Paris days 3 & 4:
we woke up early on Sunday to get breakfast in Paris. we took the RER B straight to St. Paul. i couldn't understand my gps directions so i went in to a store and asked where a certain street was. they guy (in perfect English) said he doesn't know where that is. turns out it was the next block. antisemitism?
you absolutely can't go to Paris and skip Korcarz. the food here is so amazing. so fresh! so much stuff to choose from! i went to the bathroom for 2 minutes (pretty sure that used to be a dungeon) and came back to see that my husband had gotten a bit overexcited at the bakery counter
Americano coffee with 2 slices cheesecake (meh) and a rose shaped pastry that felt a little like fried egg-roll wrapper dipped in honey. was really delicious. and did i mention fresh?
i didn't really want plain old coffee so i ordered us some hot chocolate. this was with a special French whipped cream on top. absolute heaven. we even ordered more of this to go before we left.
at this point we weren't too hungry so we got this scrambled egg panini to share. oh. my. god. this sandwich will haunt me until i return to Paris. the bread tastes as though it came out of the oven 10 seconds before it was put on your plate. the eggs were hatched a minute ago! the most incredible sandwich we've ever had in our lives.
i took some pics of the bakery before we left:
i had to take some real french macaroons to go:
the whole Marais neighborhood is so quaint. Sunday morning was very quiet with a few restaurants starting to open and the smells fill the street. everything is old and tiny here with cobblestone streets that are really narrow and pedestrians walk freely. every shop is as big as a shoebox but somehow is filled with jewelry or judaica or soaps, etc.
funny books on Judaism and Torah for dummies in a Judaica store
(this pic i saved from my snapchat)
in a shop in Le Marais
my husband found it interesting that a Paris fire hydrant looks like this
i included the fire hydrant pic for the boys, now a display of soap at Lush for the girls
just a random street
funny albeit inappropriate On the first Sunday of every month there are some museums that are free. since my husband and i are in no way interested in art, we figured this was a great way to get some culture at no expense.
The closest one was Musee Picasso. it's supposed to take like maybe 10 minutes to walk it from Le Marais but we took our time and made it in 20 minutes. The line was super long but it went fairly quickly. Not sure if it was long because it's Picasso or because it's free.
"Head of a Woman" looks more like a jumbo sheital head to me
most of these are on lazy susans so that's probably why they look so off. not because flat faces with eyes sticking out is art.
afterwards we walked back to Le Marais for lunch at the famed Pitzman's
I had the pizza with Camembert, Mozarella cheese, spinach, and mushrooms. turns out i don't like Camembert and i only had a bite.
my husband got falafel. wasn't anything special
I checked how far Darjeeling is from where we were and saw that we could walk it. was about 3/4 hour away and we didn't want to eat right away anyway.
let this be a lesson to all: Darjeeling the restaurant is at 1 Rue des Colonels Renard, 75017 Paris, France.
Darjeeling (sister company?) the lingerie shop is at 74 rue du faubourg Saint Antoine, 75012 Paris, France
DO NOT GO TO THE WRONG LOCATION or your spouse will be super pissed to have walked an hour in the rain with no food at the end of the rainbow.
lets call that an adventure
at least we got to see the Bastille on the way
the metro was right there so we took that to the proper Darjeeling. unfortunatly, they only open at 7pm (1900) and we were 1/2 hour too early.
the restaurant is in a plain neighborhood with nothing really interesting nearby so we just walked around a bit. side note: if rain/fog/mist bothers you then you're better off in London for there is better weather there.
we saw the original Jacardi Paris which i have no interest in but my friends were all jealous so at least there is that.
down the block is the only other kosher place in the area- Le Shine.
i really wanted to eat there too because i had seen great reviews but since we could only do one, i chose Darjeeling because what's traveling if you don't try something new and go out of your comfort zone? we had never had real Indian cuisine (unless you count Persian which is very similar).
