Paris: City of Love and…Food?

Ahh Paris. The city of love. Home of decadence and endless corner cafes.

We spent three full days in Paris in August and honestly, we’re not sure we loved it. WHAT!? Hear me out…

First Impressions

We buzzed into the city in our little Uber and were dropped at the door of our hotel, the Hotel Vinci Due, a block from the River Seine in the 6^th Arrondissement, in a quiet back alley of a street. It was in a great location, quiet, close to everything we wanted to do, but on my gosh, SO so so so small. The lobby barely had room for the desk, us, and our two suitcases. Once we checked in we were told our room wasn’t ready, so we had to leave and come back later (no waiting around apparently). They immediately took our bags and shuffled us downstairs to the basement to use the facilities (like they read my mind) and then out the door.

We had planned to take a few minutes in the hotel to get our bearings and make a plan, but there we were standing on the street, so we started walking. I knew where we were and what general direction everything was located in (study those maps folks!), so we started off towards the island in the middle of the river where Sainte-Chapelle and Cathedrale Notre Dam de Paris are located. It only took us about 20 minutes to find ourselves on the island, but it was HOT, we hadn’t eaten yet that day, and it was well after noon. So, after seeing the extremely long line for Sainte-Chapelle, we decided to find a café and get something to eat. Just at the end of the Pont Saint-Michel bridge was Le Soleil d’Or, a café with excellent avocado toast and burgers. Perfect.

Revived from the food and people-watching, we set off to find Notre Dame. We didn’t have to go far! The twin bell towers, scaffolding, and crane were visible as soon as we rounded the corner of the café. It was surprisingly busy there considering the cathedral is closed for renovation after a massive fire in 2019. There was a great display on three sides of the cathedral explaining what the workers were doing, how the cathedral had been constructed, and how they were adhering to the original methods to restore it. I found it extremely fascinating, but I’m a giant nerd. We’ll tell you more about it in next week’s post.

The hotel called while we were at Notre Dame to tell us our room was ready, so we headed back to unpack and make a plan for the evening and the next day. We smashed ourselves into the hotel’s tiny elevator – two people, no bags (they’d been delivered to our room), we were on top of each other, and I was having flashbacks to our elevator entrapment last summer in Spain (#claustraphobia). Oh dear. We made it to the top and took the stairs after that. It was only the 5^th floor…exercise.

N. B. In the US, folks often prefer higher floors in their hotels for the great views. The same is true in Europe, but keep in mind that the elevators commonly don’t go all the way up to the top floor. For whatever reason, they’ll go to the second-highest floor, after which you’ll take the stairs up to the top, dragging your luggage behind you. Not usually a huge issue, but don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Our room…so unique, so tiny. It was gorgeous, but oh mylanta, there was barely room to turn around. The bathroom was located up a tiny set of stairs and the room itself had enough space for the bed, barely. It was quite the circus act finding places to put our things and move around each other (seriously, are the French that much smaller than us?). But, there was a bottle of prosecco on ice and two glasses waiting for us, so we sat on the bed and got to work on that.

Is this the Magic?

We went for a stroll a few hours later looking for a place for dinner. We found ourselves in Saint Germain Des Pres and located a little Italian Restaurant, Chez Bartolo (because when in France, one eats…Italian, right?). We ordered pizzas after a short wait and barely managed to sit down before the sky opened up and poured the entire time we were there. Luckily, our outdoor seats were covered by the awning and it was just our feet being sprayed with rain bouncing off the cobbles as we ate. It was bliss. The rain stopped just in time for our stroll back to the hotel after dinner. We were hoping to find some macaroons, but no luck that day. Instead, we crossed the bridge by the Louvre and stood in its courtyard as the sun set. That place is absolutely massive (the Louvre, not the sun. Well…okay, the sun is pretty big, too).

