New Years Eve! A Blue Moon! Le Réveillon de la Saint-Sylvestre (New Years Eve feast) at Bistrot Paul Bert! A relatively quiet and very tasty evening of foie gras (Alfonso), truffles (Kim), and a splendid wine from Languedoc-Roussillon (Côtes Catalanes) winery Le Petite Baigneuse, Grand Largue.
Then the fire brigade, who have a station just down [...]
A nighttime pilgrimage to the Tour Eiffel, by which I mean a five+ mile, three hour stroll through le Marais, past Notre Dame, and along the Seine. Heaven.
When we arrived at the foot of the tower, it began to practice for the first ever rainbow-hued 400 LED light show on New Years Eve. Some things, [...]
A pair of thirsty kids break up the workday with lunch at the always lovely Le Baratin. We had wanted to try the co-owner’s new Le Chapeau Melon, but food poisoning caused us to cancel our reservation Saturday, and Sunday the same caused the chef to cancel on us. Tant pis! They will remain closed [...]
Edit, edit, edit all day, then, a date night. Alfonso surprised me with a trip to tiny art house cinema Studio 28 on the Butte Montmartre. The theater opened in 1928 as Paris’ first avant-garde cinema, and showed Louis Bunel’s L’Age d’Or not long after. The lobby displays the foot prints (not shoes, like Graumans, [...]
Lost a day and night to food poisoning, both of us, presumably via the dreaded shellfish! Discover a passion for oysters and the price of such passion in one go…
We did manage to drag ourselves through the Louvre, where Alfonso had never been. It was a sea of humans and alleged “masterpieces.” When the Mona [...]
A very extravagant Christmas Eve spent on the Rive Gauche at La Coupole, a brasserie that opened in Montparnasse in 1927. The mood was lovely, humming and old-school. A birthday was righteously celebrated with singing and sparklers, our waiter took my camera and photographed the entire restaurant for us, and when someone dropped a large [...]
For the child in us all, I offer pictures from the Art Deco Le Clown Bar (opened 1902), at once charming and creepy, with a superb wine list, and next door to Napoloeon’s Cirque d’Hiver (Winter Circus). Joyeux Noël!
Christmas in Paris means Brasserie week for us, starting tonight with Bofinger. Our friend Christian–who read a bit of Faust at our wedding (Germany represent!)–is in town to share the holidays, and for Christmas eve, we will go to La Coupole, and I hope also to visit Julien.
Bofinger, an Alsatian joint, was opened in 1864 [...]
Y’all might not yet have been enchanted by Alfonso’s secret wistful side, but now his inner dreamy Nouveau lady is unleashed upon Paree. Alfonso had a meeting, I had some business of my own, and this was how the working afternoon was spent, in the nook of Marais/Bastille. There was an afternoon glass of Rosé [...]
edit, edit, walk, edit. beats the pants off holding up the facade of a building all day…