Victoria and Kelly Go to Paris

The highlights of our trip were definitely the meals we experienced at non-tourist locations. We were the only Americans present at all of the restaurants, and the French actually seemed to respect us for finding these places. We also attended Mass at Notre Dame and loved seeing the twinkling lights on the Eiffel Tower each midnight.

Quick Tips:

We were intimidated by the transportation at first, but without a good sense of direction between the two of us, we did successfully navigate the Métro, which means it has to be easy. A lot of the taxi drivers don’t speak French or English, so we had better luck writing down our destination and giving it to them.

Best Way To Get Around:

Absolutely without question we loved riding the Batobus up and down the Seine. It was 13.50€ for a 2-day pass, and you can get on and off as much as you like. The Batobus comes every few minutes until 10pm and stops or passes every beautiful landmark. The driver will tell you what is what in English, French, and really bad Spanish. We picked it up at the Quai de Brancy at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

The Splendid Hotel was such a great place to stay that I swore to let everyone know about it as soon as we returned. First, it's a very pretty Hausman-style building that straddles a corner in much the same way as the Flatiron building in New York. It is exquisitely maintained and very chic and new inside. The employees all speak perfect English, are warm, outgoing, and eager to assist with everything and will make genuine friendly conversation with you. They seem happy to have you staying with them and will do anything to make your stay perfect.

We requested a room with a view of the Eiffel Tower, and we definitely got what we wanted. We did agree to share a queen-sized bed, but we're cousins, so we didn't care. It was worth it. They gave us what we felt was the best room in the house (207). It had its own balcony with three star-shaped lights, facing the tower and the bustling intersection below. The room was sort of triangular and definitely not huge, but it suited our needs very well. The bathroom was clean and modern and had a huge tub which I took long, hot baths in every night. They provided us with lots of fluffy towels, nice soap, and good-smelling shampoos and lotions each day.

We stayed for 7 nights, and our bill ended up being about $1,100 for the whole week. The hotel also has Internet service, free local telephone calls, and a free breakfast, which we never got up early enough to try. This hotel is also steps from the Metro, tons of amazing shopping, The Rue Cler, a post office, the Tower, excellent restaurants, and Les Invalides. It was truly "Splendid". The address is not as listed above. Someone changed it. It is 29 Avenue de Tourville.

This was where Kelly and I had our first meal in Paris, and it set the standard for the rest of the trip and was an excellent precursor for meals to come. We came here for a late lunch, cold, jet-lagged, and still in a dream-like rapture over the fact that we actually made it to Paris. I kept looking around saying "I'm really in Paris!"

When we arrived, there was a wait, and I was shy about speaking French, but the owner was very nice and did not speak back to me in English, which made me happy. Kelly learned her first new French word, cendrier (ashtray), and was amazed that in France people can smoke inside and that it is assumed that you will have wine with lunch.

We had the three-course prix-fixe, which seemed so insanely cheap that we thought there was some sort of misunderstanding. I had a salad with mustardy vinaigrette that had blood-red tomatoes dripping with flavor. That, along with the Poilane bread soaked in the salad dressing, would have been enough to make me happy. We each decided to try to duck confit, which was a thick duck leg and thigh that seemed to be deep-fried, and not in a bad way. It was really crispy and salty, and the duck meat was tender and yummy. It came with cubes of fried potato loaded with chopped, raw garlic and parsley. For dessert, Kelly had an ice-cream Charlotte, and I had chocolate mousse. We were thrilled and went back again on our last day. One of our favorite things was the restaurant's darling cat, Caramel, who is a friendly, playful ginger kitty. We fed her vanilla ice cream and she was immediately our friend.

Le P'Tit Troquet, which is very small, provided us with our best meal in Paris. It was so good, in fact, that it is definitely one of the top five meals of my entire life. The restaurant is on a tiny little side street in the 7th. Cars can't go down it, so if you take a taxi, they will have to drop you off, and you'll have to walk the rest of the way down the cobblestones to get there. Once inside, you will find the most darling, quaint, almost country-looking little place. It's delightful.

The menu is small and never the same, because they buy the food fresh at the market each day and only get what is fresh and in season. The day we were there was in spring, so all of Paris seemed to be celebrating an abundance of asparagus and wild strawberries. Luckily, these are two things Kelly and I adore. Our meal began with an asparagus-Parmesan risotto. It was creamy, cheesy heaven. I have dreams about it. It was topped with a little lemon zest and chives for a bit of a citrusy zing.

