Paris day 2

(These journal entries will get more interesting after we leave Paris. This leg of the trip is more hanging around and relaxing, so there's less to say.)

After breakfast we walked the full length of the Promenade Plantée, which follows old train tracks. The first half is on an old viaduct, and the second half is in a culvert. It's really quite lovely. It's planted in the very regimented way that is favored in France, and it makes a very nice place to walk. I've often looked at this place on the map of Paris and wondered what it's like, and now I know. (When I mentioned to Graziella that we'd been walking there, she didn't know what we were talking about at first. Apparently, despite its being identified as the "Promenade Plantée" on maps and signs, people call it the Coulée Verte.

For lunch we went to the Bouquet des Archives in the Marais, a restaurant we've been to before that makes nice croques on pain de Poilâne (Poilâne is a famous artisan bakery in Paris). Tony: croque des Causses (jambon de pays, roquefort, fried egg; the Causses is part of the Périgord region we'll be visiting next week), Edelweiss draft beer (too sour, not hoppy enough), café crème. Eric: croque madame (ham, cheese, fried egg), Affligem draft beer, café.

After lunch, more wandering, in the Luxembourg Gardens and Odéon area.

For dinner we ate a place with two names: Iou Pescadou/Café Julien. We started at a different place, but there was no room, the host decided after much reflection. He offered to call a nearby place and see if they had room, which they did. The hostess came over to get us. We chatted on the way over; her English was excellent, though we spoke half French. The restaurant is a nice little tiny place on Mabillon. Tony: chiffonade de saumon fumé au chèvre (essentially a salad; goat cheese, it turns out, is not a great accompaniment to smoked salmon, but it was still good, once I started have the salmon and cheese separately); magret de canard au poivre vert (very tasty – especially the crispy baked potato slices, sort of like a gratin but with no cheese, only tons of duck fat; the poivre vert sauce meanwhile was a cream-based sauce and lovely); gâteau de chocolat (actually a mi-cuit or moelleux – that is, with a molten center; it was very tasty though I would have preferred something even stronger). Eric: salade de fruits de mer; filet de bar (served with fennel and anise cream-sauce, plus a zucchini gratin); griottes en kirsch avec de la glace vanille (cherries in kirsch with a scoop of vanilla ice cream; very kirschy).

Labels: france, journal

posted by Tony at 4:48 PM