La Douce Folie (de Paris)

A surprise trip to Paris for my birthday sounds exotic, and it is…but it’s so close to Lausanne that it would have been a shame to miss Paris this year.  We stayed in a wonderful Air B&B apartment on Rue des Fossés Saint-Jacques in the 5^th arrondisment, just a block away from the Panthéon.  This little block had a bakery, three terrific restaurants, and a tree-lined triangular park – all loaded with charm.

Anthony Bosson Bakery - some of the best croissants in Paris

We arrived in the late afternoon in the pouring rain, got settled in, toured the Panthéon (saw Volaire, or at least his crypt) and tried out one of the neighborhood restaurants, Café de la Nouvelle Marie, for a delicious meal from locally sourced ingredients.  There’s nothing better than just walking across the street after dinner to go home, especially in the rain.

The next morning, Doug, still full of surprises, led me to the Right Bank, stopping at Atelier Des Chefs, a cooking school on rue de Penthièvre in the 8^th arrondisement, where he had signed me up for a class in French called La Tradition – Menu du Marché.  In the three-hour class we learned how to make tarte tatin aux tomates cerises et rouget au basilic, risotto artichauts en tempura safrané et chips de jambon cru, and a rhubarb and raspberries dessert with a basil syrup with tuiles dentelles caramélisées à la noisette.  I was in heaven!

Les tuiles dentelles

That afternoon, to continue the day of maximum sensory delights, we went to a Chagall exhibit at the Jardin du Luxomberg, followed by dinner at Les 110 de Taillevent Brasserie. 

The sun came out for the next two days and we decided to see Paris by bike.  We used the Velib bike rental system, easy to do now that they let you sign up online to get a 1-day ticket for 1.70 euro.  The first 30 minutes are free, so if you swap out your bike every 30 minutes you won’t have any additional charges.  We downloaded the Velib app with a map of the city and all the bike rental locations, as well as a map of the Paris bike routes and off we went to the Bois de Bologne, sometimes sharing the bike lane with buses, sometimes with our own lane and a curb dividing us from the cars. 

By 2:00 in the afternoon we needed some lunch, so we wandered off the bike path in search of a café and found Il Russo, an Italian trattoria in the heart of a beautiful neighborhood of grand 5-story Haussmann-style apartments.  We had the friendliest Irish waitress, who put together an antipasto plate for us since it was too late for lunch.  We found out later that they filmed a scene with Leonardo Di Caprio in the film Inception at the same restaurant.

Sunday morning we walked around the corner to the Marché Place Monge to buy ingredients dinner that night.  On the way to Place Monge we stopped at the outdoor market at Rue Mouffetard, in one of the oldest streets of Paris (still in its original form before the Paris reconstruction), and where some scenes of the Le Fabuleux d’Amile Poulin fim was filmed.

That afternoon we decided to splurge and take a bike tour of the city.  We found Paris à Velo c'est Sympa!, a company that had bike rentals for 12 euros for the afternoon, or 3-hour tours for 34 euros.  The tours were sold out, so we were going to buy the guide with 3 different city tours and navigate on our own for the afternoon.  Luckily, as we arrived, a group was just starting a tour, so we were invited to join a private tour with employees of L’Acoss (described to us as the bank of the social security system of France).  The group was super-sympa, and we spent a pleasant afternoon touring some neighborhoods in Paris we would have never seen (in the 5^th, 11^th and 13 arrondisements). 

 Our bike tour guide giving us a history lesson of Paris

 Hidden street in Paris - Avenue des Glycines (Wisteria Lane)

Artist colony frequented by Picasso and his friends

 Market ingredients for our Sunday dinner - just as fun as going to a restaurant

To get home the next morning we had a quick ride (we thought) on the RER to the airport, interrupted by (surprise!) a train strike. After a quick change of plans and a shared taxi with another stranded passenger we made it back in time for the short flight back to Lausanne. Quel anniversaire!