Sunday, December 3, 2017

Paris: Old Friends and New






After a crazy and hectic year, it is time for another AOH adventure and time to celebrate my 50th birthday!  So Julie and I headed to Paris for a week of fun and exploration.  Unfortunately, we were not able to fly over together but fortunately, our flights arrived at CDG within 30 minutes of each other so we met up at Passport Control and we were off!




We dropped our luggage off at our hotel which looks directly in to the Louvre and headed to Eglise Saint-Sulpice for mass.  Saint-Sulpice is most noted for its organ, Le Grand Orgue, and its 7,000 pipes.  After their 11:00am mass, there is a concert which is the perfect background for exploring the church. 










How can we have been in Paris for 3 hours and yet to  visit a cafe?!  There was a cute cafe directly across from Saint-Sulpice so we popped in for some onion soup.  Today was a cold and drizzly day in Paris with the temp around 26 degrees so the soup was perfect!  Neither of us slept much on the flight over so we decided to head back to the hotel for a power nap to ensure we were lively for our dinner this evening.   









This fall I discovered a really cool site, VizEat, where travelers connect with locals and have dinner (or other meals) in the home of locals.  This sounded like the perfect thing for Julie and me as we so enjoy meeting people and learning more about daily life when we travel.  Dinner did not disappoint as Martine and Didier were the perfect hosts and have a lovely apartment in the 11th arrondissment (arr.).  Paris is made up of 20 arrondissments with each having its own distinct style and personality.




Upon arrival, we were offered an aperitif of champagne and lovely olive bread, chips and tomatoes.  Martine and Didier are in their early 70's and just the cutest couple!  For dinner, we started with a vegetable soup, followed by a lapin (rabbit) stew and as no French dinner would be complete without a cheese course, we had a selection of 3 very different cheese.  For dessert, we had an early birthday celebration with a tasty dark chocolate cake (my VizEat profile mentioned I love dark chocolate).  We had a lovely red wine from the Upper Loire region where Martin's daughter lives and more champagne. 









Martine has quite the eclectic collection of music so we listened to everything from the Bee Gees to Jazz to Classical.  We also saw pictures of the 18th century country house her daughter Estella recently bought so she and Rafella (Martine's granddaughter) could move out of Paris.  Martine is quite tech savvy as she zipped around on her Mac showing us the pictures.  She and Didier actually met online 3 years ago!! It truly felt like we had been friends for a long time and the 4 1/2 hours we were there went by so quickly.  They sent us off with some of the cake to have with our coffee (cafe) tomorrow morning AND a bottle of the wonderful wine.  After saying our good-byes, we headed back to the hotel to get some much needed sleep.

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