Today mom and I did a food tour in Montmartre. Our guide was nice but not nearly as charismatic as our guide on London. I didn't take pictures of everything but it was all delicious. We got a little history of Montmartre. I also learned that for a shop to call itself a boulangerie they have to make their goods on site. And baguettes are very regulated. The tour had two parts, the first part was walking around to a few shops to get food. We had macarons, chocolates, a cream puff and a crêpe.
The second half of the tour we went to their little tasting room for wine, cheeses and meats. We tried a goat milk cheese, sheep milk cheese, cow milk cheese with truffle, a Comte and a blue. For the meats we had a ham, a goose rillette, duck pate and a salami like meat. I liked it all except for the blue cheese and duck pate.... the goose rillette tasked like thanksgiving turkey and stuffing but it was a little hard to eat hahaha
Meanwhile, on Tommy's lazy day. . .
I got a later start than the food tourists. After my experience in the Lourve where I didn't really know what to look for and found it a challenge to know where I wanted to go, I decided I'd start collecting works I knew were in the Lourve in one spot so, should I return, I can have a plan. I did a little pre-packing, worked out something of a plan for my day, and when to find food.
I had a galette (savory crêpe) near the Cluny au Sorbonne metro stop at a cute place called Bobo Crêperie where I had a chicken curry Egg with Emmental Cheese galette and a coffee. I had planned to see if I could get into the Pantheon (a big neat building where many famous people are interred (Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas and Jean-Jacques Rosseau).
I did not.
I probably could have bought a ticket on my phone, but I'd been all queued out, and decided to go to the next stop on my list--Saint-Etinne-Do-Mont just next door to the Pantheon. But, did I go there?
No, I did not.
They are closed on Mondays until 2:30. So I tucked tail to the nearest metro and returned to my previous stop to go on to my next stop--The Abbey bookshop.
I had seen a sign on some scaffolding pole on the sidewalk for the book store and took a picture of it.
Clearly I wasn't going to go the rest of my time in Paris without ate least attempting to go to this fine establishment, and went I did. Finally, a successful activity (brunch notwithstanding)! I was 2/2 now.
Oh, boy. What I came across was something to behold. There's a great used book store in Bellingham called Hendersons this place reminds me of1. Anyway, this is like that but with the same amount (or perhaps only nearly as many) within a much smaller space. The space between shelves is TINY. I don't know how folks look at any books in the middle of an isle that is lower than one's hips as there is no room for an adult to squat down to look at them. I could touch books on either side of the isle between the tips of my fingers and elbow. . .
The above is not an outlier. Nearly every isle was like this. And despite the cramped nature of this I loved it. I loved and hated it. I took a bee-line for the British history section only to find the "small" British history books behind a wall of other sometimes related, and sometimes unrelated books. There wasn't really anywhere to shift the content of the wall of books so I just looked around to see if there was anything anywhere there I wanted.
. . . there were. . .
When I emerged Libby texted to say they were wrapping up. This put the kibosh on a few of the of the other plans I had, but c'est la vie. I headed back to our place, dropped off my meager haul, and . . .
After the food tour mom and I shopped around a bit while Tommy made his way to Montmartre. Then we went up to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur.
You could either walk up a bunch of steps or take a funicular. Of course we took the funicular. The view of Paris from up there is crazy. It's just sprawling, Notre Dame was hardly visible. The basilica had a tower tour so you know Tommy and I climbed those 280 steps to the top.
There were helpful signs along the way though.
The view from the top.
Tomorrow we are heading to Rouen for 2 nights. We're going to rent a car for the day and see how driving in a foreign county goes....
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1Hendersons is of a decent size, yet despite this fact, they resort to putting books on carts in the crook between where two bookshelves meet perpendicular to each other, on the floor, and even behind and perpendicular to their preferred siblings. It's annoying because you'll see something back there and wonder, "What is that? Do I want to move these books to see if there is some treasure hidden behind?" Only to discover that no it's just a copy of something to the right or left of all the books you've moved to dig the thing out.
It’s official, I’d like to go to France. Mostly for the food and a little bit for the art.
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