France

A Parisian Date

September 26th, 2021 – September 29th, 2021

Table of Contents

Ah, Paris, one of the most romantic cities in the world. Home of the Eiffel Tower, the Lovre, the Arc de Triumphe, delicious pastry, and of course, WINE. We were beyond excited to kick off the beginning of our 2021 European Tour with this banger of a country. Would it live up to the hype?

A Familiar Delight

We started our journey flying from the USA with a layover in Iceland before landing in Paris. We had flown IcelandAir previously in 2020 to head to its home country Iceland and we were happy to stop over in a familiar airport. You can read about our trip here. After the pandemic Iceland had started hitting hard with their tourism marketing and were promoting it a great place to layover a day or two! Which we highly recommend doing so you can experience this small piece of nordic paradise.

Of course, being in Iceland again meant only one thing: Skyr had to be consumed.

The Undefeated Yogurt Champ of the World

Yeah it’s the best Yogurt you’ll ever eat. Creamy, sour, just enough sweetness, and fruity if you get the flavored one! Isey, the brand pictured here was one we frequently grabbed as a snack on our 2020 trip. After our yogurt itch was scratched, we were back on the plane heading to the city of lights.

A Magical Hotel

Our arrival into Paris wasn’t so smooth. We landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) on time, but the gate wasn’t ready so we had to taxi around for 45 minutes before getting off. Then, after all that waiting, the luggage took another 30 minutes to arrive at baggage claim. And if that wasn’t enough, the personal driver we hired on booking.com replied to one of our texts and apparently was not patient enough to wait for us and bailed. An expensive mistake we won’t ever make again. All we wanted was to get to our hotel and start eating baguettes.

We ended up getting an Uber and made it to the hotel. Seeing the location of where we’d be staying immediately lifted our spirits. I mean, if this was the view from the street imagine what the view from our balcony would be!

The Big Tower Picnic

The first thing you think of when you think of France is The Eiffel Tower, and because it was so close to our hotel, it was the first thing we went to see. It was about a 15 minute walk, but first we needed to grab some picnic essentials.

We first secured a baguette from the local bakery, Boulangerie Bonon. The smell of fresh pastry is a smell you never forget. The yeasty air, the hot ovens, and the sound of bread crunching as it is sliced, absolutely brilliant.

Tip: Always get your bread from a Boulangerie. Boulangerie is French for bakery, this typically means that the bread is freshly baked in the store. You always want fresh bread over anything prepackaged or baked the day previous, the difference in flavor and structure is stark!

We then stopped by the nearest Nicolas Kleber wine store, and picked out a bottle of Red Wine. We weren’t too sure about what wine to pick but, its France, our choice wouldn’t likely be a bad one. We grabbed a Bordeaux and our French picnic was complete.

Seeing the Eiffel Tower is really one of those ‘Holy Shit’ moments, similar to that of seeing the Colosseum. Standing in front of you this tall pointed structure, one that you you have seen in countless movies, pictures, and any other possible media, it really was an unreal moment. Emily and I took a long and silent couple seconds to take it all in. We were really in Paris in front of the Eiffel Tower. It was hard to comprehend it was all real.

Just like the movies

Our first evening in Paris was filled with plenty of those magical moments that you remember for the rest of your life. We had a reservation for one of the most famous café’s in all of Paris: Les Deux Magots. This café became famous during the 1920’s as it became a hotspot for artists. Their patrons most famously included Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Julia Child, and James Joyce. So, as you could guess, we were quite excited.

We turned up to, what I always imagined as, the classic French dining experience. The atmosphere was bustling. All around the café people were talking, laughing, smoking, and drinking wine. Waiters hustled back and forth from kitchen to table. The honking of cars and clanking of plates and glasses added to the orchestra. It was electric.

A charismatic waiter donned in a white shirt and black bowtie took us to our table. We chose to sit outside in the garden area.

The waiter helped us pick out some wines and we both got a Bordeaux (this confirmed we made a good choice earlier, phew!). Shortly into our wine indulgence, as if the night couldn’t get more magical, a jazz band started playing out front. It couldn’t have been more perfect, the atmosphere was more than we could have ever hoped for.

Our waiter wanted to take this of us. 10/10 photography!

