Ladee's Travels

Decided to stay in the neighborhood today and enjoy the local shops. What good finds. Au Pied de Cochon (This blog excerpt was sent to me by Ginan. I took one little side street and there it was, very close to the apartment!) As famous a brasserie then as it is now, Julia [Child] came here—sometimes in the hours just before dawn after a night out—for their traditional onion soup. Visit It: One of the few remnants of Les Halles' raucous all-night past is this brasserie, which has been open every day since 1946. Now run by the Frères Blanc group, it still draws both a French and a foreign crowd with round-the-clock hours and trademark traditional fare such as seafood platters, breaded pigs' trotters, beer-braised pork knuckle with sauerkraut, and cheese-crusted onion soup. It's perfect ribsticking fare for a winter's day or to finish off a bar crawl. The dining room, with its white tablecloths and little piggy details, feels resolutely cheerful. 6 rue Coquillière. 0...

ohhhh, this was yummy. We thought that the restaurant would open for a late dinner at 7PM. You know that we are new Europeans. WELL, we discovered once we walked to the restaurant that they don't open until 7:30. We pretended to read the menu, as if deciding if we were going to actually eat there, and then went for a walk in the nearby "passage" (Covered shopping street) We were back at the door of the restaurant, with our American tails wagging, desperately wanting to come inside, precisely at 7:30 PM. We were accepted with the graciousness of our hosts, and selected a seat (all of them were open!). This is what the restaurant looks like when you are the only one in it. I ordered a "menu", which is their entre (appetizer), plat (main course) and dessert (same for us...no one messes with that word!). I had this yummy dish of lamb and veal in a dark gravy with mushrooms. Brought tears to me eyes with the first taste. This went very well with the first bottle ...

The Fall brought many colors to Monet's home and pond in Giverny. The weeping willows, normally green, were lightly painted with golden yellow. I think that these two trees are Japanese Maples. One was brilliant orange and the other was breathtaking red. Some flowers remained in bloom around the pond. This shot is from the far side of the pond. You can see the yellow and deep purple leaves on the left, and in the lower right is the vine covered bridge (blue). This is taken from underneath a willow, with the red, orange and purple trees in the background. After visiting the gardens and the house, we walked through the town of Giverny to a restaurant in an old tavern. The name was Hotel Baudy, once a hangout for American impressionist. It was located at 81, rue Claude Monet (pretty snazzy). We sat outside in the terrace overlooking an open field (someone's back yard). We had the "menu" for the day. Goat cheese with mushrooms and Pepperoni (the waiter explained that ...

Today's target - the Marais District. We hopped on the #4 Metro at Les Halles, changed at Chatalet and boarded the #1 to Hotel de Ville. The streets were buzzing and busy as usual. The metro brought us up to street level a small distrance from the huge store, Bazar de Hotel de Ville. (BHV for the big shoppers) We toured from top to bottom, rested with a cappacino, and then moved on to our ultimate target. Ginan introduced me to the wonderful tea from Mariage Freres at the Cultured Cup in Dallas. I've been buying teas from them for the past two or three years, and their Paris shop was on my list of must see places. We walked down a little side street, crossed rue de Mauvais Garcon (street of the bad boys?) and turned left on rue de Bourge-Tubourg. I stopped a woman who was walking and asked her is she could tell me how to find the Mariage Frere store. Her face lit up and she pointed in the direction of the store and asked if we were going to have tea. Of course! We found the ...

Today started with late coffee, but we gained an hour because the Europeans started daylight savings time this weekend. Surprise! The plan was to go to the Ile de la Cite, the island we visited to see Notre Dame, and finish the Rick Steves Historic Paris walking tour that we had started last week. We walked on rue Montmontre to the Les Halles metro station and took the train to the Cite stop. What a wonderful surprise when we came up out of the metro. The metro sign was one of the old ones, the art deco ones, and not many of these still exist. (I'll take a picture of the new ones at a later date so that ou can see the difference.) We went directly to St. Chapelle, but the sign said that they were going to close between 1 and 2:15 PM. We decided to go to the little cafe across the street, Cafe Deux Palais. We sat outside to take in the street scene. We were not disappointed! This is hard to see in the picture, but the group gathering on the right side of the photo were protesting, ...

I took the smaller camera with me today so that I could take photos for the blog. Here is a thumbnail sketch of the day's adventures in the Left Bank area. This is the fountain in front of St. Sulpice church. This church is neo classical modeled on St Paul's in London. There are three Delacroix murals inside the church. Sunday mass was being held when we walked in, so we sat down and enjoyed. The church is known for their awesome organ. The organist played during the service, and also after the service had ended. For you "DaVinci Code" fans, this is the church that played an important role in the book, although there is a sign saying that the story was fiction. We left St. Sulpice and walked across the plaza for lunch. There is a cute little place, Cafe de la Mairie. We had omelettes and caffe creme (like a latte). The seating inside was nice, and you can see that they had an extensive outside seating area also. Just a short walk down rue St. Sulpice, and a l...

We enjoyed the morning coffee and then went towards the Metro. What a surprise to discover a street market was opened on a normally busy street. Food smells were wonderful. This man is pulling cooked chickens off of a sword. There were flower stalls along the street. Butcher stands had an assortment of meats. I got falafel and some other ravioli thing. Heated, bagged, and ready to eat as you walk. It didn't last very long. The fruit stands had a quite a variety of great looking fruits. It looks like everyone in the neighborhood turns out for these Sunday morning street markets.