Day 2
September 7th on which day we gorge ourselves and walk untold miles
Wow - what a day! Despite our exhaustion last night, we both found ourselves wide awake at 3am. I saw Cris take some Excedrin PM and I decided to do the same. I laid there and tried to sleep but the medicine didn't seem to be kicking in. I thought I may as well get some reading done but didn't want to disturb Cris'so one bright idea later I found myself sitting in the bath tub reading A Traveller's History of Paris.
After an hour or so of moderately comfortable reading, I decided to give the ol' bed another try. No luck. I finally figured out that part of the problem was that I was cold. So I loaded on some extra blankets and the was able to fall back asleep around 5am. At some point the Excedrin kicked in because I woke up at 8am so groggy and cranky I was tempted to toss the annoying travel alarm out the window! Note to self, next time, take only one Excedrin.
So we finally dragged ourselves out of bed around 10am. It was late and we had a 1pm lunch reservation, so we skipped breakfast. I'm guessing the croissants will be there again tomorrow :). We were slated to have lunch at the Jules Verne restaurant at the Eiffel tower so we took the metro over to that area of town and had a lovely walk up the Champ Du Mars towards the tower.
We tried very hard to take our own picture:
But we ended up much better off when we set the camera on the ground and used the timer:
Having reservations at the restaurant was great since we didn't have to wait in line to go up to the tower. We took a special elevator straight up to the 2nd level. The service was wonderful and very attentive but I couldn't understand ANYTHING the wait staff said to me. In their attempt to be discreet and non-intrusive, they were a bunch of mumblers! :)
So I'm looking over the lunch menu, prix fixe with choice of appetizer, entre and dessert. I don't really recognize any of the meats in the entre section. Turns out the choices were baby cow, cute little bunny, or stinky fish. :/ I know that I cannot abide a fish taste so I try the rabbit, thinking it will probably be okay. I have to make a split decision on the appetizers as I have spent too much time deciding on the entre. I know I don't want foie gras so in a panic I order the soup - seems like a safe choice. The waiter responds with, I kid you not, "oh the pigeon, excellent" and walks away before I even process what he just said. I lean forward to Cris, "do you think my soup is going to have pigeon in it?" We just have to wait and see. First we are served an appetizer of some kind of seafood mousse - very fishy tasting and confirms my decision to avoid the fish entre.
When the "real" appetizers arrive, they pull the cover off of mine and say "and your pigeon madame." Not only is it definitely pigeon, it doesn't look anything like soup - just five or six little pieces of meat sitting with some sort of ravioli looking thing. I'm just staring at it, totally confused when the waiter returns with a pitcher of creamy soup to add to the meat. The cream part was wonderful. The meat part, not so much. It tasted okay but the texture was weird and I just couldn't stop thinking about the fact that it was, indeed, PIGEON. I spent the rest of the day apologizing to any pigeon that crossed my path.
Next up is the rabbit. Again, it tasted okay, but I couldn't get over the fact that I was eating a cute little fuzzy creature. The zucchini tart that came with it was delicious and I ate that gladly. The desserts and champagne were great and all in all, it was a fun experience. We were able to leave the restaurant and spend some time on the 2nd level of the tower before heading off for our next stop of the day. However, I feel compelled to adopt a rabbit when we get home to atone for my sins-imagine if I had eaten all of it!
Feeling quite full, ready to burst, in fact, we waddled off to find the musee l'armee. The French military museum is also attached to the church were Napoleon is entombed so we got more bang for our buck. The tomb is ENORMOUS. Apparently Napoleon was encased in 6 coffins before we was put in this crypt in the middle of this church. We saw lots from his reign as Emperor in France but I have to say, I think Napoleon Dynamite remains my favorite Napoleon. We hoped to get a glimpse of one of Bonaparte's military uniforms so we could confirm whether he was truly a wee little man, but it turned out they didn't have any of his stuff in particular. Well, except for his dog and horse, both taxidermied.
We didn't get a shot of the horse (which was wee) but we did get one of the dog:
This cannon also caught my attention as the couples embracing on top of it seem kind of antithetical to the whole point of the weapon. I call it "the love cannon" *giggle*
From there, we headed over to Avenue Rapp to find an exceptional art nouveau door. We were consulting our map when a little old lady approached us and asked us where we were going. She told us how to find our street and we arrived without incident. Whoever says that the French are rude or unfriendly is just misinformed, With the exception of one correction of pronunciation, everyone has been exceptionally helpful and kind. The door was pretty neat although we had a hard time discovering the "erotic" motifs that made it racy back in the early 20th century. Desensitized by the love cannon, I guess.
