Greetings from Paris! We arrived in the French Capital yesterday afternoon as the Eurostar train zipped us across the English Channel from London in only 2 hours and 15 minutes. The Paris Metro seems to be substantially faster than the London Underground, and allowed us to reach our hotel very quickly after arriving. Speaking of the hotel, it's absolutely fantastic, a medium-sized building tucked in amongst the other apartments and shops along the Rue du Brancion here in the 15th arrondissment (southwest Paris). Once ascending to our room, the view outside through the inward-opening picture windows is excellent, looking down over a garden in the back of the hotel, and across the other buildings nearby. After settling in for an hour or two last evening, we departed and walked northward to a particular restaurant we had picked out, Little Breizh. The restaurant was a small, quaint typical French bistro/crepe shop, with a number of tables crammed into a relatively small location. The restaurant is owned/operated by a man and woman from the Brittany region of west and northwest France, who wished to bring their cuisine to Paris. Specialities of the region include fresh seafood, and most importantly, crepes, particularly galettes (buckwheat crepes), as well as farm and organic cider. We both opted to begin with a bottle of the sweet organic cider (cider could be ordered sweet, dry, or extra dry, with alcohol content beginning very low for sweet cider, and increasing as the cider became more dry). For the main course, we both chose a galette with smoked salmon, creamy dill sauce, pink peppercorns, and a small salad. The taste of the crepes and quality of the salmon was everything we had hoped for, and certainly lived up to the high reviews the establishment received on TripAdvisor (#2 rated restaurant in all of Paris). For dessert, we shared several more traditional white crepes filled with homemade salt caramel, chocolate sauce, toasted almonds, and whipped cream. I could sit here and try and describe how good the crepes were, but it would be a fruitless attempt, instead I'll continue and tell you about the service we received, which was fantastic, and far from the typical "rude Parisian waiter or waitress". In fact, when we first entered the restaurant, which English-French translation book in hand, the waitress immediately said, "we speak English here, so you can relax". The entire rest of the meal, it was hard to tell she wasn't from America, as her English was flawless, without an accent really even being detectable. The majority of the restaurant seemed to be English speakers when we arrived, but that changed as the hour grew later, and the all the locals arrived (Parisians typically begin dinner at 8 or 9pm). As an aside, this brings us back to a small story I had forgotten about back in London. While riding back on the Tube from North London on Friday night, we noticed a couple adjacent to us, with the man wearing a Wisconsin Badgers hat. I struck up a conversation with the couple, and indicated that my wife had attended Wisconsin, and sure enough, he had as well. "Small world" as they say. Anyhow, back to Paris, we lingered in the restaurant for a while, as is typical in Paris, and then walked northward until we reached the Seine River. We then walked westward along La Rive Gauche for several miles in the direction of the Eiffel Tower. The river was magnificent, with an assortment of tour boats and paddle boats carrying tourists around and providing stunning views of the scenery nearby. Simply put, the architecture in Paris is unlike anything you will see in most US cities, even simple apartment buildings seem to reflect a time where appearance and character bore far more importance than they do now in the era of commercialism and cookie-cutting. I'm certain we passed by a plethora of historic buildings and famous sights, but it was dark, and hard to tell exactly what was what. One particular statue we passed by was of none other than Thomas Jefferson himself, founder of my beloved University of Virginia; a little piece of home right along the Seine. Continuing along the Left Bank, the Eiffel Tower came more and more into view, growing increasingly massive with each passing tenth of a mile. Eventually, around 11pm we reached the Eiffel Tower, and gazed straight up at the marvel of modern engineering. We didn't ascend the Tower as it was becoming quite late, but did get several nice photographs, and enjoyed a light show that emanated from the top of the Tower. After lingering at the Tower for a while, we headed back to catch one of the final Metro trains of the night, and returned to our hotel, grabbing a quick kebab (similar to a gyro) at a late night stand along the way. So far today, we've kind of taken it easy here in the hotel, and also waiting out a steady rain which seems to have abated a bit recently. We did however traverse to a local bakery near our hotel earlier in the day, purchasing a baguette, two croissants, and two chocolate croissants. The croissant was incredible, and I believe has topped the list, at least for me for greatest item consumed yet on this trip. It's amazing to think that this type of food quality is common place for people that live here, and really nothing out of the ordinary.
Anyhow, enough for now. Au revoir!
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