For my "plat", or main course, I had a filet of beef with mashed potatoes. Now, I know this sounds rather common, but I assure you, there was nothing common about it. It came with some roasted spring veggies on the side and some sort of demi-glace sauce. I don't know what they did to these mashed potatoes, but my goodness. I can only imagine the amounts of cream and butter involved. Kelly had a roasted lamb with couscous that was so tender you could eat it with a spoon. She loved it. They served it with a sprig of thyme lit on fire so that it gave off little puffs of herb-scented smoke as you ate. It was like having a little stick of incense on your plate and a very nice touch.

Dessert was equally perfect. I love how in France, everyone gets their own dessert, unlike at home. I had a wild strawberry tart. It was a small shortbread shell, crispy and buttery (of course), filled with tiny wild strawberries. They were raw and just topped the crust rather than being baked inside of it. On top of that was a generous helping of thick, sweet vanilla custard and then a cumulous cloud of whipped cream. If I were on death row, this could have been my last meal. Kelly had her first creme brulee here. How anyone can get through 25 years of life without having creme brulee is shocking, but if you want to lose your creme brulee virginity, there is no better place than this. It was perfect. I am glad my fiance was not with me this evening, as the erotic noises that this food elicited from me would have surely made him jealous. I want to go back to Paris just to eat here. Go! You will be happy too.

Kelly and I visited Auberge Bressane on a lively Saturday night. The place was completely full and very raucous. There were lots of large groups of people and families all celebrating different occasions. There were even dogs. Since there was a wait, we sat at the bar and had wine. The waiters were all very young and flirtatious, so we got very good service there before we were squished into a very tight banquette. If you want privacy, this might not be a good idea, but we wanted to immerse ourselves in French culture, so we were excited.

I started my meal with a unique salad of haricot verts, mushrooms, and herbs. It was so good that I figured out how to recreate it at home so I could have it over and over. Kelly had frog legs, which she tried to eat with a knife and fork before our sympathetic waitress showed her how to do it. Kelly loved her frog legs, but I decided not to try them. I turn suddenly kosher in the face of weird food.

I had a roasted chicken in a morel cream sauce. Yum, morels! It came with pommes frites, but it was so rich that I took some of Kelly's mashed potatoes instead. For dessert, we shared a plate of profiteroles with a very dark, lush chocolate sauce.

Beware that there is no prix-fixe menu here. It is all á la carte, so it can end up a little more expensive than other restaurants in Paris if you get all the courses. Portions here were large enough for us to feel quite full, though.

At the end of dinner, the wait staff brought us free shots of some sort of clear apple liqueur with ice in it for being the best Americans to visit their very French restaurant. They even complimented our French. We had a wonderful time here, and it ended up being our whole evening out. We were so satisfied that we didn’t need to go anywhere else.

Kelly and I had an early Monday night dinner here on our last night in Paris. The restaurant was very close to our hotel, and it was a very pretty walk around Les Invalides to get there. It was a drizzly, cool periwinkle twilight, and the lights on the Invalides dome were glowing golden. Since we decided to eat early, the restaurant wasn't very crowded, and we were seated immediately at a table by the window. The entire front of the dining room is a large glass window so that diners can look at the lovely view.

Kelly started her meal with a Parmesan salad, and I had tomatoes and mozzarella, which was a little disappointing to me because I get this at home all the time. We both decided to have a main coarse of sauteed scallops with fettucine. When the scallops arrived, I was somewhat alarmed to find that in France, you get the whole scallop. I am used to a little round white thing, but here it was a big round white thing attached to a green thing and an orange thing. I was incredibly skeeved out about this, but Kelly ate it with wild abandon. The fettucine was homemade and slightly bland for my liking. I was having a hard time with the scallops. They were next to raw, which I understand is how you are supposed to eat them, but I couldn't handle it. I filled up on bread, and Kelly ate my jiggly shellfish. I have to tell you that you should not take my not liking the scallops as a bad review of Le Maupertu. It was my own fault. I should have known that I don't like seafood and ordered something else.

