ooh la la

Our best meal: Las Papilles. Hands down, one set four-course dinner. Make reservations.

Pineapple caramel panna cotta. to. die. for.

Our best bistro meal: Chez Omar. Fabulous canard au poivre and cous cous. The finest and tastiest cous cous.

Best ice cream: bethillion. The noisette flavor is ridiculous.

Best macaroon: Henri Pierre. Just like everyone said. The salted carmel or praline flavor.

Our favorite area: Le Marais. We walked up and down all those streets, window shopping and looking for the best bistro to grab cafe, at all hours of the day and it never got old.

Our favorite time of the day: Kim and Charlie happy hour in our hotel room after picking up a fresh baguette, some stinky cheese and a bottle of cote de rhone wine. Although our room smelled like stinky cheese for long past happy hour.

Today I counted 18 people on my 4 metro rides with large, old school headphones. Hip and colorful ones. I live in DC and take the bus a lot. Is this normal? New Yorkers, fill me in! Have I totally the missed the boat on the ironic hipness of “our music players have gotten so conveniently small, that we now need to carry around huge headphones again to compensate?” Man, I am such a country bumpkin.

I tried to secretly take photos on the metro but they didn’t come out.  So instead, more photos of Paris.

While walking towards the Trocadero Plaza, to wait for the hourly sparkle light show of the Eiffel Tower, we actually saw two couples doing the tango, cheek to cheek, to no music. It was like a movie.

Every hour after dusk, the Eiffel Tower sparkles for 5 funny minutes.

Growing up in New York City, I love cities. I love riding subways that people of all shapes and sizes, actually take to get around. I love that people are up and walking around on midnight, on a Tuesday. I love shopping for shoes one minute, then getting an ice cream cone next door, before grabbing some bananas for breakfast in the corner store right next to that. I love looking at all the different fashions and faces. I love walking everywhere and weaving in and out of crowds. I like looking up at architecture and squinting to catch the little details against the sun.

A beautiful day at the Jardin Luxemboug

But what I love about Paris, is that these city people love to sit. There are wonderful chairs both upright and some perfectly reclined in all the magnificent gardens. There are benches on the sidewalk. And of course every cafe, bistro and brasserie has outdoor seating, with all the chairs in rows facing the street like a theater, just for people to sit and sip an espresso or a glass of wine for hours, at all hours of the day, in all weather. Parisians sit and read. They sit and smoke. They sit and check their email on their iPhones. They sit and gossip with friends. They sit rocking their strollers over a midday beer. So much sitting. It seems like no one needs to ever get anywhere.

Why don’t all cities have reclining chairs like these?

Charlie and I did our fair share of sitting and people watching. On top of being something that is fairly easy to get used to, it was also necessary to give our feet a break from all of our wandering. We wished we could have had more time to just sit and read, but we were still tourists, with the nagging urge to see more. The next time we go back to Paris, we already have a list of things to do: make reservations months in advance for Yam T’cha, spend several more hours at the Musee d’Orsay, and sit more.

Sit and think, just like this dude (at the Rodin Museum)

Bonjour from Paris!

Charlie and I arrived in the city of lights on Friday after an overnight flight from Dulles. I had this brilliant idea to stay up really late the night before leaving so that I would be able to fall asleep at like 7pm and wake up in Paris when we arrived at 7am (1am est) feeling fresh and new. So I obsessively plotted every restaurant and patisserie and boulangerie onto a google map that I read was “the best” until 2am in the morning. The plan worked, I couldn’t even finished “Girl with a Dragon Tattoo” (the one with Daniel Craig) but I was still exhausted. Man, these transatlantic flights are rough, no matter how you try to plan ahead.

We checked into our cute Hotel Beaubourg in Le Marais (which by the way, we highly recommend if you want a no frills but great location hotel, very small but a surprisingly modern bathroom) and immediately walked to a cafe for our first of many, espresso and pain au chocolat. Delicious. So flakey, so buttery, so delicious. I don’t know how much yoga and working out we need to do to eat a pain au chocolat every day, but I would do it.

It feels like 2AM in the morning.

It was raining and kind of cold, but isn’t Paris supposed to be romantic in the rain? Probably, but we were too sleepy to be romantic. We weaved through the small streets of Le Marais before finally giving in to a nap. A glorious nap.

I only see Notre Dame on rainy days

We celebrated a fresh outlook on the day with walking down to Ile Saint louis and getting some ice cream. Hands down the best noisette (hazelnut) ever. Charlie was jealous of my cone. We will be back.

Hazelnut and fig ice cream from Berthillion