 |
| Bride jumping the fence to escape the tourist hordes at Sacre-Coeur |
Last day in France. Last day before heading home. One last encore day in Paris to end the trip.
The bullet train from Saint-Etienne got me into Paris mid-afternoon. My flight back to the United States leaves tomorrow morning. That left some time for a little Paris-seeing. So I decided to head to one part of Paris I had not seen last week: Sacre-Coeur on Montmartre.
The Basilica of Sacre-Coeur sits atop Montmatre, dominating the skyline in this part of the Rive Droite, which the "right bank" of the Seine River is officially but rarely called.
You climb a ton of steps to get up to Sacre-Coeur.
The Basilica itself is strikingly beautiful. And there's a carousel.
France has a lot of carousels, but this was a very nice setting for one.
Indeed.
The problem is this. The area around Sacre-Coeur is absolutely lousy with tourists. Worse, it is packed with cheap souvenir stalls, aggressive salesman, and scam artists trying to pull the string-around-your-wrist scam. This is not the fun side of tourism.
No photography inside the church, so I took no pictures inside the church because I obey church rules on photography like no other rules.
But it didn't stop me from taking pictures of the view from Montmartre. Weirdly enough, even though this should've been facing south, I did not see any distinct Parisian landmarks. Not even the Tour Eiffel. Just the Gare du Nord train station, which was nearby.
The interior of Sacre-Coeur was almost as beautiful as the outside. But it was not a fun atmosphere.
Time to take the funicular off Montmartre. We were heading for the Latin Quarter, Rive Gauche, the much more interesting side of Paris.
This time we did not take just the "Metro," we took the "Metropolitain," as it was cutesily labelled at the Arvens stop. By the way, it was on this Metro ride that I thwarted a pickpocket attempt on me. For reals.
I never put my wallet in the back pocket of my pants when I'm traveling. I had on cargo shorts (with camera around my neck -- how did he ever figure out that I was a tourist?), with the pockets snapped shut. The subway car was very crowded. It was rush hour. I could feel someone trying (unsuccessfully) to get my wallet out of the cargo pocket on the left side of my shorts. He had my wallet about a quarter the way out. Luckily, it's tough to get the wallet out of those pockets unless both snaps are opened. I put my hand down and the pickpocket attempt ended. He had opened only one of the snaps. Snap on my back pocket was open (I knew I closed it when I left this morning), meaning he tried to grab tourist wallet there first, so this was a professional.
So, yes, don't ever put your wallet in your back pocket when traveling.
Back to the much nicer Rive Gauche. That is Notre-Dame cathedral, which I photographed a hundred million times during last week's visit.
But, you know when the doubledecker open-air hop-on/hop-off pulls up, your tourist attraction is about to get a whole lot more touristy. And, by this time, I'm developing a bit of an allergy to the tourist hordes, so time to move on from Notre-Dame.
Even though Notre-Dame is amazingly photogenic. By the way, the Seine River right here looked a little lower than it was last week. Good news for Paris.
Next stop was to find the famous "Shakespeare and Company" bookstore, made famous during the "Movable Feast" era of Hemingway and Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Some activity in this area, but not the tourist concentration.
Here are some women using one of those famous Paris water fountains we learned about during the Latin Quarter walking tour.
Let's have a closer look.
There was a band playing just to left of this picture, playing mostly R&B flavored versions of American hits such as "Every Breath You Take" by the Police. And there was an entertaining pooch here, too, at the Shakespeare and Company area.
Very playful.
But he loved his plastic ball.
Enough time killed. It was the seven o'clock hour, which is the time that the restaurants of Paris open, and my stomach was empty. It had been a long time and a long way since the hotel buffet breakfast at the Hotel B&B in Saint-Etienne.
Time to wander the backstreets of the Latin Quarter in search of deliciousness.
Past Saint Severin, which you already saw in a post last week:
Past the Pantheon, which, again, you already saw in a post last week:
I've been in Paris too long. I'm repeating myself.
But I'm not repeating myself on restaurants. This one may be the best one yet. Bistrot l'estrapade. It was very small. Maybe eight tables inside and another out. But the food was incredible. Prix-fixe menu of course.
For the entree:
This is a baked pear, in a sauce made from roquefort cheese (and lots of cream I am guessing), served with chorizo. You wouldn't think those three ingredients go together. Trust me. They do. And they do quite well.
I'm not even going to try to give the name in French. The restaurant has no on-line menu. The menu is on a chalkboard that the waiter/server/wine steward/maitre d' brings to your table. The "English language menu" is him describing the dishes in English.
The main course was canard. Duck. I'm in Paris. This is my last night in Paris. I decided to break out of my culinary comfort zone and order something I would not ordinarily eat. I contemplated the beef tongue ("cooked for 15 hours," said the waiter), but opted for canard. In a cherry sauce. He asked if I wanted it "medium rare." "Medium rare" does not strike me as an option for avian meats. So I opted for "medium."
The duck was cooked perfectly and the cherry sauce was extraordinary.
Dessert was tapioca. This being France, this was not simply "tapioca." It was prepared with rhubarb (nice and tart) and topped with cocoa and berries. This is tapioca of the gods.
Bistrot l'estrapade.
And outside the restaurant, this being Music Night in the Latin Quarter, there was a band.
Two girls and an amplified acoustic guitar.
The crowd loved them:
If I ever come back to Paris -- maybe it will happen, maybe not -- my rule will be this: Maximize time on the River Gauche. Minimize time on the Rive Droite. Everything I have loved about Paris has been on the Left Bank. The D'Orsay. The Rodin. The restaurants. Everything that was overly touristy and packed beyond the point of fun (and the attempting pickpocketing). That was on the Right Bank. And if Sacre-Coeur was that much of a hassle because of the tourist hordes, how bad must the Arc de Triomph be?