For food, we both got the same dish, Roasted chicken with a creamy jus of mustard seeds and pan fried vegetables. The chicken was perfectly browned and juicy. It melted in our mouths with the flavor of butter and thyme. The vegetables sat in a rich jus that pulled everything together perfectly. For dessert, we elected for a Raspberry Macaron. French patisserie is unmatched so having a macaron in Paris was no question. It was perfectly tart and creamy with the freshness of the raspberry carrying through every bite. I’ll let the pictures do all the talking. It was one of our favorite meals of the entire trip not only for the food but for the undeniable “frenchness” of it all as well.

That night, we ended up getting pretty tipsy from the wine, and I ended up taking possibly the greatest selfie of all time.

Hard to beat that.

Breakfast of Champions

We woke up early and caught an Uber over to the opposite side of town. There was only one thing on our mind: Croissants. We chose to go to La Maison d’Isabelle, winner of the 2018 best butter croissant in Paris. And we would soon see why.

As soon as we got out the Uber, that smell of fresh pastry filled the air again. We stepped in line and noticed something concerning, there were no croissants left. We began to panic. We cannot leave Paris without consuming a croissant! As the person in front of us paid, we began to accept the fact that there would be no award wining croissants for us. But, as if by divine intervention, a fresh batch of beautiful buttery croissants were brought out. We got 1 each and also a baguette because, why not?

One of the advantages of going to La Maison is that there’s a farmers market right out front. We stopped by one of the local farmer’s stalls and picked up some fresh raspberries from a grumpy farmer, who was not happy to serve us. Our breakfast was complete.

We took a quick stroll to the next destination, walking past some drunk Englishmen at a pub at 10am on our way (Man City were playing PSG in the Champions League later that night. Maybe that explains why the farmer wasn’t happy to hear an English voice). We then plopped down in front of a little old church called Notre-Dame to eat our breakfast.

I didn’t think it was possible for a croissant to taste so good. They were perfectly toasted, light, but still buttery, and the lamination of the layers were unlike any croissant I had consumed before. Maybe with the thoughts of the macaron from the night before we thought raspberries would be the perfect pairing. We weren’t wrong. Something about fresh fruit and a delicious pastry just hits hard. It would be worth flying to Paris just to experience.

We were in such awe of Notre Dame. It was another one of those unbelievable sights you only see in the movies and there it was standing before us. However, just two years prior the world wasn’t quite sure it would still be standing.

On April 15th, 2019 Notre Dame suffered from a devastating fire, one that made international news. Emily remembers it clearly, she was in her Theatre History class with the livestream on the classroom TV and everyone silent as they watched this piece of art, this piece of history, burn.

Due to the damaged ceiling, collapsed spire, and extensive indoor damage we were unable to see the beauty of Notre Dame from the inside, as many people may not be able to until they restore this historic cathedral. But in that moment we were thankful to be able to see its beauty from afar and it was still breathtaking.

An Old Bookstore

After breakfast, number one on our list for the day was to visit the famous, Shakespeare & Company. During the 1920’s, the original Shakespeare & Company was a hotspot for many famous writers and poets, such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein. The current iteration of the store was built in the 1950s and modeled after the original store (which closed in the 1940s).

We walked in through the small doorway and were greeted with books everywhere you looked. The entire store is, quite literally, filled from head to toe with books of all kinds. Old, new, classic, modern. It was all here.

There’s even a cat that sits upstairs on his bed, getting pet by everyone that comes into his room. He was quite literally a ‘cat on a hot tin roof’ with the window open for him to get some fresh air. He was very friendly and clearly living his best life.

The Shadow of Notre-Dame

Everyone has heard of Notre-Dame, the larger than life Cathedral located in the heart of Paris, but what if I told you there was another, equally as beautiful (in our opinion) Cathedral located just a couple minutes walk from it? Well, there is. And it’s called Saint Chapelle.

We walked across one of the many bridges across the River Seine and ended up at a police blockade. Turns out the trial for the 2015 Paris Terrorist attacks was happening in the Palais de Justice, which happened to be right next to our Cathedral. The place was swarming with heavily armed guards, news cameras, and people in suits making their way through the blockade. We bought our tickets online and showed the guards, who let us in through the same entrance. We couldn’t help but chuckle at the contrast between tourists and stern-faced attorneys making their way through the blockade.

An important trial was happening in here!

After navigating through the police and fence guarding the buildings, we saw what we came for. First impressions – just your standard catholic church.

However, its monotonous outside was deceiving, because inside was the most beautiful collection of stained glass windows you could ever imagine. Blues, and reds cascaded the walls bordered by the shiniest gold giving the room an elegance and regality. The detail in the windows were intricate and left us truly speechless. The pictures cannot compare to the real thing.