The next day we went for a very lengthy walk. After breakfast in the tiniest breakfast room ever – it was adorable, but it made me feel like a giant American – we laced up our shoes and set off in the direction of the Eiffel Tower. It took us about 30 minutes before it was suddenly before us, along with a massive crowd of people. Busy day for the tower. Also, it’s brown, I totally thought it was red or gray. We opted not to stand in line all day to ride the elevators to the top and continued on our walk. Next up, the Arc de Triomphe. We found it rather quickly and walked all the way around it snapping photos. They appeared to be filming something that day, so there was a lot of green screen and production vehicles about. We also chose to not go to the top of the Arc.

We wandered back towards our hotel down the Champs Elysees. Busy busy busy. We veered off on a side street when Jason mentioned wanting to see where the US Embassy was. It turns out, it’s right next to the Elysee Palace, and they are NOT fans of you taking any photos near there. Whoopsie. Just to clarify, they’re perfectly fine with you taking pictures of the Palace, it’s just the US embassy you can’t photograph. Who knew? We wandered along the Place de la Concorde and back across the river bridge to find a late lunch. We ducked into a corner café (Café Concorde) for some goat cheese rolls, French fries, and a glass of well-earned wine – bad decisions were made in the dairy department, especially when I got overzealous and snagged a strawberry crème tart at Boulangerie Eric Kayser before we went to the hotel. It turns out I am STILL allergic to dairy in France – oops.

After putting in 11 kilometers (just shy of 7 miles for our non-metric-using American friends), this was the day we took some of the afternoon to get some work done. Jason had new classes to prep and I started writing for you all and updating boutique spreadsheets. In fairness, we didn’t work at all for almost a week. That is a record for both of us! That evening we had reservations at Les Antiquaires for dinner. We recommend this one – great food and service with a smile (which is hard to come by in France)!

Finally Settling In

Another day! Zero plans. We stewed over what to do for the day during an extended breakfast. Sometimes the best plan is no plan. (Jason says: this is what I’ve been saying!) I kept seeing the Pantheon pop up on the map when we were looking for restaurants, so we booked a time slot with a rooftop viewing and set off on another walk to give it a gander. Honestly, I thought we were booking a tour of a cathedral, but it turns out, the Pantheon is a museum to the heroes of France. Yes, it has been a church from time to time, but the majority of its lifespan has been as a museum. A museum with a crypt. Perfect. After a few hours of admiring the paintings and statues, and saying hello to Victor Hugo and Pierre & Marie Curie in the crypt it was our turn to climb the spiral stairs to the rooftop dome. Subconsciously, this is why we didn’t go up in the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe. However, the staircase conquered, we’re happy to say this is the best view in Paris! Highly recommended.

After walking the entire perimeter of the dome, we climbed back down the spiral stairs and went in search of bookstores (Tasha) and lunch (Jason) on our way back to the hotel. There are a ton of bookstores in Saint Germain! Unfortunately, I didn’t buy any because my suitcase was already too full. Also, many were closed as the owners were away on holiday. We settled on Leon for lunch (which it turns out is a seafood chain) because they had mussels and that sounded delightful. Well, after they brought us a basket of bread that we devoured while scanning the menu, they informed us they were out of steamed mussels. Poo. So we again ended up with French fries (why the obsession with fries?? [Jason says: because we were in France, obviously!]) and a little salad with cold, shelled mussels. It was the perfect little snack to share. We had big dinner plans.

During our breakfast planning session earlier that day, we decided to go all out and take a river dinner cruise. This turned out to be the best time. We only had to walk a couple blocks to the river to get on the boat. There are TONS of river cruises to choose from. We noticed a few the day before that were loaded down with so many people we truly had no idea how the boat was floating. The one we chose, Le Calife, turned out to be the perfect size, had amazing food, and got us to the Eiffel Tower JUST as it started to sparkle at 10 PM. I have to admit…it was kind of magical. There’s nothing like standing on the front of a boat with the wind in your face, sailing into the sunset [*spreads arms wide apart*…*cues up Titanic theme song*]. Plus the food and company were great, so it turned out to be a pretty great night for our last night in Paris.