That is a wrap on Vacation 2016, summer edition.
The bullet train from Saint-Etienne got me into Paris mid-afternoon. My flight back to the United States leaves tomorrow morning. That left some time for a little Paris-seeing. So I decided to head to one part of Paris I had not seen last week: Sacre-Coeur on Montmartre.
The Basilica of Sacre-Coeur sits atop Montmatre, dominating the skyline in this part of the Rive Droite, which the "right bank" of the Seine River is officially but rarely called.
You climb a ton of steps to get up to Sacre-Coeur.
The Basilica itself is strikingly beautiful. And there's a carousel.
France has a lot of carousels, but this was a very nice setting for one.
Indeed.
The problem is this. The area around Sacre-Coeur is absolutely lousy with tourists. Worse, it is packed with cheap souvenir stalls, aggressive salesman, and scam artists trying to pull the string-around-your-wrist scam. This is not the fun side of tourism.
No photography inside the church, so I took no pictures inside the church because I obey church rules on photography like no other rules.
But it didn't stop me from taking pictures of the view from Montmartre. Weirdly enough, even though this should've been facing south, I did not see any distinct Parisian landmarks. Not even the Tour Eiffel. Just the Gare du Nord train station, which was nearby.
The interior of Sacre-Coeur was almost as beautiful as the outside. But it was not a fun atmosphere.
Time to take the funicular off Montmartre. We were heading for the Latin Quarter, Rive Gauche, the much more interesting side of Paris.
This time we did not take just the "Metro," we took the "Metropolitain," as it was cutesily labelled at the Arvens stop. By the way, it was on this Metro ride that I thwarted a pickpocket attempt on me. For reals.
I never put my wallet in the back pocket of my pants when I'm traveling. I had on cargo shorts (with camera around my neck -- how did he ever figure out that I was a tourist?), with the pockets snapped shut. The subway car was very crowded. It was rush hour. I could feel someone trying (unsuccessfully) to get my wallet out of the cargo pocket on the left side of my shorts. He had my wallet about a quarter the way out. Luckily, it's tough to get the wallet out of those pockets unless both snaps are opened. I put my hand down and the pickpocket attempt ended. He had opened only one of the snaps. Snap on my back pocket was open (I knew I closed it when I left this morning), meaning he tried to grab tourist wallet there first, so this was a professional.
So, yes, don't ever put your wallet in your back pocket when traveling.
Back to the much nicer Rive Gauche. That is Notre-Dame cathedral, which I photographed a hundred million times during last week's visit.
But, you know when the doubledecker open-air hop-on/hop-off pulls up, your tourist attraction is about to get a whole lot more touristy. And, by this time, I'm developing a bit of an allergy to the tourist hordes, so time to move on from Notre-Dame.
Even though Notre-Dame is amazingly photogenic. By the way, the Seine River right here looked a little lower than it was last week. Good news for Paris.
Next stop was to find the famous "Shakespeare and Company" bookstore, made famous during the "Movable Feast" era of Hemingway and Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Some activity in this area, but not the tourist concentration.
Here are some women using one of those famous Paris water fountains we learned about during the Latin Quarter walking tour.
Let's have a closer look.
Very playful.
But he loved his plastic ball.
Enough time killed. It was the seven o'clock hour, which is the time that the restaurants of Paris open, and my stomach was empty. It had been a long time and a long way since the hotel buffet breakfast at the Hotel B&B in Saint-Etienne.
Time to wander the backstreets of the Latin Quarter in search of deliciousness.
Past Saint Severin, which you already saw in a post last week:
Past the Pantheon, which, again, you already saw in a post last week:
I've been in Paris too long. I'm repeating myself.
But I'm not repeating myself on restaurants. This one may be the best one yet. Bistrot l'estrapade. It was very small. Maybe eight tables inside and another out. But the food was incredible. Prix-fixe menu of course.
For the entree:
This is a baked pear, in a sauce made from roquefort cheese (and lots of cream I am guessing), served with chorizo. You wouldn't think those three ingredients go together. Trust me. They do. And they do quite well.
I'm not even going to try to give the name in French. The restaurant has no on-line menu. The menu is on a chalkboard that the waiter/server/wine steward/maitre d' brings to your table. The "English language menu" is him describing the dishes in English.
The main course was canard. Duck. I'm in Paris. This is my last night in Paris. I decided to break out of my culinary comfort zone and order something I would not ordinarily eat. I contemplated the beef tongue ("cooked for 15 hours," said the waiter), but opted for canard. In a cherry sauce. He asked if I wanted it "medium rare." "Medium rare" does not strike me as an option for avian meats. So I opted for "medium."
The duck was cooked perfectly and the cherry sauce was extraordinary.
Dessert was tapioca. This being France, this was not simply "tapioca." It was prepared with rhubarb (nice and tart) and topped with cocoa and berries. This is tapioca of the gods.
Bistrot l'estrapade.
And outside the restaurant, this being Music Night in the Latin Quarter, there was a band.
Two girls and an amplified acoustic guitar.
The crowd loved them:
If I ever come back to Paris -- maybe it will happen, maybe not -- my rule will be this: Maximize time on the River Gauche. Minimize time on the Rive Droite. Everything I have loved about Paris has been on the Left Bank. The D'Orsay. The Rodin. The restaurants. Everything that was overly touristy and packed beyond the point of fun (and the attempting pickpocketing). That was on the Right Bank. And if Sacre-Coeur was that much of a hassle because of the tourist hordes, how bad must the Arc de Triomph be?
That is a wrap on Vacation 2016, summer edition.
No comments:
Post a Comment