Surrounded by beautiful stained glass windows

Sainte-Chapelle was constructed all the way back in 1248. It was ordered by King Louis IX, who wanted a place to put his collection of Christian relics. The most notable item he placed here was the Crown of Thorns. Pretty cool right? It’s like everything in Paris has some long lineage of history to it.

We walked down the stone, spiral staircase and there he was, the man himself, King Louis IX.

COVID-19 Fun

Then, came a moment we hadn’t really prepared much for. In fact, we completely winged it, and looking back, probably wasn’t smart. Because of COVID-19, most of Europe required a negative COVID test done 48 hours before entry in to their country. We needed to now get our COVID test done for the country we were heading to the next day. The thing is, we hadn’t planned where we were going to get our tests.

Luckily for us, near Sainte-Chapelle was a tent that was offering rapid tests. Great, we’d just do that. We talked to the nurse and she explained the whole process to us. Except she ended by saying we could only pay in cash. We didn’t have cash. But okay, we’ll just find an ATM and get some cash out. We tried 2 ATM’s, neither of which accepted Discover. At this point, morale was low. But to our luck (actual luck this time), we stumbled across a Pharmacy that happened to be doing rapid tests. The physician was super efficient and we received our negative test documents in seconds.

Glass Pyramid

The banks of the Seine River are dotted with flat, green pallets that fold out into stores. This is where locals sell all kinds of goods, from books to posters to vinyl records. It’s a pretty cool place to get a knick knack to bring back home.

This is where we also walked across the famous, Pont des Arts, where people would attatch locks to signify their love for each other (This is now illegal and they even have police watching to stop people from doing it!).

After walking through a tunnel, the light hit us as we emerged, and bam, there it was, that glass pyramid. Seeing The Louvre is another of those ‘holy shit I’m in a different country’ moments. All the movies we’d seen it in, all the photos, all the news broadcasts were all there in front of us.

The views from here were astounding and we decided to sit on a bench and eat the rest of our baguette as we watched pigeons fly around the courtyard.

The most famous glass pyramid in the world!

A Stroll through the Gardens

By this point we had already walked a fair distance and decided it was time to make our way back to the hotel, which was only a small 6 miles away. This loop back would take us through the Tuileries Gardens.

The entrance to the gardens is marked by a grand arch. The Arch de Triomphe du Carousel was built in 1808 to celebrate Napoleon’s victories.

The gardens were beautiful, we were just casually strolling and taking it all in. Out of the corner of her eye, Emily spots someone she thinks she recognizes. She does a double take and turned to me and said “I think that was Avan Jogia.” It was indeed. The Instagram sleuth had found out.

Somehow, someway, we missed that this week was Paris fashion week. As we turned the corner of a large building we started seeing people dressed nicely and a lot of press. To our surprise we turned around and found ourselves in front of the DIOR show that had just finished.

We were suddenly swarmed by models and influencers and we stood out like a sore thumb. How did we get in here? How do we get OUT of here? Also, what the hell? After snapping a few pictures, we scurried our way through security and laughed about it the rest of the day.

National Dish!

Our last night in Paris called for one thing, our mission goal: National Dishes. France is renowned for many foods: baguettes, crepes, and many others, but the official national dish is Pot au Feu.

We opted against getting an Uber there and walked through the bustling Paris streets to our destination. Paris really comes to night at life. It feels like the whole city comes out. Tiny backstreet restaurants become packed with people drinking wine, smoking, and eating.

We decided on trying this delicacy at the aptly named, Le Roi du Pot au Feu, a traditional looking Parisian café.

Inside was a single waiter standing behind the bar who barely spoke English. He daintily directed us to a table and took our order: 2 servings of Pot au Feu. On the table was a bottle of wine, free of charge. This was real experience we were searching for.

Pot au Feu is a fairly simple dish that just works. Tender beef in a hearty stew with potatoes, mixed vegetables, and a serving of bone marrow. It was delicious, and a great ending to our time in France.

Our waiter also gave us a tip on how to eat the bone marrow. He brought of some toasted bread and said to scoop some bone marrow out and put it on the toast with a sprinkling of salt. It was super tasty. A flavor profile we hadn’t taste before.

The End of Our Date

The next day we would wake up early to get an Uber to the train station before our journey to the next destination.

Did it go smoothly? Was it a disaster? Find out next time with Luxembourg.