Barb and Baden’s Excellent Paris Adventure – Final
Touristy or not
In many of my blog postings, I have thrown around the word touristy here and there. In most cases, the word is used by me in a negative-sounding way describing a place that that you may want to consider not going to.
However, in all honesty, I think that this word has a bad rap and carries with it the wrong definition.
I remember talking to someone who went out of their way to stress that when they vacationed to some far-off place, they were not tourists but travelers. You see, the term traveler is a fashionable word used frequently nowadays and usually by someone who wants to set themselves apart from the person who may travel in an organized tour group. What the distinction is really stating is that “my way of travel is better than yours”.
We’ll I’ve got news for both the traveler and the tourist. When all of us all in a foreign city and being seen by local people, we’re all considered tourists. It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing shorts with white running shoes and black socks or not.
I got to thinking about all of this the other afternoon as we were walking along one of the streets of Paris on the way home. We noticed that on every street corner for about 3-4 blocks there were people standing there with a clip board and were asking people questions when they were waiting to cross the street.
However, when we approached them they just looked away as if knowing that we were not from around here.
This was all very curious to me as we we dressed like most other local people on the street (I made sure that I left my white running shoes and black socks at the hotel) yet it seemed like we were wearing a sign that said “tourist” or something.
Final days of Paris
I’m writing this final chapter of our Paris Adventure today (Monday) which means that we will be flying home tomorrow. The last few days haven’t really been too different from the first few and we have continued to keep a pretty leisurely pace with very little structure of our days. Most mornings, over breakfast at a local cafe, we would typically talk about what our agenda might be but inevitably, we would end up doing something a bit different than that.
On Saturday, we decided that we would walk along the Champs-Élysées – one of the most famous streets in the world. The Champs-Élysées has the Arc de Triomph at one end and the Place de la Concorde at the other.
We decided to start our walk at the Louvre so all in all it was about a 3.5km walk from end to end but in total we probably walked closer to 7 or 8 kms that day which is probably typical of most of our days here. All in all it’s a good thing that we get this much exercise considering all of the food that we have been eating. As a general rule, I have found from experience of previous vacations that if we are in an area and don’t have a car I will lose weight on that trip. If we have a car on the other hand, we get virtually no exercise and all bets are off about weight gain.
As you probably know, when you’re eating in restaurants or cafes 3-4 times a day, you just can’t eat the same way as you do at home.
It was for this reason that Barb and I were thinking that the next time we come to Paris we wanted to explore renting an apartment and skip the hotel. Especially in Paris where we are so familiar with things we really don’t need the services of a hotel (we never eat in the hotel restaurant) so an apartment would probably be much better for us if we’re hoping to experience life as a true local. Perhaps then those people doing the surveys on the street corners will ask us for our opinions.
Fromage s’il vous plaît
If there was one thing that stands out for us on this third trip to Paris it has to be cheese. It was not planned but we just happened to have time after time when we would have cheese as the highlight of several of our meals. There were at least two visits to fromageries (cheese shops) where we would purchase several different types of cheese to take to the park to have our lunch. There were another 4-5 times where we would have something like a salade chaude chèvre (warm goat cheese salad) or an assortment of cheese as the meal itself. It’s really hard to describe this with just words but all I can say that if you consider yourself a cheese lover, you cannot begin to imagine what unique varieties of cheese there are here to be experienced.
I should point out that almost all of these cheeses here are unpasteurised. Pasteurization is a process that kills bacteria and lengthens the shelf life of a product but unfortunately it also kills some of the flavour in the process.
I happen to know that you can get unpasteurized cheeses in Vancouver. We have purchased some from Urban Fare in Yaletown. I’ll warn you that it will not be cheap but if you’re looking for the real thing, you may want to splurge every now and then.
Luxembourg Picnic
On Sunday morning, we were leaving to have our breakfast and were listening to the church bells ring and the nearby Notre Dame cathedral. It was getting a little warmer every day and it was expected to be over 25 degrees on Sunday with the higher humidity that we experienced when we first arrived last Monday coming back again. Everyone that we had spoken to had said that the higher than normal temperatures just started about a week before we arrived and was not expected to last. As a result of this, we have definitely experienced the best weather of any of our trips to Europe so far on this one.