Luckily dessert was much better. I had a warm chocolate cake, which wasn't exactly a cake. It was one of those little round patties of chocolate cake-like substance that is served hot and oozes melted chocolate when you cut into it. This simply cannot ever be bad, and it wasn't. Kelly got a more interesting dessert, and I became jealous of it and kept stealing spoonfuls of her sour cherry sorbet, which was so flavorful and wonderful that it's hard to accurately describe. It tasted like those little dried cherries that I just love, and it was velvety smooth, sweet and tart and refreshing. It was served with thin little almond wafers that went perfectly with it.

In all, I must give Le Maupertu a good rating. It had a pleasant atmosphere and wonderfully polite, elegant service. My complaint was that the menu had too few choices, which led me to panic and order something I didn't like, but overall, it was a good experience, if a little pricey. Here is the English version of the website, with good pictures and a menu: http://www.restaurant-maupertu-paris.com/index2.htm

Please listen to us and do not go to the Arc de Triomphe or the Champs Elysees. There is no good reason to go there unless you want to feel exactly as if you are in the middle of the Midwestern US. It’s ALL tourists. Everything is crowded, tacky, overpriced, and awful. We went because I felt like I had to see it just to say that I did, but it was the worst part of our trip and made both of us very crabby. It was like Times Square - big, overdone, commercialized, and all-around bad. No self-respecting French person would ever go here.

If you won't heed our advice and you must go, whatever you do, do not eat anything here. The food is dreadful, and this is probably the only place where you will find the stereotypical rude French waiters. It is because they are tired of dealing with non-French-speaking, fanny-pack-toting, tourist-T-shirt-wearing tour groups from Minnesota all day. I would be rude, too. Please, jump right back on the Métro and get out of there. My advice is to go see the pretty Place de La Concorde and cross back over to the Left Bank as soon as you can.

Kelly and I agreed that the Ile St. Louis was our favorite area in Paris, besides the 7th, where we stayed. We returned twice for the food, shopping, and of course, the Berthillon ice cream. Once you have seen Notre Dame, follow the little foot bridge over to the Ile St. Louis. It’s a very little island in the middle of the Seine and so small that it’s easy to explore. My friend Lisa, who went to Paris on her honeymoon, also said that it was her favorite spot in the entire City of Lights.

Kelly and I skipped over the narrow cobblestone streets and delighted in all the food shops. We bought souvenirs at a shop called L'Epicerie, which has an array of honeys, jams, and very unique-flavored sugars in lovely glass bottles. There is a nice scarf shop and some small cafés. We liked sitting at Flore en L'Ile, because it overlooks the backside of Notre Dame and is right at the end of the bridge on the river. There was even a man playing the accordion. I felt like I was in a scene from Amelie - it was just SO French and quaint and perfect. We watched the sunset and sighed over and over. If you go here and do not have a Berthillon ice-cream cone, then you are sadly missing out. It really is the best ice cream in the world.

Kelly had really wanted to go to Versailles and it was closed for the beginning of our trip due to a workers strike. We decided to call on Sunday and see if they were open. Luckily, they were, and we took the RER Vick train to get there. It's a short and lovely ride from Paris and once you get there it's a 10-minute or so walk from the station to the palace.

Versailles is enormous. We should have gone earlier and been more well prepared. If I had to do it over, I would have done more research, worn more comfortable clothes and shoes, and planned for an entire day. We just went for an afternoon. I also would have brought a snack of some sort.

I liked the gardens the best although they were starkly lacking in flowers. They are mostly trimmed hedges and fountains. Inside the palace is not as opulent as I had imagined. By today's standards, it's very tacky and Donald Trump-ish. The Hall of Mirrors is under renovation, so don't expect to see that. Kelly was disappointed. The lines were horrendous, and it was extremely crowded. One thing I would have liked to do was to ride the horse-drawn carriages through the gardens, but it's 80 euros for about 20 minutes, so it's expensive. Its hard to take pretty pictures because there are just too many people.

In all, it was nice to say we went to Versailles, but it wasn't a particularly moving or even educational experience. I still, however, recommend it.

Some interesting things about Versailles are that there are rumors it is haunted, especially the Petit Trianon. People have claimed to have been transported back in time and have seen ghosts strolling the gardens.

Another thing I recently read on chocolateandzucchini.com was that Versailles actually has a real, working garden and a shop where you can buy produce and products made from things grown right there. I wish I had known about this before I went.

On the way back to the station, there is a lovely crepe place. I don't remember the name, but the service was good, and they made excellent, crispy, lacy buckwheat crepes filled with ham, cheese, and asparagus.