We started out with breakfast at a little cafe on our block called Cafe Saint-Victor. Most cafes that we've seen have a large outdoor patio section that usually has sidewalk adjacent seating and a section closer to the building, sometimes behind a small curtain or glass wall. That is how Saint-Victor was setup. We sat in the inner most area of the patio on the deck. The waitress came out and with Deanna's minimal French knowledge and my google translate we managed to order 2 ham and cheese omelettes, 2 lattes (Cafe Creme), and 2 Orange Juices (Jus d'orange).
When the juice came out it was fresh squeezed but they only filled our glasses half full. They provided a tiny pitcher of water with it so we could dilute our juice to our liking. I wonder what they would have thought if I would have wanted a full fresh squeezed juice? I didn't ask of course and just added a bit of water to my juice to make it a bit more mild. I like full strength juice though, for the record.
Our omelettes came out pretty fast and they looked and smelled great. They were accompanied by a small green salad with onions, tomatoes and balsamic vinaigrette. The omelettes were very good. The ham was tasty and the cheese melted perfectly. I think Deanna's was a bit runny on the egg side, but mine was just fine. They also accompany the breakfast with a basket sliced baguette bread with no butter. This is another trend of dining in France. Everything you order comes with a fresh basket of bread. (yum! from Deanna)
After our tasty breakfast we did take a small stroll around the neighborhood to see what we were working with. The streets are filled with cafes on about every corner. A lot of the same menu items repeat themselves from cafe to cafe. Not a bad thing really, but hard to find out which place to try. All of the shops were open and many people were out shopping and walking around.
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| Our Neighborhood |
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| Our Neighborhood |
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| Our Neighborhood |
Pretty much every person we see on the street is smoking. The front of cafes are packed with people drinking and eating and smoking. Some of the cafes are so full of cigarette smoke that they are intense just to walk by and try to breathe. It takes some getting used to. When we were at breakfast we had many people smoking around us. The only real way to avoid it is to eat inside the restaurant. But even then some of it can drift in and usually does.
We found a small bakery and picked up 2 quiches for later, a baguette and 2 butter croissants. Then we continued our neighborhood stroll.
From Deanna--
Our interactions with the locals have all been very positive so far. I (Deanna) have been practicing my French lessons for the last few months, trying to prepare myself for our trip. I have to admit that not knowing the language has been kind of stressful for me. I have been nervous that they won't understand me and we will be called out as the stupid Americans.
As we approach each restaurant or store, I start rehearsing in my mind all of the French words that I want to say when we arrive... but usually we walk in the person who greets us says something that I don't understand and then it immediately becomes apparent that we are not locals. I feel like a deer in headlights. Suddenly I can't recall one single word in French- Ahh! But luckily, everyone here speaks a little bit of English too. So it usually ends up that I will say a few words in French and the person will respond to me in English, lol. It feels a little silly, but it is also comforting to know that we are both trying and are able to communicate with each other in the end.
So far no one has made us feel bad for not being fluent in French or for being American. In fact, the one person who did ask us where we were from started squealing when we said we were from San Francisco. haha, it was pretty funny- he was super excited about the Warriors.
End Deanna 1st Person--
The walk then took us up around the Pantheon area where they have some very large buildings, a church, a mausoleum and a square.
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| Pantheon |
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| Pantheon |
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| Pantheon |
The architecture in Paris is gorgeous. Everything is so cute it almost seems like a set in a movie. The pace in Paris is noticeably slower than that of London too. It also seems that most of the people in our neighborhood are French and are not transplants from abroad.
Anyway, back to our day.... after shopping a bit and cruising around, we headed back to our place to lounge around the rest of the afternoon.
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| Above our dining table. I hit my head on these spikes many times |
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| View from our apartment |
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| View from our apartment |
Our apartment and most apartments in UK and Paris come with front loader washing machines. They are typically located in the kitchen. Ours is right under our sink to the left. We took some time to read online how to use it and wound up doing a load of underwear and socks. The thing took like an hour and a half or something to complete. The clothes came out with a bit of a soapy feeling left on them but are pretty dry compared to clothes in an American washer. We hung up our clothes in the bathroom where a drying rack hangs over the tub. Apparently there is a negative opinion of dryers here as they fry your clothes.
The toilet in our apartment is in its own tiny closet. I kind of feel like I'm back in our trailer when I'm using it. Our bathtub is jetted, so at some point I think hot tubbing is in order.
The weather was mostly clear, cool and windy. But a couple times during the day it went from sunny to hailing and looking like the world was going to end outside. lol, but the bad weather past very quickly. As the rain clouds moved away a giant double rainbow even appeared over the city.
After laying around, reading, and finishing up those last two blogs we decided to go find dinner. We took a walk down a street we had not gone down yet and stopped at each cafe and restaurant to check out their menus. It's been a bit difficult to settle on food here. We don't want to just eat familiar things like pizza or pho, so we have been trying to find local-style restaurants to eat at.
We settled on a place called Le ValmoZZola which was positioned on a very busy corner of 5 intersections. We found seats inside and began ordering in Frenglish.
I ordered the steak dish with fries and Bearnaise sauce. The fries were delicious and crispy.The steak was sort of a poor cut of a rib steak and not a rib eye, which I was hoping for. The cook on it was much better than the one I had in London, but the overall meat was tougher and had more stuff to gnaw on. It was pretty good overall though after adding salt and pepper.
Deanna ordered a chicken and potatoes dish with a nice brown gravy. We also ordered another bottle of Chardonnay. A cool thing when you order a bottle of white wine is that they always bring you an ice bag to put your bottle in. It's very nice and keeps your wine good and cold. Deanna liked her chicken and potato dish. We finished with a creme brulee for dessert. This creme brulee was better than the place we went to the first night in Paris. It had a more vanilla bean flavor and crispier top.
After dinner we walked up to a Metro station to try to buy our Visite train passes for our trip the next day to the Palace of Versailles. The machine denied both of our cards for some reason so we decided to head home and get some rest before the big trip the next morning.
Our full photo album is located here(Many more photos and we'll be posting on facebook in one large album later):https://goo.gl/photos/rRMpDJXDXoF5QsS98
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