Last Tango in Paris (with Canard)

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.

Evening Walking Tour of the Latin Quarter

Public water fountain in Paris

For my Tuesday evening entertainment, I booked a walking tour of the Latin Quarter of Paris.  Very interesting.  Very informative.  For example, Paris, as the "égalité" part of the whole  "liberté, égalité, fraternité" thing (and "fraternité," too, to a lesser extent), had hundreds of these public water fountains placed around the city for all of the public to have access to safe, clean drinking water.  Now there are less than 80 of these fountains.  And here is one in the Latin Quarter.

The tour got off to an auspicious start, as it was absolutely pouring rain at the scheduled start time (and I was dressed inappropriately, sans umbrella).  Fortunately the rain ended -- and the strikes and protests held off -- and the Latin Quarter Walking Tour could begin.

The Latin Quarter is the heart of the Rive Gauche, the Left Bank.  This is the student district as it is home to the Sorbonne, one of the world's oldest universities.  This is the Sorbonne chapel, which is not open to the public and especially not open to tourists.

This is the church of St. Stephen the Martyr, known in French as Saint-Etienne.  ("Etienne" is Stephen in French.  Think of the Spanish "Esteban" as the conduit.)  A very historic church with historic people buried within,

This is a building in which, I believe our guide told us, that George Orwell lived during his "Down and Out in Paris" period.  (Or maybe it was Hemingway who lived in that building and Orwell lived in the building which appears as a mere sliver on the right edge of that picture.  I wasn't taking notes.)  Orwell did not like Paris.  Why, you may ask, since that building looks pretty nice.  He had an apartment in the top floor (this was before an elevator had been installed) that he shared where the residents would sleep in shifts.  One worked in the day and slept at night;  the other worked in the night and slept in the day.  Not really the glamorous "Movable Feast" lifestyle.

Note the balconies on only the second and fifth floor.  (Floors are counted so that the "first" floor is the first floor off the ground.)  This is a very common architectural quirk in Paris.

And this is a view of one of the spires of Notre-Dame, as seen through a bunch of motorbikes.  So let's look at the Cathedral a little closer:

That's Notre-Dame.  And this is the famous (at least within the writer's community) Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris.

This was the epicenter of the Paris literary scene when Paris was the epicenter of the world literary scene.  It also is at "kilometer zero" for Paris, as it is right beside Notre-Dame and Notre-Dame is the true kilometer-marker zero in Paris.

This was historically the "peasant" church in the Latin Quarter, when the well-to-do could go to Notre-Dame.

This is the Church of Saint Severin:

This dates from the 1300's.  It's very old Gothic architecture,

This was our tour guide.  She is Serbian, not Parisienne.

And this monument means we are now on Boulevard Saint Michel (the same street on which my hotel is located).  And that means our two-hour walking tour of the Latin Quarter has come to an end.

Which means I am hungry.  So it was time for a very late dinner at Les Editeurs, a highly recommended restaurant in the Latin Quarter.  I ordered the escargot for an appetizer because I am in France.

It was delicious, with each shelled filled with a buttery pesto.  But I could only get the snail meat out of about half the shells.  Amateur.

And for the main course:

Penne pasta (gluten free!) with chicken and goat cheese.  Trez French.