Americans in Paris... Day 1 Recap

DH and I spent a long weekend in Paris, filled with walking, food highlights and lowlights, and lots and lots of butter.

Day 1:

We arrived via Jet2 at Terminal 3 at Charles de Gaulle airport. We were staying in an apartment one street over from the Rue Cler, so we called the rental agent from the airport to let her know we were in Paris. To make a long, fiasco-filled story short, we got to the apartment and there was no one there to meet us. After frantically calling and texting the rental agent for 10 minutes, the people I suspect were the "cleaners" came down and let us in. Apparently whoever was supposed to have met us was in some kind of accident (although it couldn't have been too serious since we got a hold of the agent about 30 minutes later). There was much drama and misunderstanding (the cleaners spoke very, very little English, and we spoke no French and very, very little Russian) but we finally got things settled.

We walked to the Eiffel tower, stopping at a little boulangerie/patisserie to pick up an outstandingly delicious onion quiche and a fairly pedestrian apple tart to eat in the park under the Eiffel. We took some pictures, then walked along the Seine for a while, took a chilly boat ride at sunset (which was not visible, since there were heavy dark clouds in the sky the whole weekend) and saw the Eiffel Tower light up for the night.

Without a doubt the highlight of Day 1 was dinner. In what I'm chalking up to intervention by a supreme being, DH and I walked into a fairly popular restaurant (Cafe Constant) a couple of blocks from our apartment at 8:00 and we able to score the last table available that night. Seriously, there was another couple studying the menu outside we passed while entering the restaurant, and when they walked in two minutes after we did, they were told the restaurant was full for the night. Two more groups walked in and were told the same in the following 5 minutes.

DH and I had done lots of mental preparation for eating out in Paris. All the guidebooks and online travel websites tell you that eating out is a religion in Paris, which lots of social codes and such. We wanted to try and fit in (or at least not draw undue attention to ourselves) as much as possible. We read the chalkboard menu all in French (no "menus" here... just chalkboards with the day's offerings) and used our little French phrasebook's menu decoder to try and figure out what everything was. We sorted out what we wanted, ordered in French, and when our waiter said something to us in English (can't remember the circumstance - maybe when we asked for wine) I realized that he had an impeccable unmistakably American accent. I asked him where he was from, and lo and behold he was from NYC (Queens, no less!). Moreover, when the Japanese couple sitting next to us asked if there was a menu in English, our waiter produced an English version of the menu that he himself had translated. DH and I just looked at each other and laughed and laughed... all that effort to try and assimilate, and we had a NYC waiter. It was gratifying, though, to know that we did a pretty darn good job figuring out what everything was from the original French.

Anyway, on to the meal. This was one of the best meals I've eaten in my life, no doubt about it. To start DH and I both had lobster ravioli in a bisque-like sauce. There are no words to describe how wonderful this tasted... the sauce was like velvet, the lobster was sweet and perfectly cooked, and it was the perfect-sized portion. Dinner for me was a lovely cooked filet of sea bass (not Chilean!) on a garlic-potato puree. Absolutely scrumptious! The only complaint I might be so bold as to offer is that the portion size was a little big. There were three filet "chunks", so to speak, and I had palate fatigue after eating two of them. DH had an interesting shrimp dish where the shrimp were lightly "breaded" and fried in what appeared to be a flaky filo dough. Underneath the shrimp were these little roasted potato "coins" that were divine. For dessert, I had a lovely, light Creme Caramel and DH had the richest chocolate I think we've ever tasted. Called "Quenelles Chocolat" or chocolate dumplings, they were these little, solid, egg-shaped milk chocolate "dumplings" that were swimming in a custard-like sauce. They were so rich he could only eat one, and after three bits I was similarly unable to eat any more. But they were incredibly delicious. We had a carafe of wonderful Sancerre white wine (nice and dry, very good with all the rich food we had) and perfect service. Needless to say, it really was a great dining experience. The same chef owns four other restaurants on the same street, and if we return to Paris, we'll absolutely be eating at one of them.

We stumbled home on our sore feet and fell into bed... waiting for the noise of the neighbors to die down behind the paper thin walls of the apartment before we finally we able to get to sleep...