists we’d managed to dodge earlier. It was so packed that we almost lost each other in the throngs and had know idea how we’d find each other. We reconnected in the luxurious bedroom of Louis XVI. It’s purple and gold from ceiling to floor with wall hangings and bed curtains to match. The kickers for me are the plume of feathers on each bed post. Some attendants would watch him sleep here and wait for him to awake and then in the next room these attendants would dress him for the day. But it is in the Hall of Mirrors where we really start to relate to the French commoners of 1789. The long hall features 17 floor-to-ceiling windows and 17 corresponding mirrors, flooding it with light. There must be at least 17 crystal chandeliers dripping from the ceiling and gold grecian figures hold more candelabras lining the room. It is just ridiculous. We can’t imagine how much must have been spent to create such a space. It must have been astronomical, even during those times. But we can imagine the growing ire of poor, torch-carrying Parisians who stormed the palace in the early days of the French Revolution and must have grown even more angry as they went from gilded room to gilded room to find and capture their king. We definitely get why they would have wanted to chop his head off, along with his queen, who had her own private estate just down the hill.

 By this time we are famished and maybe a little light-headed from all the gold-leaf exposure. We decide to have a late lunch at Angelina’s in Versailles. As we wait for our table, we can see what dessert choices await us. Colorful sweets beckon from a glass case. But we still decide to have lunch (quiche, salads and sandwiches) before dessert (eclairs and cheesecake). The eclairs and cheesecake look like nothing we’ve seen in the states. April and I think it is sad that bakeries in the states are passing the thick, gooey things they sell off as eclairs. Ours are light with melt in your mouth pastry and nicely flavored cream. Hers is passion fruit; mine vanilla. My mom can’t wait to dig into her cheesecake, which looks more like a rounded, mini ice cream cake. But is encased in white chocolate and layered with a raspberry gelee, which, remarkably, isn’t ridiculously sweet.

 

 

 

 

After lunch, we want to continue on to see an exhibit of fashion during the time of Marie-Antoinette, said to be quite a fashionista. But we’ve run out of time, so we head back to Versailles train station and board a train that we hope will take us back to our destination, since the trains are unmarked and the spider of lines for one train line is a tad confusing. We get lucky and make it back to our hotel for a much needed nap.

Once again we are eating. Steve says he’s never eaten so much in his life and we all know that we must have gained a pound or two on this trip, but then we think about how much we’ve walked. April says she’s walked her legs down as if there are nubs dangling from her hip bones. It does kind of feel that way, especially after today, so it is nice to sit and have a nice French meal at Bouillion Racine on Rue Racine in Saint-Germain. This is another spot we hit, and loved, on my friend Tanya’s fantastic birthday extravaganza in December. The menu is varied and we all order something different–lamb, duck, suckling pig, shrimp and fish– and it is all delicious. But I think April may have selected the winning dish with the suckling pig. We can’t resist ordering dessert and then realize how much time has passed. We ask a waitress what time the metro closes and she says, ” A maintenant,” meaning now. The metro here keeps similar hours to DC’s metro and you have to watch your time to make the last train. We aren’t sure how we’ll get back, so we just savor dessert. Mom has a delicious mango gingerbread. April goes for creme brulee once again (Bistrot Vivienne’s still rules) and I have a light, basil-flavored strawberry soup.

We have the restaurant call a taxi for us, only to realize taxi cabs aren’t allowed to take five or more passengers, so we have to split up. Mom, April and Steve head off in one and my father and I wait for another. Our taxi slowly approaches and doesn’t seem to want to stop for us. He explains that he his here for 5 people from the restaurant and we explain that we are those people, but the rest of our group has gone ahead, because we couldn’t fit in one cab. After a bit of convincing, he takes us and then, sadly, proceeds to take us for a ride. Our ride cost us almost 15 euro in comparison to the 9 that Steve paid for their ride to the same destination. We are certain our driver took the long way, even making a wrong turn on the way. I hate when that happens, but it happens everywhere. It didn’t stop me from reflecting on a great day and hitting the pillow hard with a full belly and worn out legs.

