Our Paris Adventure: Day Two (14 February)

As some of you noticed when I told you about our trip, our visit coincided with Valentine’s Day—a perfect excuse to enjoy the culinary delights of Paris, don’t you think? We started our hunt for all things yummy with a walk through Luxembourg Gardens, just moments from our hotel, and spectacular even on a rainy morning.

Thankfully, it wasn’t windy enough that we had to heed this warning:

Our first stop on the other side of the gardens was a wonderful pâtisserie, Sadaharu Aoki.
His shop was filled with incredible edible works of art and it took us (okay, me) a long time to pick which treats to buy.

Next stop: Christian Constant for chocolates

and then Jean-Paul Hévin for more chocolates!


In both chocolate shops, instead of saying, “Je voudrais un petit sac” (I would like a small bag), I dreamt about saying, “Je voudrais une grande boîte” (I would like a large box), but still came away with enough treats to take care of the dessert part of Valentine’s Day.




On our way back to the hotel to drop off our treats, we went a different way through Luxembourg Gardens and came across a unique sight, at least to Canadians who aren’t used to the idea of urban beekeeping—the Luxembourg apiary. I’m a bit (okay, a lot) nervous around bees, and was very glad that the apiary wasn’t all abuzz on this cool winter’s day:
By the time we left the hotel, we were overdue for lunch and decided to treat ourselves to a special Valentine’s Day meal. I picked L’AOC as just the place. It’s a traditional bistro that specializes in using ingredients designated AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée), which uses strict regulations for labelling agricultural products as authentically regional in terms of variety and origin. AOC is the highest designation that produce in France can achieve, and is most commonly encountered in French wine; L’AOC uses the AOC philosophy as its starting point and brings it to life in a warm, convivial room (two separate rooms, actually: one smoking and one non-smoking) positively filled with charming touches such as real family hierlooms, blackboard menus that are propped up on a chair beside your table while you choose, and a very visible husband-and-wife team who seemed to personally know more than half of our fellow diners. The restaurant was packed when we arrived toward the end of the Parisian lunch hour (1:30 P.M.), but by the time we left, the owners were slowly tidying up around us and the only other diners left in the room—a French family who went through seemingly endless courses of food with no end in sight.

Now I love bread and the bread at this meal was stellar. Artisan-made in-house, our waiter informed us that it would be a minute for bread because he had to start a new loaf. He went into the back, brought out a baguette, and strode across the length of the dining room toward the front door, where the bread-cutting station was:

A few swift cuts and he popped our slices into a burlap bag and brought it to our table.
The bread was everything bread should be: textured, nuanced, and full of flavours that were just beyond detection—a little bit of nuttiness, a hint of sourdough, and something almost mushroom-like in its earthiness—in short, really really great bread. Although the desserts looked fantastic, we already decided that we were going to have round #2 of Berthillon today, so we crossed the Seine and walked down Rue Saint-Louis en L’Île on our way to ice-cream bliss:





We spent the late afternoon wandering around the Marais and browsing in some shops between the Marais and the Louvre.


We stumbled across another chocolate shop that was on my list, but since we already had plenty of chocolate waiting at the hotel, I settled for a long look in Michel Cluizel’s window

before a cappuccino break at our favourite Paris coffee roaster, Café Verlet.

With Valentine’s Day in mind, we decided to take an evening boat cruise on the Seine—even though we had taken the same cruise last time, we had done so in the day and were looking forward to being on the Seine at night. Our 8:00 P.M. boat departed from the Pont Neuf (“New Bridge”), which is actually Paris’s oldest bridge, first completed in 1607:
The one-hour cruise was lovely and we sat bundled up on the open upper-deck, going under bridge after bridge and enjoying the Seine-level view of the wonders of Paris.
















Before the cruise started, a photographer took photos of all the passengers; afterwards all the photos were on sale at the typical tourist-inflated price of 10€ each (about $15 CAD). Bob was a bit mortified (“Are you allowed to do that?”) but I took a photo of our photos, which didn’t turn out too terribly. Sad to think that they were just thrown away after the cruise:
Hungry and a bit chilled after our windy hour on the Seine, we headed to the warmth of dinner at a bistro that was founded in 1845, with an interior almost perfectly preserved from more than a century ago.

If it was good enough for James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway in their day, surely it would be good enough for us. We came away happy, warm, and full—with just enough room after our walk back to the hotel to dig into our Sadaharu Aoki treasures, which were pretty spectacular. (The chocolates would have to wait until tomorrow.) All in all, I have to say that it was the best Valentine’s Day ever: a day of wandering through Paris, complete with great food and an evening cruise on the Seine—somehow I don’t think we’ll be able to top that next year . . .