We happened to be walking through the Montparnasse area just a little south of our hotel and happened to find a fromagerie open. It being a Sunday and many stores being closed it was a (pleasant) surprise and we immediately changed our plans for lunch and bought some of the best goat cheese that they had. Another store at the boulangerie (bakery) and a small fruit stand and we had everything we needed for lunch.
We were close to the Jardin du Luxembourg (Luxembourg Gardens) which is a large park in Paris so we decided to grab a bench under a shady tree and enjoyed our delicious fare.
It being the weekend, there were lots of local Parisians enjoying the good weather in the park and there were even children sailing their little boats in the small pool that was at one end of the park.
And finally …
Today being Monday and our Paris trip coming to a close tomorrow, we had one more meal of note this afternoon that I wanted to share. In truth, there were quite a few meals that I didn’t talk about that I wanted to share but I would had to have written much more than I did if I did not pare down some of my notes.
This morning I made a visit to a kitchen supply store that I had talked about on my last trip to Paris called E. Dehillerin. There are of course many different kitchen stores in every city in the world but E. Dehillerin stands apart as perhaps the most unique.
The fact they have been in business since 1820 is part of what sets them apart but it’s really their product selection that does it for me. What makes them unique is that they are really focused on the professional cook and not the consumer. As a result, you can buy things at E. Dehillerin that you don’t see at many other stores.
For example, if you happened to want to purchase that stock pot that measures 36″ across (and you could stand in) to cook for that party of 100 that you were planning, this would be where you would get it. You could also get a wooden spoon here that was about 4 ft. long to use with that stock pot.
Being a professional cook-focused store, the you must know what you want before arriving at E. Dehillerin and do not expect to bother the sales staff to much. I am certain that when they are asked something by a neophyte, the surly clerks no doubt are thinking “away from me with your foolish questions”.
Unfortunately I didn’t buy anything at E. Dehillerin today. I bought my mandoline from them the last time that I was in Paris but because we are travelling with only carry-on luggage and our space is limited, I didn’t want to get anything that would not fit into my luggage – which basically meant that there was room for nothing.
Anyway, getting back to our final great meal this afternoon for lunch, we happened to stumble across a small restaurant called Le Petit Zinc (11 rue St. Benoit) which was just about a 10 minute walk from our hotel.
When we sat down and saw the menu, we immediately knew that Le Petit Zinc was going to be an expensive meal – even by Paris standards. We limited what we ordered to just a small number of items but as it turns out we had one of the best meals in Paris here today and were only slightly above our average meal costs.
I had order a soupe poisson (fish soup) and Barb a cheese platter (of course!) and a Grand Marnier soufflé to follow.
The waiter raised an eyebrow when Barb placed her order as technically she was breaking protocol by ordering twice from the dessert menu but we like to live life on the edge so we sent him away despite his concern. 🙂
The fish soup came with a side dish of freshly grated cheese and with this combination into the soup it was an incredible flavour and nothing like I had ever tasted before.
After Barb had finished her cheese platter, her soufflé was brought out in a small pot. They also brought a small glass (about 3 inches high) which they filled with Grand Marnier and they left the bottle on the table.
Barb offered some of the soufflé for me to taste and my only regret was that I did not order one of them myself. Quite simply, the soufflé was the most delicate and best tasting dessert I had ever tasted. It had a crust on the top which was dusted with powdered sugar and the inside was a light airy cream that got progressively thicker towards the bottom.
One of the first things that Barb asked after her first bite was: “can you make these?”
I pledge to you here and now that my life will now be dedicated to making a soufflé like the one that we tasted today. No doubt, many will end up in the garbage before I am finished but in the end it will all have been worth it if I can duplicate this recipe.
By this time tomorrow (Vancouver time), I will be back home and Paris will be a memory for us and the thoughts of our next Excellent Adventure become the next thing that we will begin to focus on in the upcoming months. In all likelihood, we will not be returning to Europe for a few years as our next few trips will take us to other parts of the world.
Without a doubt we will return to Paris again – perhaps as a singular destination like this one or as part of a broader trip to France as in our previous two visits. Paris will always hold a special place in our hearts and will always remain to us as our favourite city.
Thanks for joining us on this adventure and our next travel adventure will occur again in late September but as regular readers know, I post many other articles throughout the year on both travel and cooking subjects.
Until next time …
Barb and Baden
