A Weekend in Paris
Solidifying the fact that I need more hobbies to keep my brain occupied (and that I need to site-block all my travel sites as well as my procrastination ones), I bought round-trip nonstop tickets to Paris from RDU for the weekend of my birthday. Yep, we went across the pond for two whole days because North Carolina is frustrating and I stress-plan trips (also how Iceland, Japan, and Peru were booked). We'll see what happens next year, when Brendan's restaurant opens and he won't be able to fly off with me as easily.
Because we were there for such a short period of time, our schedule was jam-packed with things we wanted to do more than things we wanted to see, including a cabaret show, a cooking class (of course), a champagne tasting, and a dinner cruise down the Seine.
premier jour
This trip kind of snuck up on us, only two months after we got back from Japan and right after I had a few busy weeks at work. We got to RDU for our direct flight at 3pm on Thursday, Nov 14th, just hoping that we’d be able to sleep on the plane and avoid another experience like our first day in Dublin in 2017.
We boarded our flight, DL230, close to 5 and took off on time around 6, happy to learn that we’d land around half an hour early thanks to favorable winds. I think this was actually the best international flight I’ve flown on, so thanks Delta! The food options were surprisingly good (I really liked my grilled chicken salad) and we all got a peach bellini as a welcome cocktail, something I’ve never seen in economy.
The Eiffel Tower from the Montparnasse Observation Deck
jour deux
Unfortunately, neither of us slept much but we didn’t feel terrible when we landed around 7:30 CEST at Charles De-Gaulle airport. After getting through the easiest border control we’ve ever experienced (the agents didn’t even look at us but still managed to stamp our passports inside the grid), we hopped on the RER B train to central Paris.
Our hotel was in the latin quarter, or 5th Arrondissement, and was appropriately called Hotel Quartier Latin. We got off the train at St. Michel Notre Dame and walked up the stairs that put us directly in front of the cathedral! Even half-burnt, Notre Dame is stunning in person.
When we got to the hotel to drop our luggage off, we were lucky enough to be able to check-in early at 9:30am. After a quick half-hour nap, we stepped out of the hotel and immediately regretted our decision to not put more layers on. We picked the closest restaurant, a tiny bar with a set-price breakfast menu, and got a bite to eat to warm up, enjoying a baguette with butter and preserves, cafe au lait, and a pain au chocolat.
Fortified, we went back to our room and put on more layers to deal with the dropping temperature (the morning started at 40 F and was 32 by noon) and never-ending rain. I gave in after twenty minutes of walking, just after we crossed the Seine heading towards the Louvre and bought an umbrella, the rain slowly seeping through my water-resistant coat.
Neither of us were particularly interested in going inside the Louvre, but we made a detour to see the glass pyramid before continuing to towards the Champs-Élysées through the Tuileries Garden, jumping over puddles the whole way. We were delighted to find that it was the opening day of the Tuileries Marché de Noël! I had checked for weeks to try to figure out when the various Christmas markets were beginning, and was convinced that none would be ready so early in November.
Most of the vendors were still setting up for the day, but we were able to purchase a large cup of vin chaud (hot spiced wine) with my limited French. The delicious beverage reinvigorated us, and the two mile walk to the Arc de Triomphe no longer seemed impossible!
We reached the Arc near noon, and snapped a few pictures before moving on to the Eiffel Tower, determined to get as many sights in as possible with our limited time. After seeing the Eiffel Tower from both the Trocadero and Champs de Mars, we debated going to the Montparnasse Tower to see the city from above but decided against it due to the rain and distance.
We hiked for an hour through the charming streets of Paris and made it back to the hotel around 3pm, opting for another catnap before we left for our 4pm reservation at Dilettantes Cave de Champagne, a wine shop focused on small, unknown wineries in the Champagne region.
Champagnes on display at Dilettantes
The cellar that we did the tasting in was built in the eighteenth century, and we were one of three couples that started our champagne tasting around the same time. First, our sommelier explained why the Champagne region of France was so special, as well as the different terrains and types of grapes that were grown and what each one brought to different sparkling wines.
