Joseph, Ileana and Jose wanted to take a bus tour and see all the main sights. I walked them to Notre Dame, which was about fifteen minutes from where we were staying. They caught a bus from there. I had other plans - the usual Paris plans: walk around and eat. Repeat. One thing you could rely on in Paris is the same old spots would be there waiting for you with the same old good food.
First stop, breakfast at Poilane, famous for their bread and bowls of coffee. Drinking coffee from large bowls is the traditional way to do it in France, especially for breakfast. This is where it started to unravel. They no longer served bowls of coffee - just cups, like everyone else. I never would've expected that. They'd removed the tradition as if it were cancer but killed the patient in the process. Crossed them off the list, permanently.
I shook it off with a walk back towards Notre Dame. There was an artist there working in watercolors.
We had doses of the usual weather - sunny, grey, rainy, windy, It was colder than London by a lot. I wasn't sure why his watercolors weren't frozen solid.
I hopped a bus over to the 7th to check on my favorite patisserie - Jean Millet. It's headed by an old baker and manned by grumpy old ladies, I'd promised to take my colleagues there for Sunday breakfast. They serve classics like Bouchee a la Reine (Queen's bite) which is a puff pastry stuffed with sweetbreads and topped with Bechamel sauce. When I walked in it felt like someone hit me in the stomach with a bat. The place I knew was gone. Same name, different place. Apparently the old man sold out to investors from Tokyo and they'd gutted the place - turned it into the control room of a shiny spaceship. I felt woozy. Perhaps this is how the mid-life crisis starts - those familiar to you start to die off....
By late morning Ileana had abandoned the bus ride and we met up to shop in the 7th. When we got hungry we went back to the 4th for lunch.
Luckily, Robert and Louise is exactly the same. It's a cozy restaurant where they cook their steaks in a large open fireplace. We feasted on pate.
Then steak and potatoes.
And finally the cheese course. I was ready to sleep after all this food.
The Marais looks pretty much the same. Tight winding streets full of shoppers and strollers.
Ileana and I hit every old and new famous patisserie, stocking up on cakes to celebrate Joseph's birthday. We visited them all: Pain de Sucre, Hugo and Victor, La Patisserie des Reves, Des Gateaux et du Pain and Les Fees Patissieres
I'd booked us a birthday dinner at La Verre Vole, a wine bar that has pretty good food. It's in the 11th near the Canal St Martin. I promised everyone a picturesque walk along the canal on the way to dinner. We walked from the Marais and when we got to the canal, it was walled off and drained to the bottom. They're cleaning the canal, pulling all kinds of debris out. Picturesque walk down the drain. Dinner was good, though. We drained a few bottles of wine.
Back at my rental apartment we wowed Joseph with the cakes and sung happy birthday. We got all kinds of things, the nicest of which was the Paris-Brest in the middle of the plate.
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