Day 5 in France

A walk in Les Tuileries right before it starts to rain

After a much needed good night of sleep we are up at the reasonable hour of 9:30 am to drink our coffee, enjoy our breakfast and plan our day. Lisa is back in Rotterdam so it is back to me and Mom. We decided to take it easy today with very little planned save for a walk to the Parisian food mecca La Grande Epicerie with a stop along the way for a little lunch.

This is one of the very best things about having lots of time in this city, you don’t need to rush from landmark to landmark checking things off your “must see” list. However, we do need to have some plan in place as both my Mom and I are known for our ability to spend a whole day puttering about in our pyjamas and you certainly don’t fly all of this way to do that. At least not everyday…

So today we walked, we ate, we shopped.

Lunch was in a little restaurant located near Au Bon Marché that played country music on the sound system but served a very satisfying prix fixe menu that was cooked by the owner and served by his wife while their kids hung out doing homework a few tables down from us. Our lunch consisted of country paté with a pleasingly vinegary green salad and a grilled white fish with a meltingly soft tian of eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes and a hit of basil pesto. Perfect food to fuel some shopping.

We headed over to La Grande Epicerie and spent an hour or so looking at the chocolates and cakes, mustards and meats, teas and spices. One of the main reasons we walked all the way down was to check out the many varieties of butter. Last year we became quite fixated on tying to determine where you could get the best baguette in the city and we really took our research seriously. With all of those baguettes lying around we needed some butter (and paté and cheese and jam etc) to go with them and so our love affair with French butter began. There are many, many different brands and unlike most of the butter at home the taste varies greatly between them. I will go into our quest to find the best butter in a future post but just let me tell you that we picked up two new brands (Echiré and Bordier) today at Le Grande Epicerie. These join the two brands (Président and Beillevaire) we currently have in the fridge already. That is 4 different demi-sel butters and we have only been here 5 days… Uh oh.

After paying for our treats my Mom decided that it was time for her to take the metro home and so off she went with the grocery bags in tow, leaving me free to spend a couple of hours exploring the city. I walked back along rue de Bac and strolled along St. Germain de Pre. I was hoping to find a few stores that I remembered from last year but my lousy sense of direction got in the way. No matter, I made my way over to the Louvre and walked through Les Tuileries just as it began to rain. I love the alleés in Paris and some of my favourite walkways lined with trees are here in this park that runs between the Louvre and the Place de Concorde. Despite the light rain there were couples making out on benches, old people walking holding hands, families playing on the grass (on the grass!), kids on the carousal.

There is more rain in the forecast for tomorrow but just like the Parisians we don’t plan on letting it slow us down. I’m off first thing in the morning to the Raspail market which is an organic food market that I really enjoyed last year. In the early afternoon we will head up to check out the Marché aux Puces St-Ouen flea market which a friend highly recommended. On that note, thanks to all of you who sent out recommendations of things to do and see. Anyone else with an idea or two please send me a comment!