Paris again

Trust our luck that the one full day that we have in paris is a national holiday. Almost nothing of interest was open, except for the markets. However, the morning light was beautiful and I left Chloe and Kenji to go buy some bread and fruits at the local covered market, which was just getting set up around 8:00 AM.


I wandered around near Notre Dame for a while


and a furniture repairman let me take a photo of his shop.

on the way back to the market, I ran into Kenji and Chloe:

and then Kenji insisted that we go for another walk and take more pictures near le Notre Dame.


The park to the east of Notre Dame was now open and I eavesdropped on some drunk french guys (drunk at 8:00 AM!) trying to pick up on a crowd of American girls. "We just got off the plane!! tee hee!" they tittered.

I took this picture from le pont de l'Archeveche


and then Kenji and I headed back to the apartment for breakfast.

Shortly afterwards, Chloe and I ventured out again to go check out a restaurant near the Odeon metro called la Bastide Odeon, but we were waylaid by the market which was by now in full swing. We ended up buying a bright yellow and blue tablecloth, some excellent Tomme de Savoie, a big chunk of excellent Comte de montagne, and a little chunk of appenzeller,

and last but not least, two warm baguettes, fresh from the oven.

We all had an early lunch, and Chloe and I set off again to see what la Bastide Odeon looked like. Along the way, we stumbled upon a storefront on la rue Racine which sold exquisite cutlery.



If you're okay with paying Laguiole prices for steak knives, these are just so much more beautiful, and basically the same price.

I subsequently found out that the knives are all hand made, and the somewhat Italian sounding name (Ceccaldi) is actually Corsican. The shop was originally opened in an atelier in the Southern Corsican town of Zoza.

After Chloe got tired of my pawing at the window and pathetic whimpering, she dragged me away towards the rue Racine. Surprise, surprise, la Bastide was also closed for the day, so Chloe and I dejectedly walked back towards the 5th past le Vieux Campeur (the climbing/camping/sport everything megastore near la Sorbonne). We decided it was time for some Berthillon ice cream... but it was closed. However, a place nearby sold Berthillon ice cream -- excellent of course, but somehow not the same.

We walked down by the river and watched the Parisians making picnics on the cobblestones and saw the french cops (or firemen? They flew by so fast that I couldn't tell) showboatingkeeping the Seine safe


As I was looking out over the water, I had the thought that in high winds, there might be enough room to kite there! I wonder how long you would get thrown in jail for that.

We headed back to the apartment and I took a picture of it from the outside:


while I was resting on the couch, I noticed this curious inscription on one of the rafters:

and I have no idea what they could signify... any thoughts? Anyone?

After packing, we rewarded ourselves with a few more Gauffre.


chloe: sucre, me: nutella.

Thinking that perhaps Ceccaldi would be open after lunch , we headed over towards rue racine again. Along the way, we found two amazing map stores on rue Condé, which were OPEN! Just kidding, they were closed too. One of them had this very cool engraving of the Seine:

We also passed this patisserie with a line out the door

And then headed for Ceccaldi again. Unfortunately, it wasn't just a lunch break, so after a little more coveting and squinting through the window


We headed back to the apartment and got ready for dinner at Chez Michel, a recommendation of my friend Dominic. The food -- Bretonnais -- was excellent. It started with tiny crustacean hors d'oeuvres and toothpicks with which to pry them out. This was more of game than a source of nutrition, because they are pretty hard to extricate and offer miniscule quantities of meat. Chloe and I had glorifed chevre chaud salads, which were excellent, and gail had a salad of some kind. Kenji, being Japanese, ordered the pickled anchovies, which I have to admit were excellent. Mom and I ordered the breton style cod, which was pretty unique: a bit stew-like with morsels of cod, potatos, and lots and lots of butter. Kenji had the same thing except with duck, and CZ had the pintade. I won the prize for the best dessert order with the Kouign Amann -- a Breton cake with just a touch of butter. Actually, if you so much as nudged it, a syrup of sugar and butter would leak out, and it tasted fantastic. The others went with more traditional fare, like a fromage blanc with fruit (gail and chloe) and some kind of buttery chocolate dessert, which Kenji decided would be a good idea to smear all over my Kouign Amann, despite Chloe and I simultaneously yelling "NOOOOOOOOO!". The meal was also entertaining because for whatever reason, there were almost no native French speakers, which resulted in all kinds of table hijinx. First, the wrong table was given to someone, then a Japanese party (left of Kenji, below) showed up and asked for their reservation for eight people at seven o'clock... and discovered that they had actually reserved a table for seven people at eight o'clock. An older american couple who spoke little snippets of french insisted on moving tables twice... And the maitre d' and her wait staff were by this time looking pretty stressed out. Just when things couldn''t get any worse, a painting fell off the wall and clocked the two people on the left on their heads before hitting the ground and shattering. I should point out that we were *easy* in comparison to all of the other tables, even though they had given us one of the worst tables in the house. All in all it was an excellent and thoroughly entertaining meal. We took a taxi back to the apartment and it was time to go to sleep.