A Final, Dreamy Stop

The next morning we checked out of the hotel after breakfast and had them hold our bags. We had one more stop to make. Remember how I said the line for Sainte-Chappelle was insanely long? Well, I managed to snag us some tickets for a time slot right before we had to head to the airport hotel. This was the ONE thing I wanted to do in Paris in case we never came back. We went about an hour early since the line had been so crazy a couple of days before, but it turns out that is completely unnecessary if you have tickets. You can show up about 15 minutes before your time slot to get in line and they will let you in at your reserved time. We made friends with the gal manning (erm…womanning?) the line since we stood there for so long. Her job was frustrating (seriously, just read the signs, folks), we shared lots of eye rolls and shrugs with her at the questions she was asked. People are funny.

We finally were let in, went through security, and walked into Sainte-Chapelle. Oh my glorious stars. It was everything I had ever dreamed of. (Jason says: do people really dream of random medieval chapels? That’s a thing? [Tasha says: um yes, I do]) The colors are magnificent! I wanted to read about each and every window, but I could only find a card in Spanish (which I can pretty much read, but slowly), and Jason was reminding me we needed to catch a ride to the airport hotel. Sigh. Fine. I snapped a photo to read later. I did manage to snag a book, my only souvenir, about the symbolism in the construction of cathedrals. I can’t wait to read it and have it as a reference as we continue to visit churches and cathedrals in Europe. (Jason says: sigh…more churches).

We went back to the hotel to collect our bags after another quick lunch at Le Soleil d’Or. Then we tracked down another Uber and were off to the airport Hilton Hotel (which was thankfully MUCH bigger) to organize all our stuff for our flight home the next morning. The Hilton is right next to the train station that takes you into the airport terminal, so it was the perfect location. It has a great restaurant and breakfast as well.

So, How Was France in the End?

The final verdict: Did we enjoy Paris and our time in France? Complicated answer.

We thoroughly enjoyed the slower pace of the French countryside. Our favorite hotel was the Hotel Domaine de la Tortiniere just south of Tours. Versailles was a dream and a great slow integration into the city from the country. Paris was a lot. It was a complete 180 compared to the slow pace we had been operating at. While I didn’t particularly love it, we did have a good time. Would I go back? Probably not by choice. If it happens to line up with a trip somewhere in the future, sure, we’ll go, but we won’t be seeking it out again. The only thing I wish we would have done is go to the Louvre, but that would have taken DAYS to see and that’s not the kind of time we had this trip.

To be fair, the architecture in Paris, and really in France in general, was unique and pretty neat to see. Everything, at least in Paris, was built on such a grand scale it really does put most other European capitols to shame. Most major European cities feel very…city-ish. Most look like they could be anywhere, at least for the most part. But Paris was different in this regard; we’ve never seen buildings like we saw in Paris. So, from that standpoint, Paris was pretty cool and stands apart from other cities we’ve been to in Europe.

We ate enough food in two weeks to cover us for a month at home and I still managed to lose about 10 pounds. I can never rave about the quality of the food in Europe enough. It’s just something we don’t have easy access to at home. I hope that listing out all the places we ate gives you ideas for places you would like to try on your trip to France. The options are endless and Europe is truly a friendly place for all diets…although they might scoff a bit when you ask for gluten or dairy-free in a place known for their bread and cheese! But, you get used to it, and they’re very accommodating.

The rest of our blog posts about out trip through France before Paris can be found here.

Holy Smokes, 2023 is Winding Up in a Hurry!

We’re headed back to Scotland in November. I can’t wait to tell you about the weather, what is open that time of year, and what it is like trying to navigate the shorter days in the highlands.

But first, a trip to New York City for a wedding, Pennsylvania to meet our newest niece, and Branson for our final boutique show. It’s been a wild year. Thanks for coming along with us!