We couldn't find the women intertwined with flowers and animals, but the door was really pretty nonetheless:
From here, we wanted to find the Trocadero fountains that we had seen from the Eiffel Tower. It was a fair bit of walking back from the military museum and the door, but we were still working off our heavy, rich lunch. When we first approached the fountains, we noticed two guys standing in one of them, without their shirts and proudly hoising their 40 oz. Cans of beer. We giggled and thought, "hmmm" they must have gotten an early start on the day. We we got closer and could see more of the fountains, we discovered lots of people wading in them or sitting on the side dangling their feet in the water. We walked around a bit and finally, despite the fact that I was wearing a white skirt, the lure of the cool water proved to be too much. I had to try it for myself! So we fashioned a bit of protection out of a plastic bag. The water was really cool but felt WONDERFUL. We sat there and looked across the river at the Eiffel Tower and the beautiful blue sky. It was my favorite part of the day.
Our poor feet got a cool treat:
We sat for quite a while before we realized that we were losing daylight and we still wanted to do a walking tour before dinner. We headed off to Parc Monceau in the Champse Elysees area. It was too far to walk so we metro'd it there. The park was really neat with its Eighteenth century obsession with ruins - fake pyramids, a fake roman colonnade, etc. It really should have been called Park Makeout as love was apparently in the air and couples everywhere were having picnics and -well- making out.
The monument to "Frederic Freakin Chopin" was way in a back corner of the park, behind the children's play area:
We ended up cutting out on the our half way through as it was quite dark, we were quite tired, and the path had taken us quite aways from the park into an area we did not know at all. So we hopped the metro back to our hotel. The plan was to ideally find a restaurant on the Ile St Louis that would be open quite a while later (it was already 9:30) so we could go back to our hotel and clean up before dining. We lucked out as we found one a few blocks from the hotel. We didn't even look at the menu - all that we wanted to know was that they were open late and we could use our credit card.
Imagine our surprise when we return and the menu looks quite good. Better, in fact, than our lunch menu. The prix fix includes appetizers, entre, a cheese plate, dessert, and unlimited beer or wine. So we each pick out an appetizer, Cris was going to have the sausage basket and I was going to have the soup of the day. We were very confused when the waitress approaches our table and sets down a tureen of soup and a plate of pate. Hmmm. We didn't give her our choices yet. We get to the point where we are ready to ask her about it when she comes back with the basket of sausages and the basket of vegetables. Apparently, the "unlimited appetizers" included all four choices!
Everything was yummy (well, honestly, I didn't try the pate - I felt I had challenged my taste buds enough already for the day!) and it took considerable restraint not to just fill up on the beer, appetizers, and bread. I really thought Cris was going to eat so much sausage and veggies that he could not possibly fit anything else in. My fears were unfounded as he did just fine. When I asked him what his favorite moment of the day was, he replied "basket of sausages!" LOL.
The infamous appetizers:
Our entrees were also great and the cheese plate held many delicious surprises - probably the best swiss cheese either of us has ever had and rumor has it, also the best blue cheese. I am allergic to blue cheese so I couldn't tell you first hand. I liked the meal just fine and the restaurant was decorated really cool - old stone walls, heavy wooden doors, etc. As great as everything was, it wasn't until dessert that I decided this was my favorite meal so far. I had the chocolate mousse. BEST. CHOCOLATE. MOUSSE. EVAR. It was dark chocolate, rich, creamy, and even had little bits of chocolate mixed in that just melted in your mouth. Oh, it was heavenly! This meal was so good overall that we will go back if by the end of our trip, we don't find anything else as good or better!
Cute decor:
Dessert: 
Well, that is it for today's report. Just to recap: Kim's favorite moment: sitting at the Trocadero fountains. Cris' favorite moment: basket of sausages. We'll see what surprises tomorrow holds - Culinary adventures, to be sure. Who knows? Maybe we'll finally get over the Shakespeare and Company and get that souvenir I missed out on last trip!
