Day 2 (2025) - Dive Right In

Today was a day to explore. Our first stop was the Montmartre area of Paris. We took the metro from the hotel and got off at the Abbesses station, as this was described in my research as the "heart of Montmartre." While that was true, what none of these web sites that suggested this station as the starting point happened to mention was the 180 steps that were required to get from the train to the "heart of Montmartre." After trudging up the many, many steps, we emerged (tired but triumphant) into Montmartre.

We really didn't have any particular plan, route or destination in mind. The only place we wanted to find at some point was a gluten-free bakery that I had noticed on Google Maps when doing my planning. Turns out this place was also mentioned in a blog that Debbie had read. So since we didn't have any other goal in mind we looked up the address of the bakery and headed there. After a short walk we found the bakery, looked in, but didn't buy anything right away. 

We went on our way and kept exploring, yet somehow the gluten-free gods must have been guiding us because within a short period of time, lo and behold we found ourselves back in front of the bakery. This was clearly a sign. And who are we to ignore signs. So this time in we went. Debbie (stunningly) chose a pain au chocolat and I chose some sort of variation of the same. I think mine had walnuts on it, but all I know was that it was a little different.

As you may be aware, typically gluten-free means not as good. But in this case that would be wrong. These were outstanding! It took some serious will power not to get something else. We considered buying a loaf of bread to eat along the walk, but didn't.

We walked around a bit more, mostly to work off the pain au chocolats (or is it pains au chocolat?), and after a while started to get hungry for lunch. We did a little Googling and found a few places that looked interesting. I set up the route on Maps and away we went. We found the first place and checked out the menu but decided to check out door #2. When we got to the second place, La Bossue, we decided to try it.

They seated us again at a cute little round table, with chairs barely above the ground. The decor was very cute and, according to Debbie, "Friends-like." Her observation proved accurate when we looked at the menu and a few of the items were subtitled "The One With The ..." And if you know Friends, you know that every episode's title starts with "The One With The ..." 

We had a lovely lunch, well that was until Debbie asked the waitress for hot water. She looked at Debbie with a very confused face and said something like "just hot water?" Debbie said yes whereby the waitress said "No tea?" Debbie said "That's OK, I have my own tea." The waitress then looked like this was the most offensive thing she had ever heard and said "No, you can't do that. We have our own tea." In order to keep what is left of world peace, Debbie passed on the hot water and we finished up and paid.

We then headed towards Sacré Cœur with the idea of checking it out from the outside then catching a metro to the Le Marais area.

We trudged up the hill of Montmartre towards Sacré-Cœur, and walked along the Instagram-famous street, Rue de l'Abreuvoir, and reached the Sacré-Cœur area. 

This area has a ton of artists in a square right outside the basilica. We walked around the artist area for a few minutes and then headed towards the metro. 

Unfortunately, the station we needed to take to get to Le Marais was a bit of a walk and eventually took us into an area that, let's just say, was very different from Montmartre. But we got the station and headed to Le Marais. 

There wasn't anything we really wanted to see in the area - that is except for a well-known falafel stand, L'As Due Falafel. More than one person had said we had to try the falafel there, so who are we to say no? We strolled around Le Marais with the falafel stand in mind and after a short time we arrived at the stand. There was a line, but not a very long line, and there was a guy taking pre-orders from those in line, so we didn't have a lot of time to check out our options. Thus, under immense pressure we simply ordered two falafel pitas.

Our first thought upon getting them was that one would have been enough to share, and the second thought was how do we eat this? This is where our strategies diverged. Debbie asked for a fork so should could very carefully and cleanly eat the sandwich. I, on the other hand, basically stuck my face into and bit down. While her way was most definitely neater, my way worked just fine, if I may say so myself. And not only did I enjoy it my way, so did all of the pigeons that filled up on the scraps that I ended up dropping on the ground. Oh, and that first thought that we could have shared one? Yeah, that was incorrect. We each polished off most, if not all of our own.

After we finished and I hosed myself down, we headed back to the hotel to await the arrival of the first addition to our trip - Amanda was flying in from Vienna. We got back to the hotel a little before she arrived and greeted her with long-awaited hugs and kisses when she came into the lobby. We headed up to our rooms, really a two bedroom suite with a shared hallway, and freshened up before we headed out to dinner.

