Jeudi Le Grand Vefour

Clare spends the morning at Musée Rodin.
We go to Lunch at Le Grand Vefour, a restaurant originally established as Café de Chartres 1n 1784 at the Palais Royal. Over the years everyone from Napoléon Bonaparte & Joséphine, Victor Hugo, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and today's celebs have dined there. As you would expect the food and experience was superb. Philip 9/10
Later Clare goes off to visit her friend Bridie and we stroll up Avenue de l'Opera to look at the Opera House which is by now closed for visits. Philip gets to browse a computer shop - yeh.





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Musée Mercredi

Kwan is not feeling too well and stays at home. Clare and I spend the morning at Musée du Quai Branly, a new museum of indigenous art. In presentation and content it is stunning.
After a Soupe à l’Oignon Gratinée in a local bistro we visit the Palais de Tokyo. A great surprise. This Musée has modern temporary exhibitions most of which feature installations.
By now it is 4pm and we have just enough time to visit the free permanent exhibitions at the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, situated in the same complex next door to Tokyo. We are again blown away by another wonderful space featuring 20 century french art. Surperb.
Would highly recommend all three museums.

Dinner à la maison.

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Mardi Clare arrives

We spend the morning tidying up the apartment. Clare arrives just after lunch.
We go for a long walk around the area and down to ET, across the Seine and weaving back through the 7th.
Dinner in a local restaurant - Le P'tit Troquet.



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Lundi sur les îles

Today we spend exploring the îles Cité and St Louis.
En route we try a Chinese restaurant, Mirama, in Rue St Jacques 5e, which is more than passable from our point of view. The first, so far.
We walk to Ile de la Cité and head for Square du Vert Galant garden on the western tip. It is beautiful; the spring flowers are now coming out and many locals are enjoying their lunch in the park. We walk along the lower level walk way along the Seine to Notre Dame. It is exactly as you might imagine; people snoozing in the sun, small children strolling avec leur parents and many lovers stealing some romantic time by the Seine. We also discover the lovely jardin behind Notre Dame - Square Jean XXIII - full of locals soaking up the gorgeous weather.
We explore all the streets of the small Ile St Louis. It is a beautiful day and the island and its open air restaurants are packed.
Returning to Ile de la Cité we visit St Chapelle hoping the late afternoon sun would provide a light show through the stain glass - its nice, but the moment hard to capture with the hoards of people also visiting.
Dinner - L'auberge du Champ de Mars at 7eme.

Sunday Vaux le Vicomte

A fine day of 16C is forecast and delivered. Our Versailles resident friend Jacques picks us up at 9.30 to take us to the Vaux le Vicomte 55 kilometres (1 hour by car) west of Paris. It is a beautiful chateau of the 17 century.
We spend all morning looking at the Chateau, carriage museum and gardens. Louis XIV was so envious of this beautiful castle that he had the tax collecting owner trialled and jailed for the rest of his life for corruption. The key tradesmen (including the garden architect, Andre Le Notre) were then employed by the Sun King to work on Versailles Palace.
After lunch at the on site restaurant Jacques drops us back at Port d'Orleans and we decide to walk back through the 14th to the apartment. Some of the ground is the same as covered on Friday but the weather is sunny and very beautiful.

Dinner at Chinese (Le Village de Chine) in the 1eme. Walk home via the Louvre and watch the ET lights over the Seine. One has to agree Paris is still the most romantic city in the world. Walking thru Jardin Tulleries under the full moon with lights reflecting from Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Invalides, Concord and Notre Dame .... you can almost hear a french love song playing as the backdrop ....


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Saturday the 14eme

The weather is fining up but still quite cool. We decide to check out the 14eme and visit a market - Vanves - a bric a brac market at Port de Vanves. It is very cold and the market is full of other men's treasures. Not much of interest to us; but we're not into old junk. I'm sure many a collector would have gone into raptures over boxes of seriously old post cards, old glass photo negatives, silverware, buttons, vinyl records and the like.

We walk back to Montparnasse and have lunch in a pub. Penne Ceps (mushroom) for Kwan and Dorade (white fish) for me - satisfying and warmed us up. For 9 euros each we ventured up the Tour Montparnasse and much to my surprise with weather now cloudy and light showers, the view of Paris was really good. Because Montparnasse stands to the side (or south to be correct) of Paris, it lends a view which puts the sights of Paris in perspective. Many a guide book has said this and I concur with the recommendation of a trip up to the top of Montparnasse.
We walk home in the drizzle, via the patisserie (Mont Blanc and Rum Baba) and deli to buy some supplements to our planned fried rice dinner.

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Lunch with Guy

Its raining quite heavy and not conducive to going out at all.
Kwan goes ahead into LaFayette to organise some Tax refunds - and I suspect to have a last look at the sale which finishes tomorrow. I join her and look around for a jacket but can't get motivated or interested - very crowded.
We have lunch at Guy Savoy restaurant in the 17th, just near the Arc de Triomphe. We ask for the fixed price menu which is not a problem, like the rest of the meal. The service is superb and everything about the experience is wonderful. I say 9/10 Kwan says 8.5/10.
Still raining when we finish a little after 3 so we come home and have a nap. Luxury.
Dinner a la maison.



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