 

I am standing betwen my parents with my head pressed next to my father’s as I listen to an audio tour selection at Musee d’Orsay. We are standing in front of a bust of the Negre du Sudan by Charles Cordier, a Frenchman who became fascinated by the cultures of Africa and wanted to see them represented in art. We are amazed at the use of color in the marble which shifts from eggshell to an auburn color, revealing the draping of the man’s robes and his burnished skin has a perfect sheen. If this man wasn’t royalty, Cordier wants us to believe he is. It is a wonderful find in a museum filled with the works of France’s most famed painters, the Impressionists. This was my mom’s pick for our Paris trip and she is thoroughly enjoying it. She nods emphatically and laughs as she listens to some selections on the audio tour. She thinks it was tough on the Impressionists who had to deal with the stodgy jury of The Acadamie, which constantly condemned the realism displayed in their works. But the Impressionists get the last laugh in this lovely space that was once a train station and since dedicated to their best works.

Somehow we are always hungry after long walks and sightseeing, so we decide upon lunch at, Bistrot Vivivenne, a place that my friend Tanya and I visited along with our friends Abby and Helen back in December. We make our way across the Seine and stroll through Les Tuilleries, the French garden that stretches between the Louvre and the Champs-Elysee. It’s a cool, cloudy day, but that hasn’t stopped joggers from jogging, Parisians from walking their dogs or tourists stopping to take photos. Some of the latter also stop to consider buying the ever-present mini Eiffel Towers and other touristy trinkets spread about on the blankets of Senegalese entrepreneurs. We see a pair of tourists about to make one such purchase, when suddenly things get tense. April says, “Something is about to go down.” Seconds later the make-shift merchants are mobile, swooping up their blankets with their wares inside, bolting in a cloud of dust. Before we can wonder what has happened, we spot Parisian police on bikes approaching. The vendors have scattered and the police are left staring at an empty patch of dirt where the vendors once were. With this incident and yesterday’s mosque shutdown, we seem to be trapped in an episode of “Cops: Paris.” The mood changes as we pass the Louvre metro stop at Rue de Rivoli where a small orchestra is playing. A crowd of people has stopped to enjoy their serene sounds in the middle of a busy, bustling city.

 Bistrot Vivivenne is just as I remembered it, nestled between high-end shops at the Palais Royale on Rue des Petite Champs, with its cozy decor of wood and velvet chairs. We’ve arrived between lunch and dinner, so our selections are limited, but what we select more than sufficiently satisfies us. April and I have ravioli with a cheese and pear mixture in its center. My parents opt for salad and Steve has a fish dish. But it is dessert that once again makes us really happy. Mom and I have a creamy lemon merengue tart, while April goes for her stand-by creme brulee. She declares it the best of her trip so far.

 

 

