Wednesday - Montmartre And More Modern Art

Our usual routine seems to be to leave the apartment around 9:00am to go for breakfast. This morning we were back to breakfast at our local cafe where we had been before. One big reason is that we knew it had good rest rooms.

I will miss the fresh squeezed orange juice.

Every where we went we saw cafes with their "patio" chairs facing away from the restaurant. Set up for people watching.

This is a huge piece of art in one of the metro stations. There is quite a variety at the metro stations. Some seem very old and do not have any art but the newer ones have shops or art. You do have to pay attention to where you want to go and which line, even with the exits or the Sortie. One metro stop had 8 exits. We have not always chosen the best exit.

We took a walking tour of the Village of Montmartre. We started near the bottom of the hill and wound our way up through narrow cobbled streets. Our guide was wonderful. He pointed out the homes of Van Gogh, Picasso, Toulouse Lautrec, and Renoir. He had stories about them all.

The Moulan Galette.

All the way up to Sacre-Coeur. I got a better photo of the Sacre-Coeur later.

We were at the highest point in Paris.

It was time for a lunch break at the Le Cremaillerie. We had the Renoir Formule but there were 3 choices within that.

This is my caramel custard dessert. I am trying to not bore you all with too many food pictures. We all took pictures of all of our courses and our wines for every meal. Salad or entre, main course or plat, dessert and coffee and of course wine.

The restaurant was in the artist square. So we wander around there after lunch. Fun to watch artists paint and sell there wares.

We took the funicular down from Montmartre

One last view of Sacre-C0eur

Of course there is always a little shopping.

We made a brief stop at the Trocadero on our way to the cruise. We wanted to get the Eiffel Tower from a different perspective. We thought we were going to a cafe to sit and rest but it was closed for renovations

You can barely make out the Monument to Peace in the background under the Eiffel Tower.

There was a rally going on in front of the Freedom Flame. We were not sure what it was about.

Next was our champagne cruise on the Seine. It was fun to pass by all the places we have been to. And it was a beautiful day.

We had 3 different champagnes. Our guide told us about the process of making champagne and about the 3 types we had. There were maybe 15 of us on the tour.

After the cruise we got the metro over to our next stop - dinner.

Dinner at the Bistroy les Papilles. WoW. I think that was our longest meal - 2 1/2 hours or so. But we have been lucky lately with having delicious meals. This place served only one fix price formule.

We started with a zucchini soup. It was interesting and very tasty. The waiter first set down this bowl with a clump of zucchini, crutons, cheese, bacon and creme. We all thought "this is soup??" Then he brought a bowl of zucchini soup to ladle on top of the clump of zucchini.

I guess they probably do not want to give out the recipe.

Then came a big dish of potatoes and baked cod. Even I liked the cod. The potatoes were especially tasty as well.

Then the cheese course followed by a heavenly dessert of pears, ice cream and whipped cream. Of course there was wine. We opted to not follow it with coffee since it was 11pm and we all wanted to crash.

We headed straight home after that. And we did not go for many more modern art. We just ran out of time.