Our first champagne was good, and refreshing after our long day, but we felt it was a fairly normal tasting champagne and not much different than one we could get in the US. The second glass though, blew our minds. The flavor was complex, and felt like it was a red wine even though the liquid was pale gold. It was harder to drink, and we took a good ten minutes to finish our glasses but we resolved to buy a bottle to take home. A tough act to follow, the third glass was a rosé champagne with a very dry finish that we also really enjoyed, but the second (William Saintot Cuvée Prestige) was the clear winner!
After the champagne tasting, we went back to the hotel to get ready for the main event of the evening — Le Paradis Latin! One of the oldest cabarets in Paris, and more favored by locals than tourists (unlike the Moulin Rouge or Lido), the theater was constructed at the same time as the Eiffel Tower, also by Gustave Eiffel. Until earlier this year when the show was completely redone, Paradis Latin was declining, but it was almost sold out on our rainy November night and packed with Parisiens and tourists excited for L'Oiseau Paradis.
We enjoyed a half-bottle of champagne during the pre-dinner show, where an absolutely fantastic woman belted out all kinds of songs, from Brittney Spears’ Toxic to more traditional French ballads. Various dancers in sparkly skin-tight animal costumes accompanied her, and we enjoyed our starters (Brendan got shrimp in puff pastry and I got a perigourdine salad with lardons and smoked duck breast) and entrees (Fricasse chicken and zucchini, salmon with stewed vegetables) before the real show started, leaving only the ice cream dessert and our bottle of Bordeaux as the curtain rose.
We were lucky to be there when the headliner, Iris Mittenare, was performing (the show was designed around her), but I personally thought that the other stars of the show, the emcee and a ‘waiter’ that was picked out of the crowd to join the show were much more interesting characters. Our favorite acts of the night were a comedy duo that did sharpshooter and other carnival routines, and a scene with two aerial silk dancers. The show also did some neat digital projection tricks to change the scenery.
Exhausted, we both fell asleep easily by the time we made it back to the hotel around midnight, ready for more adventures the next day.
Coq au vin ballantine with gratin dauphinois
troisième jour
First up on the docket for our next (and last) day in Paris was a cooking class at Le Foodist, and we arrived at 9am to meet up with the rest of our group and get to know each other over coffee and croissants. We were the only east-coasters, with Mike and Patrice hailing from Detroit, two women (both named Nancy) from Seattle, an older couple from San Francisco, and Elizabeth, a study-abroad student also from Seattle.
Our instructor for the day was Kristoff, who grew up in the southwest of France, and looked too young to have been a chef for twenty years, with the last four working as a teacher. After we finished breakfast, Kristoff led us through the latin quarter, stopping at the Pantheon and the last remnants of the medieval wall around Paris before we reached a small market near St. Germain. He explained the five main types of French cheeses and bought some Brillat-Savarin (super creamy brie) from the fromagerie for us all to taste before turning us loose on the market while he bought the produce we’d need for cooking.
After fifteen minutes, we went back to the studio to begin. Kristoff split us into groups to prepare various ingredients, explaining the dishes we were going to make and the techniques we’d use. Patrice and I began chopping cauliflower for the starter, while Brendan, Mike, and Elizabeth peeled and sliced potatoes for gratin dauphinois, both Nancys worked together to peel the pears we’d poach for dessert, and Alina and Frank got started on the aromatics — peeling garlic and shallots.
We then chopped the rest of the vegetables, Kristoff moving us around to different groups every now and then when tasks were finished. He designated Brendan as the sommelier for the class, and we each got a small glass of Cabernet Sauvignon to toast with, using a whole bottle for the wine reduction needed for the modern-take on coq au vin we were preparing for our main course.
Patrice finished off the cauliflower soup, called Dubarry, as the rest of us worked to pound out chicken breasts to the same thickness before we rubbed them with rosemary and rolled them in plastic wrap like sausages. We did an assembly line plating of our starter, adding small cauliflower florets, parsley, and truffle oil to the puree before we sat down to eat with a bottle of white wine.
After our starter (delicious), Kristoff used a method similar to sous-vide to cook the chicken breasts before we plated again, covering the chicken with the red-wine reduction and adding a generous slice of the gratin dauphinois. The coq au vin was beautiful, and I especially enjoyed the reduction, but I think I prefer my potatoes gratin to have cheese instead of nutmeg.