 Hunger pains cured and sweet toothes addressed, we decide to go shopping in search of April’s elusive Louis Vuitton bag. We head to Galleries Lafayette, the massive seven-level shopping destination on Boulevard Haussman. The metro drops us right into the shoe section, which spans the entire floor and makes April’s eyes bulge. Designer brands from Jimmy Choo to Prada ring the floor while French shoe designs dominate the center. We don’t know where to look and neither do the other shoppers who bump and jostle one another for pole position. But we aren’t here for shoes, unless we happen to see a pair we must have, of course. We are here to help April with her designer bag hunt and ascend the escalator into pure shopping mania where perfume sellers spritz the air with their strong fragrances and we navigate our way past a Jean-Paul Gauthier fregrance fashion show, featuring gyrating models in white under the ornate gold and purple ceiling of the “Grand Magasin.” (There must be something with me and Gauthier.) Finally at Galerie Layafette’s Louis Vuitton outpost, its sales people work hard at making the sale offering us champagne as April contemplates the perfect bag. With the deal done, we ascend into high-end shopping heaven with more designer wares on display. But we’ve started to fade upon realization of the vastness of this place. April says, “This is like the Louvre of shopping!” Lucky for us the store was closing in 2 minutes and we had to rush to the tax-free desk to declare April’s purchase and then were promptly hearded out into the rain to figure out how to spend the rest of the evening. This wasn’t difficult to do. We head home and decide to dine in our neighborhood. April and Steve decide on pizza and mom, dad and I wander Montparnasse until we stumble upon a place called La Creole that looks cute from the outside and has dishes we all like. The owner, a teddy-bear like black man with a Caribbean lilt welcomes us when we ask if he speaks English. We immediately realize that we’ve found a Montparnasse hot spot when we step inside to hear a DJ/singer playing a blend of Caribbean and salsa and see couple dancing in the middle of the room and near their tables. As we dine on flavorful curry and lemon chicken dishes, we bob our heads to the DJ’s Caribbean rendition of Kool and the Gang’s “Get Down On It.” By the time dessert of banana flambe and a coconut cake concoction, the vibe had definitely taken a turn towards salsa with the owner dancing with a diner. This definitely seems like a place regulars love. We appreciate the warm atmosphere of the place, too, and miss it a bit as we head home on a cool, misty evening.

We were standing at the fountain in Saint Michel, trying to make out the violent, yet strangely romantic scene of an angel that we took for Saint Michel slaying a horned demon, when Ealy Mays of Walking the Spirit Tours walked up. Ealy looks the way I would imagine a black ex-pat living in Paris to look. He wears a bibbed knit cap over his locs, which hang down his back and he’s carrying a large orange ceramic cup of coffee. It’s clear that he his comfortable in this city and very familiar with the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter. He starts with an important event in American Black History in Paris, the arrival of Sally Hemings, Thomas Jefferson’s slave mistress, which was followed by the arrival of Josephine Baker, black soldiers in World War I and II, and the BeBoppers. Ealy appears to be a fountain himself, but one of black history in Paris. As we meander through the Latin Quarter, he points out places where African-American writers, artists and performers sought refuge from American racism, places to just be themselves and practice their craft. Standing in front of the Relais Hotel du Vieux Paris, formerly known as the Beat Hotel, Ealy tells us that black detective writer Chester Himes once lived there. Himes penned “A Rage in Harlem,” which was rediscovered and became a movie starring Forest Whittaker and Robin Givens in the 90s. But Ealy also tells us how he is in a bit of a feud with the hotel owner because he wants to have Himes recognized here. He says he sometimes tapes Himes’ name on a plaque in front of the hotel listing other famed writers like Alan Ginsberg, who lived there too and became known as “beat” poets. He wants these black artists to get their due. At several trendy looking cafes, he tells us of how he has left pictures of famous black ex-pats on the walls, only to later find them removed. I am reminded of Spike Lee’s movie, “Do the Right Thing,” when Mookie asks why there aren’t any black people on the walls of Sal’s pizza shop. Ealy is kind of like the Mookie of Paris trying to do the right thing and keep the history of African Americans in Paris alive. Ealy also quizzes us periodically on our black history, “For 10 points, what was Josephine Bakers real name?” Answer: Freda Josephine McDonald. Josephine Baker and Richard Wright are the only two African Americans in Paris memorialized with a plaque in the city because they became Paris citizens, according to Ealy. He shares the little known back story on the tense relationship between Richard Wright and James Baldwin, suggesting the two didn’t get along well because Baldwin didn’t think Wright was black enough. These stories along with standing on Rue Christine in front of the hotel where Baldwin wrote much Giovanni’s Room, just down the street from where Gertrude Stein lived, brings these artists to life. We’d just had dinner on Rue Christine the night before at Chez Fernand and marvel that we were so close to so much black history. It seems that there is history around every corner in Paris, black or otherwise, and Ealy points out the Le Procope, restaurant founded in the 1600s that served the likes of Napoleon and early American leaders like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. In fact, we see Napoleon’s pointy chapeau (hat) on display.

