Paris, Tues-Thurs, April 23-25, 2013

tuesday we invited our friends Elisabeth and Jean Pierre to lunch at Les Papilles.  The buses were all messed up so we had to improvise. Thank goodness we had our Paris bus maps with us.  And it worked so we arrived on time.  I had made a reservation at this small place which has about 24 seats so we were tucked into a pleasant alcove at the back with a window.  We went for the full meal but our guests were more restrained and took only the main course and an espresso.  Everything was delicious.  We had a very creamy cauliflower soup with all manner of little goodies added the last drop of which was wiped from the plates with their wonderful bread.  This was followed by a beef dish cooked for hours in red wine with potatoes, carrots, pea pods and garlic cloves.  Harley and I shared the blue cheese and the pudding dessert and we all enjoyed plenty of the house wine.

After this the only thing possible was to go home for a nap.

Wednesday we paid a visit to Dehilleron, the kitchen supply shop where Julia Child always bought kitchen equipment when in Paris.  It is a very old enterprise loaded floor to ceiling with pots and implements squeezed along narrow aisles.  I would have loved to have someone explain what a lot of the things were used for, but I'll never know.  They serve as a source of equipment for restaurant kitchens so some of the pots were enormous.  John Pierre noted that they are one of the few places to get the kind of knives which can be sharpened repeatedly producing an extremely sharp edge in which case the knife is eventually worn down.  And they carry a huge line of copper pots which must be quite expensive since they are all chained and held fast with small locks.

After this adventure Harley bused back to the apartment and I walked to the Marais to enjoy the Paris streets and revisit the bead shops I had been to earlier.  I walked for several hours until I was very tired and a bit lost but I didn't buy anything else.  Managed to decipher a bus route that would get me back to the apartment tired but happy.  I love to walk in cities!

Thursday promised to be a lovely day, warm and sunny so not even a jacket is needed to be outdoors.  Stephanie stopped by to return our security deposit after which we took the bus to the Left Bank to walk along the Seine.  It is such a magnificent way to admire Paris.  What a city!  If you've never been you must come and if you have been before, come back.  It never gets boring.

We then walked a way south toward the Luxembourg Gardens looking for the restaurant where we planned to have lunch.  As in the Marais, the streets here go every which way and change names frequently.  And the regular map does not show many of the smaller streets so it took frequent stops for geographic analysis to find the restaurant, Bastide de l'Odeon, but we found it with no major detours.

We ate here two years ago when we were in Paris and it has remained excellent.  Harley had creamed asparagus soup and I had raw, thin sliced salmon with ratte potatoes and a creamy sauce.  We both wiped our plates with their bread which was so good.  They manage to bake bread with a heavy, crisp crust which is tough to break but great to chew.  (You may have concluded by now that I approve of the bread here.)

Then for mains we had duck with polenta.  Their duck is a bit tougher than ours but tastes so good and we both love polenta.  For dessert Harley had melon with ice cream and sauce and I had a sable with strawberries and pistachio ice cream.  Then espresso to end a wonderful meal which again necessitated a return home for a nap.  After all we had been eating for two hours which uses a lot of energy and the consumption of a good bit of red wine adds to the sleep requirement.