Saint Germain des Prés

We spent much of the day walking around Saint Germain des Prés and hanging out at cafés. We had our first café crème at Café de Flore. It must have been the most expensive cup of coffee I've had in my entire life... 15 euros for two cups of coffee!! It was good but not thaaaat good. This was the first tourist "rip-off" of our life in Paris. Oh well... c'est la vie.

Along our walk, we stopped at the Village Voice bookshop, on Rue Princesse to peruse and warm up a bit. Everything was in English (yay!), but we didn't end up buying anything since the appartment came fully stocked with a bookshelf full of travel guides and novels.


Our "treat" for the day was our stop at Poilâne, a boulangerie / patisserie famous for their apple tarts and butter cookies. It seemed like the perfect place for me! For the past couple of months, I've been obsessed about making the perfect apple tart and the perfect shortbread cookies. I can't even count how many apple tart variations I've made (Quinn has been my ever so gracious taste tester). I could open up the Poilâne of California! To the right is a picture of some apple tarts I made in SF one afternoon.

Poilâne's apple tart was not too tart, not too sweet, perfectly flaky, and oh so good. We should have passed on their butter cookies; they tasted very ordinary and are nothing to write home about.

It took all of my willpower not to stop at all of patisseries we saw on the way to Poilâne: Pierre Hermé, Gérard Mulot, Eric Kayser, Fabien Ledoux, and Ladurée. I'll have to save those for another day.

The next stop was Le Bon Marché, which is sometimes regarded as the first department store in the world. It was much like any other major department store we have in the States... Quinn was hungry so we went searching for La Grande Épicerie. Our walking tour guide referenced it as a "magnificent food emporium" so I was expecting some sort of massive food court, but it was just a little café in the back of the store. We relaxed there for a bit as we daydreamed and talked about some small-business ideas.

Our journey home consisted of multiple stops trying to find a place where we could buy the Paris Museum Pass. We stopped at the Musée Delacroix, the Louvre, and a Paris tourist office. Third time's the charm! We were able to finally buy our 4-day Paris Museum Pass at the tourist office on Rue de Pyramides. At least we were able to get our first peek inside the Louvre!