A Sunday in Paris

We venture into Paris each weekend, for the cultural edification of our English exchange student (otherwise we would be at home, doing the garden, decorating, continuing on our epic saga "Requesting Planning Permission for improving our Gate 3" writing letters of complaint and calling in guarantees on broken electrical goods etc).

Today We went to Saint-Paul "Marais" (marais means 'marsh, it was originally reclaimed marshland) on Metro 1, and walked to rue des Rosiers,  sat outside a baker/delicatessen in the SUN (a rare day) and ate savoury strudel (finely chopped courgettes, eggs and goats cheese with carraway seeds, according to my taste buds), aubergine caviar, vine leaves stuffed with rice, potato latke, cheesecake, apple and red fruit strudels, really really good.  (I deliberately miss the bit where R moaned vigorously about everything.  Continually.  Even though he was bought off with a can of coke).

Delicious fare...truly madly excellent food and service, loved it

We peered in the window of the Chocolatier Georges Larnicol  where you can buy chocolate red stiletto shoes filled with multi-coloured macaroons for 30 Euros.

Yes, it's all chocolate;  Chocolatier Georges Larnicol

So we went to Starbucks for coffee at Rs "request"  where he had a vanilla frappaccino without coffee and a dose of expresso to pour over the vanilla frappuccino but he changed his mind and didn't use the coffee, even though I had had to go through a Harry Met Sally salad routine to get it customised just how he thought he liked it.     Then he wanted to go home.  We forced him to walk with us to the Beaubourg, the moaning reached catastrophic levels and was accompanied by tears but I do not dwell on this.

Designer fountains, Beaubourg  

Impromtu amphitheatre in the Place Georges Pompidou

There we watched someone doing football dancing and in the impromptu amphitheatre in front of the Centre George Pompidou we sat on the sloping cobbles which had been sun-warmed and watched an etremely talented and well-built clown do a sketch where he pretended to be a director shooting a scene from a film, using volunteers from the audience.

After this R and B went home and JC and S and I walked on and shopped in a discount book shop (2 Euros for a book on Provençale Cooking which included 2 recipes for blette, the largely inedible swiss chard which is one of the only things that grows really well in our garden), paused at the Parc de la Tour St Jacques, a starting place for the Perilinage de St Jacques de St Compostelle (St James of Compostella to us), and on past the flower market lit up with strings of orchids of every colour and pattern,

Strings of orchids at the Marche aux Fleurs

past Notre Dame, paused at the Square Jean XXIII where  a jazz band performing on the bandstand  had a look at the bridge with lots of padlocks attached (Pont de l'Archevêché)  and onto the Pont St Louis where we paused to admire more street performers, and once on the Isle Saint Louis where we had the best ice cream in France (and I contend, the world) at Bertillon.

Verily the best ice cream in France (if not the world?)

 I had one ball of caramel and ginger, and one of banana.  And then we admired all the buildings and the wonderful roof profiles, and the bridges and bought a 2nd hand book from one of the dark green wooden boxes attached to the railings, and then, we went home.