 Having received a pretty thorough introduction to the history of blacks in the Latin Quarter, we move to an entirely different scene to experience blacks in present day Paris. We hop on the 4 train and head north to Barbes-Rochechouart, the home of Paris’ West and North African community. As soon as we step off the metro, I feel like I am in Senegal. People crowd the corners of the street, entreating us to take a flyer or buy some trinket. But then it starts to resemble “the hood” in any American city with check cashing places and cheap mobile phone dealers lining the streets. We are having lunch here at a Senegalese restaurant, but before we even get there we see plain-clothed French cops in front of a Senegalese shop and we aren’t sure why. At La Niomre, it really feels like Senegal with the green and yellow Senegalese flag posted throughout and Muslim chants playing. Many of the people dining are Senegalese, so the food is certain to be traditional. I suggest Yassa, a lemon chicken dish with onions and olives, because it is the one I remember best from my travels in Senegal several years ago. April and I also have gingembre, a ginger drink that packs a punch. As we eat, we watch the people of Barbes-Rochechouart pass. Women in colorful African dress or some combination there of, heads wrapped or not. Some men wear kufi hats and some are in jelabas, the long robes of northern Africa. But April and my mother are best positioned to watch quite a scene unfold, where camera crews are trying to film inside a mosque, which doesn’t make the residents very happy and they’ve drawn a crowd. Later, Steve investigates out of curiosity and learns that the police have shut down the mosque just across the street from the restaurant and news crews are filming the incident. This must have been the start of what we saw when we arrived. We aren’t sure what prompted the police to shutdown the mosque, but we can tell that there is a very tense relationship between the people who live here and the police, which sadly reminds me of some places in the United States as well.

We decide to return to Paris’s past and go to the Louvre. Entering from the Metro, we see the Inverse Pyramid, featured in “The DaVinci Code” by Dan Brown and the movie with Tom Hanks. I missed this on my first trip to Paris. April poses for a photo and we get into, what we learn is a security line. While in line a group of Italian women stare at my father, turn away and start energetically speaking in Italian. They do this several times and finally turn to me and ask in English, “Is that Morgan Freeman?” We burst out laughing. I say no. But she is not convinced. I tell her that he’s just my father, and she says that he looks very much like Morgan Freeman. My dad gets this all the time. If they ever do that Doppelganger thing on Facebook again, my dad should replace his profile picture with a picture of Morgan Freeman. What’s crazy is that someone from another country in Paris would suggest that he look like Morgan Freeman. We talked about it all day. If you are from the DC area, he gets mistaken for Jim Vance, the anchor on NBC4 all the time too. Once a man ran up to him in the grocery store and told him how much he enjoyed his newscasts. Guess he just has one of those faces.

After the celebrity sighting, we head up to see possibly the most famous piece of art in the world, the Mona Lisa. I’ve seen her mysterious face before, but I look forward to my family’s reaction to the painting. First, they marvel at the size of the Louvre and its paintings that seem to stretch 10 feet high, so when they see the size of the Mona Lisa, they are shocked. They can’t believe that it’s so small, even more dwarfed by the crowd surrounding it. Steve and my father snap photos with the rest of Mona’s paparazzi. April says she’d like to see Winged Victory and we walk to one end of the museum only realize that we’ve walked away from it and have to walk back the length of the Denon wing to get back to it. This is when everyone realizes how massive this place is. When we make it to the Winged Victory statue perched in a marble stairwell. April has to take a break. We head down to see the Egyptian art collection, passing by the Venus de Milo and a huge Egyptian sphinx, going up and down stairs, which finally took its toll on April and we sat to rest while Mom, Dad and Steve went to explore the rest of the Egyptian collection. Eventually my parents came back for a rest, too. The Louvre was doing a number on us. Steve wanted to see more and eventually found his way to the sarcophaguses and mummies.

