tbaroundtheworld

We spent our last night in Paris over dinner at Gemini, one of the restaurants we’ve visited on every trip here. Such a nice place, and some of the best Italian food we’ve ever had. For some reason, we seem to eat a lot of Italian in France, though on this trip we did honor the local cuisine twice, at the Gascon restaurant with duck and that great classic French neighborhood brasserie with Ruth. We had the greatest waitress at Gemini, from Italy and fluent in 4 languages. Having had such a great experience with the ride service coming into Paris, I used them again on the way out. Once again, the driver was great – on time, willing to chat in Franglish and in every way a classic Gallic character. Damien by name. He was using Waze to plot the best way to Charles de Gaulle Airport, and frankly I’m not sure the app was up to the challenge this morning. It routed us up the Champs, where we could see first hand the damage from the ongoing Gilets Jaunes protests. Broken windows, board...

The weather gave us a short reprieve in the later part of the afternoon so we decided to make the long walk to La Tour, because you cannot visit Paris without a visit to La Tour. It hasn’t changed much, but the security sure has – the entire base is now surrounded by 10’ high clear glass panels in concentric rings. You can enter the garden (surrounded by 10’ high steel fencing) by passing through an airport-style bag check. To get under the Tower itself, you must go through another airport-style bag check, and you must have tickets. We walked around it, because all I really wanted was a couple of photos and some churros. Well guess what, in all the confusion, the churro guy was gone. Instead, there is now a tidy food-related pop-up village of little white tents serving up what smelled like the most amazing food in the world. African, Mid-eastern, Caribbean, French, you name it and they had it. Giant piles of sausages cooking on grills. Huge paella pans filled with simmering stews...

I did a lot of research about umbrellas before we left for this trip. My experience with them has been very bad – blown out, broken ribs, torn fabric. The last time I needed one was during a downpour here in Paris several years ago, at the end of which my shoes and jacket – both waterproofed – were soaked through. I didn’t want to do that again. I finally ended up with a nice one from Davek, lifetime guarantee and a 50% reduced price replacement if anything happens to it. Including being lost. Having made a great decision, off we went. The single most effective insurance policy against bad weather is to spend a lot of money on a great umbrella. We never had a single cloudy day in Sevilla or Madrid  and never needed it once. Unpacking in Lisboa though, I noticed that I didn’t seem to be in procession of the fancy umbrella. I checked inside the suitcases; I checked the zip panels on both. It was gone. I had packed and repacked in the spare bedroom in Madrid and somehow it had ...

Yesterday ended with a threatening gray sky, and it was still there this morning when we woke up. Having no idea what we wanted to do today, we hashed around a couple of ideas over coffee and finally decided to take the long Metro ride up to the north of the city and pay our respects to the Kings and Queens of France, peacefully interred in the Basilique Cathédrale de Saint-Denis. MLW finished Ina Caro’s book “Paris to the Past” while we were in Portugal. The book is an interesting account of how she created a long list of sites of historical significance, all within a reasonable day trip from Paris via the rail system. Some merely Metro, others requiring the RER or (as in the case of our Chantilly excursion) one of the Grand Lignes. I really like her style - it’s what I like to do when writing these blogs. A lot of history, a little bit of personal spin. And so today’s trip was one of hers. I have a great app on my phone that allows me to plot the best Metro route. A couple of op...