Eating and Shopping, Shopping and Eating

One of the cool things about our apartment, is that is is 5 minutes (a real 5 minutes, not a 2 hour five minutes like the other day) away from the Bon Marche, and the Grand Epicerie de Paris - the latter being where Kate and I decided we want to go when we die. We could have spent the entire week in GEP and gone no where else and we would have gone home happy. As is was we came back with an exquisite box of macaroons and a box of Mariage Freres Earl Grey and French Blue tea.

We also bought gifts for our girls - underwear and t-shirts for mine. Sarah wanted camisoles to wear on gym days so no one can see her little chest when she changes into her gym clothes. We also bought Kate’s three girls some scarves and other bits of fun things we thought they’d like. In between all this altruistic shopping we ended up back at the Editeur Cafe for lunch. This time to have onion soup (for me in deference to my cold) and croque monseiur for Kate, just because it’s yummy. On to the Gallerie Lafayette for more shopping and then home for cocktail hour, and dinner. Tonight we used up the remains of the Divine chicken we had Sunday by turning it into chicken and artichoke pasta. Every meal looks so good we take a picture of it all laid out on the coffee table before we eat it.

Paris dans la Pluie

Another grey rainy day. It’s not like I wasn’t expecting this, you go to Paris in November, you have to put up with bad weather. Still, as I said before rainy and grey in Paris is better than rainy and grey in Ottawa. Anyway, today is our shopping day, so we’ll be inside most of the day. I’m suffering from the cold Murray so kindly gave. me. Quelching around in the rain all day yesterday certainly didn’t help. It had more of less been kept at bay until last night when I started sneezing and streaming. I took a long hot bath, drank some Neo Citron, which I had the foresight to bring along, and went to bed, I woke up this morning feeling no better at all but decided to do what I usually do when I’m sick, just ignore it and hope it will go away. If I’m not better tomorrow morning, I’ll go into a Pharmacy and try to get something to clear up the congestion - the French are such hypochondriacs that they’re bound to have some great over the counter medicine to speed my recovery.

Dinner in Paris

Dinner Sunday night. Paris has the world’s best chicken. We found one of those trattiors on rue du Buci that have the chicken roasting cabinets outside. The kind where they roast not only chickens but have a pan of potatoes under the chickens so that the potatoes roast in the chicken fat. Bliss That a salad and a bottle of vin makes the perfect meal. It was a great way to round out a very soggy day in Paris. We spent all day walking, which more of less was the idea, but we’d headed out in the morning to go to Saint Chapelle. Google said it was a 26 minute walk from the apartment, but Google hadn’t counted on how directionally challenged Kate and I are, so it took about 4 hours - mind you we window shopped, stopped for coffee and browsed in books stores, but still. Getting back was also a challenge, but by then the girl GPS kicked in - oh I remember this shop, it has the cute dress in the window we must be headed in the right direction because we passed this on our way out this morning. We finally got back to the apartment, dried our soggy shoes out under the rads and settled in for a nice quiet night chez nous.