Sunday 15th December, 2013

Very little worth writing about today. We did get up early but headed off in a different direction from the church so missed any organ music. Once again everything was deserted early in the morning as we headed back to the vicinity of the Opera to pick up another touristy bus with interesting commentary. This one took us to Montmartre and Sacre Coeur. We had toyed with the idea of getting off there but by that time the queues and crowds were massive and anyway we were frozen to our seats so it would have been hard to move. The commentary was actually very interesting and we found a lot of the history of Paris quite fascinating.
One of the advantages of sitting upstairs (and in the front seat) on those buses is that you can see over the heads of the people on the street below so we were treated to some excellent views of the Christmas windows of Au Printemps and Galleries Lafayette. They are very beautiful and the crowds in front of each window were huge of course. Decided to avoid shops.
The other Christmassy thing that caught our attention (last night) was the ice skating rink meandering among the trees, at the Concorde end of the markets on the Champs Elysée. With all the twinkle lights and skaters gliding by it was quite beautiful.
Back home around midday after the bus drive, the main focus of the day was, of course, lunch.
We decided to try a place recommended in our apartment guidebook as quintessentially Parisian and not to be missed. It was a bit of a hike but we enjoyed the walk and found it quite easily - a huge place already jam-packed with people and already turning people away. No doubt this is an indication of really good food but when we were almost ordered to hurry up as we followed the waiter and were shown to two seats in the back at a table for four already occupied by a couple of large elderly men, we changed our minds. At that stage we decided ambience was just as important as food and left. There was also a niggling memory of an article about French restaurants we had read which suggested the beautiful people are always given the front seats (to make the restaurant look good) and the old/ugly guests hidden away at the back. We didn't really want to dwell on this too much so made our way back to the lively and friendly local environment of Rue Montorgueil and randomly chose a place called Au Rocher du Cancale which turned out to be extremely pleasant, if unremarkable food wise. I do wish Rick had never pointed out the ubiquitous menu item, Cafe Gourmand. Not being a great coffee drinker I had always ignored it until I learned it is a mini degustastion of three little desserts. Thinking of which, another good long walk is probably called for!