We head back the hotel for a much longer rest and decide to try one of the restaurants recommended by our cooking school instructor, Le Gorille Blanc or the White Gorilla. The name has us intrigued. We walk about 20 minutes down Boulevard Raspail  through Saint-Germain to Rue Chomel. We are at the restaurant address, 11 Bis, but we don’t see a white gorilla. I inquire at the bistro on the street and discover that it has taken the White Gorilla’s place. The restaurant closed about a year ago. We are disappointed, but other diners say the new place, Les Botanistes, is good, so we decide to stay. It is simple French cooking and it is good, but definitely not as good as Chez Fernand. We are most pleased with dessert Mom and I order apple flans and dad and Steve order a spongy rum cake, which we learned had rum poured over the top before serving. The cake was definitely more of a night cap than a dessert.

My father is looking at me quizzically. “This beef melts in your mouth,” he says to me, in disbelief. He really couldn’t understand how a piece of meat could perform such a feat. But I could and I had experienced it before, which is why I recommended Chez Fernand for dinner this night. I encouraged everyone to try the beouf bourgningon because I had the distinct pleasure of tasting it last December with my friend Tanya. We shared the same wonderful disbelief and were happy in it. Now my entire family knows the feeling. April says “Wow,” over and over again. Steve shows his approval with several helpings. My mom is not a beef eater, but raves about the tenderness of the beef, too. Dad, once again registers disbelief.

 We’ve had several good food experiences in one day. We started with our open-air market food tour and cooking class near the Maubert-Mutualite Metro. Our chef, Julie, started us off in the market with sausage tastings from a gold medal sausage maker. She says that folks in the food industry work for years to compete in contests and earn prestigious awards like the best croissant, the best cheese and the best sausage. We are pretty impressed by this guy’s work, which includes sausage with mushroom, sausage with figs and donkey sausage. We aren’t sure about the latter; tasted very gamey. Julie selects a sausage for the appetizer at the lunch we will be making today. Then she goes on to talk about cheese like wine. Cheese is a big part of Parisian culture and Parisians know a good cheese like a fine wine by type (cow, goat, ewe or some combination there of), where it is from and sight (the smaller and yellower the better). There will be another lesson on cheese later. We pick up fresh figs and grapes for dessert, eggplant, artichokes and pork for our main course and of course bread. With all our ingredients, we head to the La Cuisine Paris kitchen and along the way get to know our fellow cooks, strangely, two couples from Sydney, Australia named Alex and Nick and Alex and Nick. They’d never met each other before and we all marveled at the crazy coincidence. Julie admits to being a little strict in the kitchen and gives us a few food prep rules in the kitchen and then assigns us different tasks. I prick eggplants to go in our side dish. Steve cuts figs to go in our dessert. April cuts beets for our appetizers. Dad trims the coriander, Mom peels and cuts artichoke. She’s really in her element here because she was in the food service business for years. She asks Julie about different flavors and cooking techniques throughout like a fellow chef. We move about different tasks with Julie giving demos along the way until we’ve managed, to our surprise, to create a fabulous meal. It starts with appetizers of quick roasted cherry tomatoes in olive oil, garlic and corriander, which was a huge hit, along with beets in balsalmic viniagrette and pepper sausage. Our main course was two types of pork filet mignon, one I helped prepare, marinated in Grand Marnier and olive oil; the other in soy sauce and honey. Steve helped cook the pork to perfection by pan frying and then roasting in the oven to continue cooking and seal in the juices. It was delicious. Our side dish was the eggplant steamed in the microwave, sauted with artichoke (Mom, the cook, says she’ll never make that again because it is too much work.) and green onions. Dessert is a yummy fig and grape tart bursting with flavor. Selecting and tasting the figs brings back memories of the fig tree my grandmother used to have in her backyard in Mobile, Alabama. But before dessert, we have the cheese plate, which is what the French do, but in our zeal to taste the cheese, we make a terrible French faux pas and cut the cheese incorrectly, giving Julie heart palpatations. This leads to the first lecture that any of us has ever received on cutting the cheese, so to speak. Check out the great video shot by my brother-in-law, Steve, below. By the way, if you noticed an improvement in the quality of the photos in my blog, that is because Steve shot those, too. Helps to have a photo journalist in the family.

