trip log: don’t trust the guide

Well by now we knew about the whole “Paris is on vacation thing” but very unfortunately for us we happened to be there on the long weekend that included a national holiday Monday. When we were out on Saturday and Sunday, we noticed ominous signs stating “le magain sera fermé lundi pour la fête nationale” and here we were on holiday monday. Indeed very few things were open. How can you have a hoilday during a holiday??

We went to the Bastille area again for breakfast. As usual, the only places to eat that were open were tourist traps and we almost went to one so we could have a hot breakfast, but changed our minds after sitting at a table and reading the menu. We had learned by this point that the best way to find a boulangerie that was open was to look out for people carrying baguettes and go the direction they were coming from. Sure enough, by using this method, we located a very nice and very open bakery. Stuff was selling fast, so we grabbed a baguette, a chocolate fruit thing and then bought some orange juice at the mini-grocery store across the street. It was quite chilly outside and after we finished eating we had some bad coffee and a very overpriced tourist café.

We walked to the Hôtel de Ville where a beach volleyball game (of all things) was on (it was Paris Plage week). We walked to Place Igor Stravinski where we saw IRCAM where Dan dreams of going to school/working one day. Among other things, they develop a very strange (to me) math-based musical composition software called “OpenMusic”. Dan really wanted to go inside for a tour and at any other time of the year except maybe Christmas this would have been possible but due to the holiday, everything was closed. We were able to get into the lobby but no further. There are some cool sound studios and recording rooms underneath the square outside. Above them is the ugliest fountain I have ever seen in my life.

We walked to l’ilse de la cité and found a nice sweets shop along the way. We bought some caramels, marzipan, and chocolate covered almonds that looked like olives (when Dan tried them later he didn’t like them at all). We walked to Notre Dame cathedral and went inside. There was a noon service on, though, and it was very crowded. We did see some of the naves along the sides that had been painted centuries ago. The line up for going into the towers was really long so we skipped that part. We walked to the next island (Isle St. Louis) and walked to a hip Jazz restaurant for lunch … but it was closed! We walked across Pont Neuf and then into the 6th arrondisement to the Jardins Luxembourg. This was quite pleasant and enjoyable and it was open!

We walked along Montparnasse and tried to find a nice restaurant to eat in, but the only one open (with high recommendations from the guidebook) had “American bar” written on the awning. So that was out. We began to realise that our guidebook seemed to be really aimed at someone who wanted to have the “American in Paris” exprience. We should have bought one written for Quebecers travelling to Paris, it would have been more useful. We knew we would be eating at least part of our supper in our hotel room again and the corkscrew we brought was a piece of crap, so we needed another one. We had searched in vain to find a good and reasonably priced one but did not have any luck as of yet. When we had walked past the “American bar” I noticed a Tabac and suggested we try looking for the corkscrew there. It was open (hooray!) and they did indeed sell them. They had the super fancy Laguiole ones with olive wood handles (and a price tag of about 50 Euros) on display but when we talked to the guy working there he showed us some plain reasonably priced Laguiole stainless steel ones for 8 Euros. We bought it and found out the name for corkscrew in French (“tire-bouchon”).

We found a small grocery store and bought some wine and pasteurized goat cheese (the only option unfortunately), then spent way too long trying to find the “invisible” buildling for the Henri Cartier-Bresson foundation. On the way we got quite lost and ended up in some of the newer arrondisements of Paris, which was an itneresting experience since they were not at all touristy. We took the Metro back to the hotel and were extremely hungry by this point. There was a Chinese restaurant thing across from the hotel and we ate some food there. Most of it was quite good except for the ginger shrimp which was coated in an icky syrupy sauce. In the meantime we started to notice people with baguettes and when I was in line to pay for my food they guy in front of me had a baguette in hand. So I asked him where he bought his and he told me there was a boulangerie just down the street that was open, so I sent Dan off to get some bread before it closed while I paid for supper. The really funny thing is that someone else came by when we were eating, saw out baguette and asked us where we got it! After supper we had the wine and so-so goat cheese with the baguette in the hotel.