For dinner I had made a reservation at a restaurant my parents frequent when they come to Paris, Le Souffle. And if the context clue of the name wasn't very obvious, they are known for their many types of souffles. You can get them as appetizers, main courses and desserts, and that's exactly what I did. After walking through the Tuileries Garden we arrived at the restaurant basically as it opened and were seated right away.

Amanda got a salad appetizer and Debbie passed on a first course, so I was the only one going for the trifecta. I got a blue cheese souffle appetizer, a chicken and mushroom soufflé for my main course and an apple soufflé for dessert. After dinner I kinda felt like one big combined soufflé had formed in my stomach. Amanda got some sort of spinach based soufflé for dinner and a chocolate soufflé for dessert, while Debbie made the rookie mistake of getting an artichoke and haddock soufflé for dinner, and the pear and chocolate soufflé for dessert. After a few bites of her dinner she recognized the error of her ways, so I shared mine with her. While each of the soufflés, other than Debbie's, were good, I think we all felt a little overdosed on soufflés.

After dinner we tried to walk back through the Tuileries again, but it was closed for the evening so we had to walk around. We were able to see the Eiffel Tower lit up on our walk, and we made a pact to get a better view tomorrow night. Each night at the top of the hour the tower sparkles for 10 minutes and it's evidently a big deal and Amanda felt she could not leave Paris without the perfect Instagram view. So that's the plan for tomorrow night. As for tonight, we souffléd, I mean sauntered, home and called it a night.

Brian arrives tomorrow (Saturday) morning early and we have a full day of sightseeing planned, including the Rodin Garden, Notre Dame and going to the top of the Eiffel Tower. 

Day 1 (2025) - 7 Years of French Down The Drain

 After a 6 year hiatus, the Volk family is embarking on another "road" trip - but this one though will not be traversed in our old trusty minivan but via a series of plans to, within and from Europe. Amanda is studying abroad in Vienna for the spring semester so we are off to Europe to visit her. The Chief Logistics Officer ("CLO") of the family was put to the test in organizing the plan for the trip, as there were a lot of travel complications. We decided to visit a few other cities over the weekends of the trip, so the plan was for Debbie and me to fly to Paris on Wednesday, Amanda will join us in Paris on Friday afternoon after her morning class, Brian will join us Saturday morning after a red-eye on Friday, the four of us will then fly to Vienna on Sunday afternoon, Ethan will be joining us in Vienna on Monday after a red-eye from Orlando (where he has a bachelor party weekend - don't ask), we will all explore Vienna Monday-Thursday when we all fly to London through Sunday, then we will spend a long weekend in London and all of us will return to our collective homes on Sunday afternoon.  Oh, throw in there that we needed multiple flights from Paris to Vienna and then London to New York since we would not all be together for those legs. See, I wasn't lying about the logistics the CLO had to coordinate.

The one saving grace on the logistics was that for the first time since we had kids, Debbie and I would break our rule and fly together to Paris. So, thanks to VERY hard earned Capital One miles, she and I flew business on Air France on Wednesday and arrived in Paris on Thursday. 

After a basically uneventful, yet not extremely restful, flight we arrived at our lovely hotel, Victory Palace. 

Unfortunately, since we arrived at the hotel around noon the rooms weren't ready. So we left our bags at the hotel and went to explore the area and find someplace to eat. After walking a bit and checking out a bunch of places, we decided to have lunch at a lovely cafe, Carousel de Rennes.  They sat us at a cute, little round table and we had a nice lunch. My lunch was a very typical French meal - cheeseburger with fries (not French fries, since we are in Paris, just fries). Debbie ordered avocado toast, which came with some other veggies. The meals were very good, even if Debbie left the toast part of the avocado toast uneaten.

After lunch we walked back to the hotel around 2pm to see if our rooms were ready and grab a scarf for Debbie and a sweater for me, as it had gotten a little chilly out. The rooms were still not ready, but we grabbed the clothes and headed to the metro to visit the Musée d'Orsay. As you or may not be aware, the Volk clan is not really a big museum family, yet the museum was highly recommended by many travel sites and friends as well. So in we went. When we got inside we got a museum map and Debbie asked a woman at the information booth where someone with an hour to spare should go in the museum. She told us to start on the 5th floor (impressionists) and then go to the first floor.