Our last task was to plate the pears, a feat that Alina, one of the Nancys, and I took on alone. I toasted almonds (only burning a few) as Alina poured chocolate over the tea-poached pears and Nancy scooped our homemade ice-cream into the bowls. I loved the tea-and-chocolate combination, and we left Le Foodist around 2:30pm, full and happy.
We resisted the urge to take another nap, instead walking the mile and a half to the Montparnasse Tower, grateful that we had one day without the rain even if it was still cloudy. It was really neat to see the city from above, and we snapped a few pictures before walking back to the hotel to change for dinner.
Wanting to do some souvenir shopping, we went back to the Christmas market, now fully open and brightly lit after dark. We shuffled through the crowds, and got a bottle of last year’s beaujolais (young wine that premieres in Paris on the third Thursday of every November) to take home. We ate chocolate-covered marshmallow cookies and drank some more vin chaud before heading back to Pont des Arts where our dinner cruise was docked.
Le Calife is a small boat that can seat around 300 people a night, offering lunch and dinner cruises down the Seine. It’s unique in that it’s one of the only boats that cooks the food on the boat instead of pre-cooking landside and heating it up on the ship. We were delighted to be seated at one of the best tables on the ship, at the very front just behind the plexiglass cover (and right next to a heater). We ordered our food and wine, and toasted with an apertif of champagne and cheese puffs before the boat set sail. The wine, another Bordeaux, wasn’t my favorite but Brendan enjoyed it!
Our starters were gravlax salmon and warm goats cheese pastry (we switched who had what after Brendan realized the salmon was raw), and the gravlax ranked just below the perigourdine salad for me with a cirtusy pop of flavor from grapefruit and beetroot cubes. Brendan ordered his rump-cut steak with a medium-doneness and was disappointed to receive a well-done piece of meat but he enjoyed the accompanying potatoes as I dug into a guinea fowl quarter with an addicting creamy mushroom sauce and perfectly spiced roasted potatoes and apples.
Right as we passed the Eiffel Tower (timed so the hourly light show would begin as we approached), dessert was served! The lights twinkled and I enjoyed a slice of iced nougat with raspberry coulis while Brendan savored his apple crisp with vanilla ice cream. We made it back to the Pont des Arts close to 11:30pm and walked the now-familiar route back to our hotel. Dinner on the Calife was definitely a bit of a splurge, but we found it worth every penny.
We half-heartedly packed a few things before giving up and setting an alarm for 6:30am the next morning, to make it back to CDG by 8am for our 11am flight home.
jour quatre
After checking out of Hotel Quartier Latin at 7am, we walked back to St. Michel Notre Dame before the sun was up (or any of the boulangeries we passed were open). Disaster almost struck when the train ticket machine didn’t take cash or chip-and-sign cards, and we didn’t have enough coins to pay the 20 euros to get back to the airport.
Luckily, a pair of friendly Germans saved us from missing our flight and offered to buy the tickets on his card for us in exchange for cash. We were so grateful, we walked down to the first track we saw, and he helped us again to call us back and get us all to the right set of tracks to get on the RER B train back to Charles de Gaulle.
We weren’t as lucky with lines on the way home, and ended up waiting to check our bag for an hour (coincidentally encountering Nancy and Nancy from our cooking class) then another half-hour queuing for border control before we got through security and made it to our gate, only to find very limited food options. We grabbed a snack (and some chocolates to bring home from the duty-free store), hoping the food on the plane back would help.
Our plane home also left on time, but against the winds we were faced with nearly nine hours of flight time home. Brendan was able to sleep this time, at least, and I just watched a lot of movies and worked on my NaNoWriMo book. We arrived back at RDU around 2pm, feeling completely refreshed from our awesome weekend away. I’ve added Paris to the list of cities I’d like to live in for a few months if we ever adopt the digital-nomad lifestyle, just to be able to take full advantage of the various markets, boulangeries, and patisseries that line every street. As one of the only international non-stops from RDU, I’m sure we’ll be back before long!