Paris

Our last day in Paris...

We packed up the last of our things, made sure our luggage was within the weight limits (we managed to pack them so that each of our 4 suitcases was just a pound or so under the limit!), and grabbed a quick lunch at our favorite Thai restaurant in the 13th.

We wanted to spend our last day in Paris in our old neighborhood on Montorgueil, and so we went to all of the places that held so many memories for us...  getting pain au chocolat from our friend at Maison Jouvin, shopping at the different markets, having coffee or beer at the corner cafe, window shopping at all of the cooking stores, having gelato at Deliziefollie, even stopping by our old apartment...

Our last meal in Paris was at the cafe, Cafe Marie Stuart, where we had our first meal in Paris.  We had come full circle.  We reminisced over our first dinner there, how we had suddenly realized that we needed to learn French very quickly, and how far we've come since that first night.  Our trip has been an eventful one, to say the least.  Quinn and I are now engaged.  I've achieved one of my life goals of going to culinary school.  Our eyes have been opened to a new culture, but at the same time, we've taken a step back to appreciate what we have at home.  Paris will always have a special place in our hearts, and we hope to return someday in the not-so-distant future.

Paris

We were in the mood for oysters so we had lunch at L'Atlas on Rue de Buci.  They also had some great French onion soup, which we wanted to get a dose of before we left Paris.  I ordered my steak bleu (very rare), and it came out just the way I liked it.

We walked along the Seine and around Paris after lunch.  We had hoped to do some window shopping but being a Sunday, everything was closed on St. Honore and Place Vendome.

Instead, we sought some shade in the Tuilieres Gardens and had a lazy afternoon in the park.

One thing we wanted to do before leaving Paris was to try some more of Pierre Herme's macaroons.  We walked to Saint Germain des Pres to his shop on Rue Bonaparte and got jasmine, olive oil & vanilla, chocolate passion fruit, and caramel macaroons to take back to the hotel for dessert.  We ate them later over a game of pusoy dos but they still weren't nearly as good as the macaroons at Laduree.

We tried to go to the Michelin-starred L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon for dinner so we went to the restaurant at 7:30pm, which is extremely early for a Parisian dinner.  However, the place was packed, and we weren't able to get a table.   As luck would have it, we asked the hostess if La Table de Joel Robuchon had any tables for dinner.  La Table is Joel Robuchon's nicer restaurant in Paris and has 2 Michelin stars.  As luck would have it, they had a table for us at 8pm so we jumped on the metro and headed across town.  Our meal was beautifully presented and impeccably prepared.  To top it all off, we even had a chance to try some of Joel Robuchon's famed pureed potatoes.  When we made them in class, Chef told us that the ratio of potatoes to butter is one to one.  Our waitress confirmed that fact when she served them to us along with our main course.

The perfect way to end the night... pusoy dos and macarons!

Paris

Wow, I can't believe we're on our way back to Paris.  We've had such an amazing time on our 2 week buzz through France and Spain.  Each city had something special about it, and in hindsight, we wouldn't have changed a thing.

We loved...
Gaudi's architecture, le boqueria, and dinner at Commerc 24 in Barcelona...
the paella in Valencia and the beauty of the city's "new" architecture...
the experience of going to see flamenco and a bullfight in Madrid...
the exquisite seascapes of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, their festivities, and seafood, and...
the wines, countryside, and people we met in Bordeaux.

We arrived into Paris early this afternoon and met up with Greg and Tam who arrived into Paris yesterday for the beginning of their honeymoon.  We headed towards the Louvre and the Tuilieres Garden for some sightseeing and a nice walk in the summer sun.  Next, we escaped the heat at the Angelina salon de The just across from the Tuilieres Gardens. We had coffee and hot chocolate with multiple carafes d'eau to quench our thirst.

Still on foot, we walked through the Ile de Cite to see the Notre Dame and then to a nearby park where Greg and Tam took some pictures for an impromptu engagement shoot of Quinn and me.

We walked by a memorial to Michael Jackson and learned he had passed away.  RIP Michael Jackson.

For dinner, we took them to Le Coupe Chou, the restaurant where Quinn proposed to me.  We sat in the dim-lit back room, and we all had the fixed menu for dinner.

To experience a bit of the Paris cafe lifestyle, we stopped at a cafe just across the Notre Dame.  With a great view, we relaxed and ordered some drinks.

Bordeaux

After two late nights, we slept in and had "breakfast" at noon.  Maureen and Jon were kind enough to leave out the breakfast for us in the dining area while we slept the morning away.

We headed back to Saint-Emilion to walk around (there aren't many towns around the area for walking around), and we had to stop and try the macaroons and Bordeaux originated caneles.  We found the same place that Brian and Diana had gone to during their trip to Saint-Emilion and enjoyed the fresh, crisp exterior with the soft interior of the canele while we sipped on some espresso at the cafe just across the way.

We visited the wine cellars of the Saint-Emilion Grand Cru Clos des Menuts and tasted 7 of their wines.  We tried a range of wines from 1995 to 2005 and found that most, not just the young wines, had sharp tannins.

We were on a mission to visit a chateau in the afternoon.  Unlike the California wineries, most Bordeaux wineries require that you make an appointment to visit the winery for a tasting.  We drove around looking for the wineries listed in a brochure we had picked up in the tourism office.  After a couple of tries, we had no luck.  Then, we drove up to Haut Veyrac, drawn in by a sign they had posted on the roadside.  After I had read in the brochure that the visits were by appointment-only, we headed down the long driveway towards the road.  As we were leaving, someone came outside towards us so we asked if it was possible for a visit.  Julien was his name, and he was the 7th generation of the winemaker family that owned the vineyard.  He showed us around the property, told us about the different grapes, spoke of the history of the vineyard, and welcomed us into the tasting room.  We tried the 2003 and the 2005 wine and learned of how the weather affected the wines those years.  In 2003, a heat wave swept through France, and in 2005, it was quite warm as well.  In 2002, however, there was plenty of rain, which made a lesser wine that year.

After driving through the Saint-Emilion vineyards, we went back to Saint-Emilion to grab an early dinner.  At Le Bouchon, we ate on the terrace and had their fixed menu of mushroom gazpacho, duck confit, and dessert (tarte tatin or white chocolate mousse).

Back at BeauSejour, Maureen and Jon invited us to enjoy some champagne out on the terrace with them.  We talked about our day and their plans for Jon's birthday dinner and told them the story of our engagement.