We are not really an art museum family, or couple, but this museum lived up to the hype. There were Van Goghs (or as they pronounced it on the audio guide we purchased - "Van Goff"), Monets, Manets (which is which?), Renoirs and other masters as well. There were paintings we recognized (Van Gogh self-portrait, the one with the room that was part of a 3D exhibit on Long Island a few years ago, one that inspired one of the Jewish New Year cards by Michele Pulver that is sold by More Than Paper, etc.) and others we didn't recognize but caught our eyes (ballerinas, some amazingly HUGE paintings, etc.). I would highly recommend this museum.

The museum used to be a train station

You can get a card like this at More Than Paper

This measures 4 meters by 7 meters

We probably spent 2 hours in the museum, which was realistically about an hour and a half more than we had expected to, and we decided to walk back towards the hotel and try and find a place for dinner, as this was the only night of the three in Paris that I didn't have reservations for dinner. My mother had told me to look for crowded restaurants, as that was a sign they were worth trying. So away we went.

We looked a whole bunch of places along the way, but none really interested us. Then we noticed a side street along the main road we were on that seemed to have a lot of restaurants and a lot of activity. Both observations proved accurate. But then the problem was deciding where to eat. We were hoping to find something authentically Parisian, but it was hard to decide. We walked up and down this side street a few times. At one point I had said something like "why don't we go back towards the start of this street and just grab a baguette" as I had seen a small place along the way. But during our exploring of the area we had seen a very busy place with a red awning that we had considered. The problem was it was hard for us to see the menu among all of the people. So when I suggested we go back and grab a baguette the place I was thinking of was not the place Debbie was thinking of - she was thinking I meant the red awning place. When we decided to go to the red awning place she thought it was the baguette place I was thinking of and I thought she just meant to try the busy place. 

Anyway, we went into the red awning place and got a table. On the table was a small menu with mostly drinks, so when the waiter came by (and dropped off a small bowl of popcorn) I asked for the food menu. He then promptly picked up the menu on the table and dropped it back down and pointed at it. It was at that point we realized this was pretty much just a bar with very non-Parisian fare - mozzarella sticks and chicken wings, for example.

By the time we figured out this was not a dinner place, we had already polished off the small bowl of popcorn so we discussed ordering something to justify sitting there. We were still discussing what to do when the waiter came back to ask what we wanted. We still weren't sure, so I wanted to buy us a little time. I was never fluent in French by any means, but I did take 7 years of it, so harkening back to my extensive knowledge of the local language I proceeded to say "dos minutes" to the waiter.

At which point Debbie started laughing hysterically that not only did I speak to him using Spanish, but also because I never took one minute of it ever. Without going into a long tangent, I basically replicated what my dad did in Paris in 1980 when he asked someone "Numero Uno?" at the Arc de Triomphe. Ask me in person to tell that story, if you are interested.

After "dos minutes" we came to the conclusion that there was really nothing either of us wanted so we pulled a quick disappearing act and left. Debbie thinks the waiter noticed and gave us a look, but we did what we had to do. 

By now we were really hungry so we just opted for the cliche-named Cafe de Paris. This was not really a quintessential Parisian cafe, but we needed to eat. Debbie ordered a salmon and I ordered chicken piccata - both of which we could have gotten in Bayside. Yet, Debbie loved her meal. Me, not so much due to the prevalence of garlic on the rigatoni that came with it. There was a lot of chicken so I just ate that and filled up.

We finished our meal and headed back towards the hotel, all with the eye on places to grab dessert. Back on the Rue de Renne, the main street near the hotel, we found a dessert place called Secco, where we purchased some delicious actual Parisian desserts - a small blueberry tarte thingy, a small cheesecake and a pain au chocolat. The original thought was to have tastes of each and save them in the fridge for the next day. Yeah, right. The only thing we could have saved were some flakes from the pain au chocolat.

This is the "before" photo - the "after" has nothing in it

After a very long day, really two days, we showered and called it a night. Tomorrow we head to Montmartre and Le Marais to explore.