one…more…perfect…day….can’t… take it…. have… to… finish….. soon. We grab a coffee and croissant at the local then enjoy the morning sun as we cross ile de cite (at Pont Louis Philippe, Pont Saint Louis and Pont l’Archeveche), circle around behind the Notre Dame re-construction and head down the left bank to Shakespear’s.
It’s early, they’ve just opened and the staff are quietly talking about their shifts and their various teeny living circumstances. Di heads straight upstairs to the library and I get recommendations on a ridiculous number of French authors (the staff are all passionate about their favourites), and follow behind.
When I arrive upstairs, Di is ensconced in the corner chair, Aggie’s chair, with Aggie purring quietly on her lap. We spend a blissful two and a bit hours there, Aggie choosing to move in concert with Di’s lap each time she changes chair or books. By lunch the numbers ar building and we head out.
We wander up towards the Pantheon in roughly the direction of a cafe we know, le Petit Cafe, near the steps of the church from the movie Midnight in Paris with Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams, and surprise ourselves by finding it first go. There are mainly young students in there with laptops, glasses of water and espressos and I think the waitress gets a little excited when we actually order food. We both get a lovely baked salmon with risotto and hollandaise sauce – delightful.
We take a post lunch stroll further along rue Descartes till it tuns into rue Moufetard and a market street.
For me, fashion is measured in temperature. In moderate cold, I don a coat, a scarf and hat and pretend, with Di, who always looks good, that I’m a local, a Parisian. In the cold, Parisians might add a stole to their fur, change the scarf for a nice silk-cashmere blend or perhaps pop on a colour coordinated pair of fitted leather gloves. I dress shamelessly for warmth. And so, dressed like Mr Michilin in five layers and a puffer, with a Grandpa ear-warmer hat on, I struggle to get Di to take me seriously when we stop for respite from the afternoon cold.
We decide to push on from Boulevard St Germain to the Eiffel tower, a fair walk, and hit the pavement again. Somewhere along here they’re making what looks like merengue rolled in nuts in a patisserie window. They look so good we buy three, a petite coffee, nut and caramel. When we bite into them they’re like little nut covered puffs of heaven full of light, creamy kind’ve aerated panacota custard stuff. We wonder if we’re too old to have more kids and sell them to buy the shop.
The number of stops and heart warmers, like my fashion sense, are also driven by the cold…and the amount of heart warming substance previously consumed and required to be discharged (it’s a vicious circle!). We make another stop before we hit the tower, where a nice waiter explains in French using a Bollywood dance hand serpent sort of motion and the words ‘zig-zag’ (multiple times) to explain how to find the tower (he also says ‘ooh-la-la. No?’, when Di declines a second drink). Fortunately by the time our hearts are suitably warmed, it’s well dark and the search light on the top of the Eiffel tower is powering out across Paris; a beacon to all those longing to be accosted by selfie stick and glowing die-cast metal Eiffel tower sellers.
The Eiffel tower base is now secure with a glass wall all the way around. It’s free to go in but necessitates passing though security. Instead we slalom through the picnic rugs of grotesquely flashing mini-towers and out into the back streets to find Assemble where we once dined with the boys. It’s closed but we find a really nice place around the corner and eat before metro-ing home and crashing.
From the descriptions of food consumption it is good that you had so many ‘long’ walks! Great trip. Dot
Agreed. Long walks highly necessary.
Di and Aggie seem very comfortable together! No wonder you stayed 2 + hours!