After a great lunch, we decide to do what Parisians do and what most people who come to Paris do, stroll along the Seine. We stroll because it is a perfect day, sunny and 70. We also stroll because we need to walk off our meal. We aren’t far from Notre Dame and it is on my father’s list of must-see sights, so we stroll in that direction. We already had a great view of the cathedral on our walk to the cooking class where we crossed a bridge with hundreds of locks attached, showcasing the tradition of lovers who visit Paris to leave the locks and throw the keys in the Seine as a testament to their lasting love. Some locks were engraved, some marked with Sharpie, and they ranged in size and shape. We walked past the bouqinistes, the booksellers along the Seine, who sell heady tomes by the likes of Satre and Camus, but we do spy a George Clooney autobiography in the mix, too.

At Notre Dame, we take in its flying butresses, rose window and quintessential gothicness. We draw comparisions again to the National Cathedral and April and I think they should add chandeliers like the ones in Notre Dame as they repair after the recent earthquake in DC. As with everything in Paris, we can’t believe how old this cathedral is. Dating back to the 1100s, it will celebrate its 850th birthday next year. It is unfathomable to visitors from a country as young as the United States.

Still inspired by the goregous day, April chose our next destination–The Champs-Elysee, of course. For those of you who don’t know, my sister is a fashionista, but not in an obnoxious way. She just knows what she likes, is always aware of the latest trends and dabbles in them along with her extensive practice in classic style. So, we have to go the center of the universe when it come to style. Question: Would you stand in a line to go to the Ambercrombie and Fitch? It seems that Parisians would. We can’t believe our eyes when we see the roped area with eager young, trendy types next to a gold ornate, gated opening that could be the entrance to a French palace, which turns out to be the Ambercrombie and Fitch on the Champs-Elysee. It is guarded by several young men that look like the sex-starved models that peer out at you from every store in the US. Young girls exit gleefully with their bags and we still can’t believe the hype. A few blocks away, we visit a place where we do believe the hype, Laduree, the famed sweet shop known for its macarons. For the unititated, a Parisian macaron is a small, cake-like cookie kind of like a soft Oreo with filling and different flavors. Inside Laduree, which is like a life-sized doll house filled with French decor from the 1800s, we enjoy an afternoon snack of tea, cofee and macarons. Mom, April and I fall for the orange blossom and citrus-thyme flavors, while being pretty impressed with the coconut flavor, too.

Rejuvinated by sugar, we continue on down the Champs-Elysee until we see the Louis Vuitton logo, shining like a beacon in the sky. April’s eyes get wide and whispers, “Wow.” Then we see the line, rivaling the line at the Ambercrombie and Fitch. I ask April if she would stand in this line. She might have, except we decide to use her pregnancy as a golden ticket to enter the golden store. It works. We are in and oggling bags. April is radiating and it isn’t because she is with child. She is in her element. After exploring every nook and cranny of the multi-level superstore and salivating over each monogramed leather item, some how April managed to leave without a bag. They didn’t have the bag she coveted in stock. But the hunt is not over.

 Then it was Steve’s turn to visit his dream store and we stepped into the chromed dreamland of the Mercedes Benz store. Steve loves cars. A great vintage car is to him what a Louis Vuitton bag is for my sister. He restores them and hits any car show he can find. A shiny burnt orange sports Mercedes with white interior greets us at the door and even my mother is impressed. The car is gorgeous and compels store visitors to take pictures with it. Steve snaps photos of every detail. He is in his element.

It’s almost 9 pm and we are running on Mercedes Benz fumes, which leads us to where I started this blog, Chez Fernand. Not enough can be said about this place. It’s a tough place to find, because its street, Rue Christine, is not on any map. But it is more than worth the effort because of its warm atmosphere and its escargot, beouf bourgingnon, lamb, clafloutis, chocolate cake and creme brulee. It’s all good. We ate every last bite and found ourselves having to roll, I mean stroll, across the Pont Neuf (New Bridge, actually Paris’ oldest bridge) to the metro on the way home. Steve got some lovely parting shots from a very full and fantastic day.

