Paris, France: Ile de la Cite and the Latin Quarter

Our first full day got a little off kilter because we slept a lot later than we should have. We’re not entirely sure we’d fly through Iceland again. The flights were great, and being able to go through immigration at Keflavik airport instead of Charles de Gaulle were definitely an advantage. The extra travel time and lack of sleep because of the interruption of the layover were definitely not. We did save about a thousand bucks this time, which was worth it, but if the prices get closer together, the non-stop will trump the layover.

So we worked around the late start and reshuffled a few things, and all was still well. We had two deadlines to work with – lunch reservations at La Rôtisserie d’Argent (filling in for the La Tour d’Argent, which has been gutted to the studs, and should be reopened next year), and the Peter Gabriel concert in the evening.

I was very thankful that we got inside Notre Dame when I was here before. It’s very nice to see how much the work to fix it is coming along, and it’s funny how many people still flock by to see it.

Square René Viviani

Odette Patisserie

We did quite a bit of wandering around the immediate left bank near Notre Dame. Our first church of the trip was Saint Severin, which was suitably grand and gothic (it’s 13th century), but my favorite things there were the stained glass windows at the back, done in the 1970s by Jean Bazaine, which are meant to evoke the seven sacraments. They’re incredibly abstract, but still work within the space.

We also visited the Pantheon, and probably should have spent more time there. We’d been trying to see Saint-Étienne-du-Mont in the time we had before lunch, and that would have been a better use of that limited time. (We managed to hit the noon mass.) The heroes in the Pantheon might not be my national heroes, but they were worth more time than we gave them. (I’m really glad we got the museum pass for this trip – it made going in and out of some of these smaller museums on a whim a lot quicker.)

Lunch was amazing. La Tour d’Argent is a one star Michelin restaurant that claims history back to the 16th century. Since they’re under renovation, they’ve got more casual dining across the street at La Rôtisserie d’Argent. It was very good – definitely the most classic French meal we got there. It’s asparagus season, so I had a fantastic cold asparagus starter. I also had the duck confit, which was delicious, but the star of that dish to me were the potatoes. They were also cooked in duck fat and were sublime. I finished with a raspberry coulis/skyr dish that tasted of perfect, tart, raspberries. (I am so envious of how much less sugar was in everything over there. I miss it.)

After lunch was a shuffle from our original morning plans – we were supposed to do the Ile de la Cite first, and not have to head back there from the Latin Quarter. But that’s ok. We got to walk through the Ile Saint-Louis, back to Sainte-Chapelle. This was one of my favorite stops of the trip – it’s just so beautiful. I feel like no camera can really do that stained glass justice. And they had the best gift shop. We actually bought a tapestry there, which will be perfect in our living room.

Since we had a later lunch, we took it easier for dinner. We also had the concert, so we would have had to have planned dinner very specifically, since most restaurants open for dinner at 8:00, if you’re lucky. There are other options, the easiest of which was getting sandwiches at the grocery store. Like London, the grocery stores have really good prepared meals available, for really good prices. Turns out we had a Monop’ a block away from the hotel, so we did a fair number of meals there. It’s a very easy way to save money if you just want to concentrate your eating on a few special meals.

We finished out the night with Peter Gabriel, which was an amazing show. He spoke very decent French – I have no idea of most of what he said between songs. It was actually mostly new music, but he played some classics. (“In Your Eyes” was the first encore, so I was happy.) The multimedia was amazing, and female singer he had for “Don’t Give Up” was an amazing cellist on all the other songs.

The crowd did swing older. It was funny, because there was not a lot of standing, but every few songs, we did get up, and there was a woman a couple rows ahead of us that was definitely sick of that by the third round of up and down.

Paris, France: Canal Saint-Martin

It’s been almost a full week since we got back from Paris. I had just enough time on Monday to get all my pictures downloaded and organized so I could remember where everything was, and then had to get through a work week before I could start formatting.

This was our first real vacation since Covid. First time out of the country since 2019, and first time off the continent since 2018. I feel like I had to learn how to vacation again.

I’ve been wanting to get back to Paris since my sister and I brought my mother, ten years ago. (How that’s been a full ten years ago boggles my mind.) We were only there for three nights, and I had found so many cool things to do. When BF and I do a big trip, we try to anchor it around an event that we would not get to do around here. We’d been through several different ideas this winter, when I stumbled across Peter Gabriel’s European tour. The date in Paris was great. And so this trip was born.

We had great weather. We had a lot of great food, and saw a lot of cool things. I still have a bunch of things I’d like to tick off the list, so we’ll probably be back.

This entry’s pictures are from our forced march first day. We flew through Iceland, which had the advantage and disadvantage of getting us into town when our room should have been ready. Except the person with our room had elected a late check out, so we had to kill another two hours. Hence, the forced march. We stayed at the Holiday Inn near Gare de l’Est, which is near the Canal Saint-Martin. That was a great first day walk. We came back by way of the Place de la Republique.

The wait was worth it – we’d opted for the king suite. Here in the States, the “suite” means they stuck a couch bed into the room. The pictures online didn’t lead us to believe that it was anything other than that, but we actually did get two full rooms. And they were not tiny, like some of the European hotel rooms I’ve gotten. They were very Parisian sized, but definitely comfortable for the week we were there. (And their king size bed is smaller than our king size bed, but not terribly so. We slept quite well while we where there.)