day off

We were starting to get pretty tired, our feet hurt, and my back problems (which had been giving me virtually no trouble for months!) started flaring up again, so we decided that instead of going to the Louvre on Monday and Versailles on Tuesday, we'd take the day off, skip Versailles on this trip, and move the Louvre to Wednesday (when they're open late anyway).  This was, after all, supposed to be vacation.

Lazy mornings are nice.

During peak times, I hear there's a line.

We decided to visit Bouillon Chartier for lunch. We were late enough to have missed the lines and were able to get right in (they don't take reservations). If you have space at your table, you're likely to get other people seated next to you; we got an American couple on their last day in Paris on their way to Italy as tablemates. The building has been there for a while - they opened in 1896, and the dining room has that opulent feel with the murals on the walls, the chandeliers, the staircase to the second floor...

View of dining room from near the entrance. Their website has a 360-degree view of the main room, so not bothering to post my not very good photos :)

The food isn't really anything *special* (not in the way Chez Panisse in Berkeley is special, or the restaurant Michel Sarran is special). They specialize in good, solid traditional dishes from various parts of France, and they do it absolutely impeccably. It was probably one of our better meals while in Paris.

Mes premières escargots.
Our tablemates had their first foie gras (and liked it).

One uses a funny set of tongs and a little fork to dig the vaguely clam-flavored snail out of its shell. Drenched in a butter garlic herb sauce... I actually kind of liked them.

I had a steak tartare - surprisingly good with the ketchup on the side. There were bits of capers and onions and other things mixed into the minced beef.

And G had a cooked steak. We shared the green beans.

Dessert (cream puff with ice cream). The chocolate sauce was divine.

More dessert (bread pudding, I think)

And this is how they take your order - they scribble it on the paper serving as a tablecloth, and then at the end, they write down the prices from memory and add it up.

We then sort of looked at the map, looked around us, and said "hey, what's that over there?" and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering without a lot of purpose. In fact, we pretty much completely scrapped our tentative plan formed while at the restaurant as far as things we went to look at.

The Paris opera house - le Palais Garnier

The Paris Ritz is under renovation. There are some *fancy* shops in that square.

"Rhinocéros attaqué par un tigre" - at the entrance of the Tuileries Garden

They have strange statues in the Tuileries. I don't seem to have taken any pictures of the permanent carnival/amusement park at the entrance.

Standing right there, in the four directions, you have...

Place de la Concorde with its famous obeslik.

Back towards the Ritz

Louvre that-a-way

The Seine is that way. Musée D'Orsay is across the water and a bit to the left.

We approached the Place de la Concorde (this is the Bassin Octagonal, still in the garden),

and got our first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower.

Apparently, Egypt was a theme here, 19th century style. This statue is called "The Nile" (there were crocodiles and hippos on carved on the ends of the pedestal).

More Egypt. Or something.

Fancy lamppost. Paris seems to have a lot of fancy lampposts.

And here's the famous Obelisk

Heiroglyphics.

It's really quite shiny. Shinier since 1998 when the golden top was added.

How they brought it to France.

And what they did with it when it got there.

Paris has a lot of fancy buildings. Eglise de la Madeleine that way.

Fountain and the Palais Bourbon

Eglise de la Madeleine

Looking back toward the Tuileries.

Champs Elysées

Oh hey. Arc de Triomphe.

Leaving Place de la Concorde.

This was a fancy bridge.

There were a couple sets of wedding photos being taken on the bridge...

Probably because this was the view behind the couples.

Champs Elysées again... this is as close as we got to the Arc de Triomphe

Le Petit Palais. Can you imagine that being your front door?

Les Invalides

This cute little thing is a street sweeper (it's opened up, being cleaned). Just big enough for one person :)

Funny story: G had forgotten to bring a sweatshirt, so we stopped at a Monoprix to pick up a light sweater for him. When we got to the cashier, she presumed (since G was the only one who spoke, and he speaks French like a French person, since he is French) that we were Parisiens. Making conversation, she asked, "aren't you going on vacation?" (this being the time of year when most French people take vacation and go somewhere else). He answered, "we are on vacation." The gal got an incredulous look on her face and exclaimed in tones of deep disbelief, "chez nous?!" (i.e., here, in Paris?). I mean, why would anybody French come to Paris for vacation, rather than somewhere more interesting like Morocco or Spain or something?

One of G's friends and his wife now live in Paris. We met up at Restaurant Tian Fu; according to them, it's the best/most authentic Chinese food in town (G's friend's wife is from China, so supposedly they'd know). The food was pretty good - better than any other Chinese food I've had since coming to France. Food was family style - order several dishes, share out of big bowls at the center of the table. No noodles though, which made me a little sad - apparently Real Chinese People don't have rice and noodles at the same meal (apparently I've been eating with barbarians in the US - whenever I've eaten at a Chinese place with friends, we almost always had a couple meat dishes, something with tofu, something with vegetables, and something with noodles along with the ubiquitous rice). Also, no tea - we were warned against it. But it was still pretty tasty.

All in all, a fairly busy day off :)