We decided to try Le Shine and have something small
my husband had the eggrolls. says they were interesting but nothing special
i had the wonton soup which was very very good. it was perfect for the weather outside. just something to warm my bones
they are not cheap and our bill came to €24
we walked back to Darjeeling for a very special dinner. First let me say the decor is exactly what you would expect of an Indian restaurant. all colors and pillows with tassels. i loved the warm atmosphere. the wait staff was great. they got an English speaking waiter for us and he knew just what to get us when we told him we want to try authentic Indian food but nothing too spicy.
Indian version of a pu pu platter
it came with 3 sauces. a mildly spicy, a sweet sauce, and a very spicy sauce
we also got warm pita bread which we didn't really touch. they did charge us for the bread €2,80 which i thought wasn't very fair. we didn't really order it. after the waiter took our orders he said "and bread for the table, yes?" to which we said sure, why not.
Dinner:
"Rogan Ghosht" - Lamb curry- YUM-MY! soft chunks of lamb you barely had to chew
"Tikka Sabazbagh" - some kind of BBQ chicken. was good but not comparable to the lamb
"Sabzi Pilaf" - rice. this was crispy and if i had never had middle eastern food i would have thought it's bizarre to serve rice "al dente". we loved it
"Gateau Du Chef" - dessert. cake was very cold and perfect. ice cream was fine, whipped cream just looked and felt out of place.
Paris day 4:
We checked out of our rooms and had the front desk hold our luggage
L'inte Cafe gets rave reviews. being that the name is such, we wrongfully assumed they would have breakfast. alas, the hour long train ride and the 20 minute walk from the train was in vain. PSA: L'inte Cafe (and the neighboring Tibs) only open for service at 12pm.
grudgingly we walked to the nearest train and went straight to our beloved Korcarz. This time we chose to sit outside as the sun was waving merrily at us (at long last).
coming off our "exotic" food high from the night before, we wanted to order something we normally wouldn't. i got a potato thing with cheese and spinach
dh got an omelet (exotic, i know. he's a bit of a daredevil). he asked for just cheese and fried onions but it had smoked salmon in it as well making it really salty
pardon the pic. it was taken with my husband's iPhone 5
we sent both back and got hot chocolate with an omelette panini.
Monday was not such a pleasant day for us. we were really nervous because our phones weren't recieving any calls or text. We had gotten our SIM cards from Hipsim with an American number. the data worked fine but nothing else. if you called, it just rang 3 times and then simply cut off. no voicemail or a missed call on our end. i didn't really care for my own phone. i rarely use it to actually make calls. it's all whatsapp and email. my husband, on the other hand owns his own business and has responsibilities that don't stop just because he's on vacation. therefore, we spent the better part of Monday trying to figure out how to fix it. FTR this didn't get resolved until around 1am later that night and required my brother in law getting us a new sim card with our original number.
we walked around aimlessly while working on the phone thing. we took the metro to the Champs Elysee stop because i wanted to see what the hype was about. turns out it's basically 13th ave but with fancier shops and little gardens. we didn't venture in very far
best pic i have of the Arc de Triomphe. i did take a zoomed in pic too but that was a selfie
aimless wanderings around the Sienne
the opposite view of the pic above
after walking around, we once again headed back to Le Marias for some food.
i wanted to try the pasta at Pitzmans and got fettecini alfredo with mushrooms to go.
then we went to L'as Du Fallafel and got dinner. there is usually a line and this time was no different. it took about 15 minutes so meanwhile i ran to the bakery next door and down the block to Korcarz looking for french madeleines which i had heard were delicious though (like macarons) i had never had any. alas, neither place had them.
We took the RER B line back to the airport. I had a problem, we would need to take the shuttle back to the hotel, pick up our bags, wait an extra 20 minutes to take the shuttle back to the airport and catch our flight. easy fix: the hotel was nice enough to have our packages waiting at the stop so we just jumped off the shuttle, grabbed them, and continued with the route.
Next up: Flight #2, Day 1 in... TBA
Au Revoir Paris!
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