 

 

“I like this little city!” My mother declares as she stands on the balcony of our suite at Hotel Aiglon in Paris. I am happy to hear it. She’s taking in a lovely view of our temporary neighborhood in Montparnasse not far from Saint-Germain-de-Pres. We’ve just returned from a whirlwind tour of the city, during which she marveled at the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter and fell in love with the artsy, village charm of Montmatre, especially its beacon on a hill, the Basilica of Sacre-Coeur. It was built by Catholics, but for some reason, the building reminds me of a great mosque with it’s trio of domes pointing heavenward. The moment we step inside, we are stopped in our tracks by a stunning mosaic mural of Jesus hovering over the altar, glistening with blues and golds. We marvel at stained glass windows and stare up at domed ceilings that seem to go on forever. April, Steve and I debate the height of the ceiling in comparison to the Washington National Cathedral where they were married. I believe Sacre-Coeur is way taller, craning my neck to see the top and scanning massive carved angels on the way up. ( As it turns out, they win. The main dome of Sacre Coeur is 272 feet tall. The cathedral’s central tower is a bit taller at 301 feet. Who knew?) As impressed as we are by the inside, we are equally wowed by the view of Paris from the outside. We stand on the steps and look at the city stretch out before our feet.

 We’ve seen much of the city on our driving tour with Eliza ofEasy Dream Paris Tours and we continue on to our final stop at the Eiffel Tower. On the  way, April and I have to nudge Steve and Dad to stay awake as they fight jetlag. My dad has been talking about seeing the Champs-Elysees and he almost missed it between nods. Steve had a particularly good time on our flight to Paris, enjoying the free flowing booze from champagne to wine and cognac. After the flight attendant offered him the latter, he turned to April and I and said, “This is amazing!” He may have been sleeping off some of the remnants of his plane fun. But when Steve and Dad were awake, they took in the city with their cameras, snapping key sites. At times, Steve would hop out of the van to get the best shot; his instinct as a photojournalist taking over.

Once at the Eiffel Tower, we head up to the second level for more great views of Paris and spot Sacre-Coeur, perched on its hill. After being separated by hoards of other tourists and a line determined to send some of us to the very top of the Eiffel Tower, we reconnected and went to lunch at Restaurant 58 on the first level of the tower. Lunch was tasty for a place at the center of a big touristy place like the Eiffel Tower. It was nice to have a moment to catch our breath, relax and trade a few jokes since landing in Paris at 6 am. We’d dropped our stuff at the hotel and started walking around in our neighborhood before our city tour, meandering past a street filled with children’s shops and dressing my nephew before he’s even born. We’d even made it to Jardin du Luxemborg, a Parisian favorite, before 10 am. One park highlight was its urban apple groves with the biggest apples we’d ever seen. So we think we were due for a nap by the time we navigated the metro back to our hotel around 5. Whew!

 Once refreshed, we took another leisurely stroll around Montparnasse to have a light dinner of crepes. Our tour guide pointed out a street filled with creperies just a block away and my guide book recommended Ti Jos on Rue Delambre as one of the best and open since 1937. It’s a cute and very simple place with wooden carved furniture. The crepes are satisfying for some. Steve is over 6 feet and used to heartier meals but he enjoyed the sausage crepe with egg and cheese. My mom had a mushroom crepe, which could have been better with some cheese, but April, Dad and I enjoyed ours. My dad especially liked the vin rouge. After dinner, we continued to explore and found ourselves on Rue de la Gaite, which was packed with people dining at outdoor cafes and the cafes were almost anything but Parisian. There were several sushi places along with Greek, Thai, Indian and Middle Eastern. And then, the street took a turn, not literally, but figuratively with peep show spots springing up just beyond the international food fare. We decide to turn back towards the hotel and April and I end the evening with the best gelatos we’ve ever tasted and served as little blossoms on a cone.