Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Bonjour Paris!

Both Aachen and Brussels deserve their own posts and they will get them, but for the 3 of you actually reading the blog, we wanted to skip ahead to where we are now and where we will be for the remainder of our trip...PARIS.

We arrived in Paris this afternoon around 5:00 p.m. The City of Lights is just as beautiful as we remembered it being in 2000. The rain clouds parted and blew away as we pulled in to the Gare du Nord, as if heralding our return! We checked-in to the Hotel St.-Jacques in the Latin Quarter (5th Arr.) and headed out for a 90 minute walk through the center of this always stunning city. Below are a few of the spots we stopped along the way.


The "queen" of Paris: Notre Dame cathedral on the center of the Ile-de-la-Cite.


The Louvre, where we will spend a good chunk of tomorrow gazing on masterworks, which include the second best portrait in the world, Raphael's Baldasare Castiglione.


The Eiffel Tower reaching up over the Seine.

At the end of our walk we returned to "our neighborhood" for a bite to eat at Le Pré Verre, a fantastic little cafe and wine bar. What you see below is one of the best meals of the trip and the best meal we've had since leaving Figlmüller's in Vienna. This is bistecca alla Parisian in a light, but flavor-packed broth, along with lightly pickled beets and yellow carrots on the side and smoky mashed potatoes. The bread was so beautiful and delicious it deserved its own photo, below. Now we are preparing to head to bed in a "food coma," but boy, was it worth it!! Oh, and I forgot to mention, homemade chocolate truffle and caramel ice cream for dessert. Ooooh lala!



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