Paris

We took the Eurostar to Paris (FYI the only way to go) and under the first warm rays in weeks I showed her my Marais and instantly she loved it, and it made me so happy. We ate steak tartare and fois gras with Cotes du Rhone at my old favourite, Les Philosophes, and she let me smoke. We walk around Ile Saint-Louis, no, you stroll around Ile Saint-Louis, with the familiar taste of Berthillon ice-cream. The Picasso museum which is not as good as the first time I went (they are undergoing renovations). I love speaking French again. It makes me want to stop at the Sorbonne and spend a month studying. Or maybe Rome, because when I look at the playlist for Pavarotti on our last day, I want to speak that language. Something inside me feels an affinity with Italy and I can’t waste that…

We had dinner at Le Souffle, the restaurant I thought had to be a novelty but with so many good reviews decided to give it a go, and to go all the way and try the menu tout souffle. It was so much fun! Three courses of voluminous souffles, first cheese, then with morilles, then dark chocolate with white chocolate sauce. You’ve never seen anything so pretty. The wine was delicious and the service cheeky. It’s a quaint, popular restaurant and a must to try. The only downside is after so many souffles, and so many eggs, you don’t want to go near any of the delicious quiches in boulangeres around town, even though they would make perfect picnic food for our last day, when I take mum to the Jardin du Luxembourg, and Paris is hot and the sky is blue, and the flowers are bright and we roll up our trousers and sit on the chairs with our heads back and it’s so, so good. Summer in Paris. Instead, we have a typical lunch at a café on the Rue du Rennes, near where I stayed five years ago, which feels so long ago, and yet also heart-thumpingly fresh. We waste time looking for a dress I don’t need around Galleries Lafayette, and it’s so hot we can only go back to Ile Saint-Louis, for another two scoops of Berthillon ice-cream (cherry, milk chocolate with hazelnuts), overlooking the river, with couples sunbaking and neither of us want to go home.

In between, we eat buttery pastries with coffee for breakfast, and go to the Musee d’Orsay for something like four hours. Our legs and feet hurt in more ways we can describe, yet we see the bright Van Goghs and Monets and the pretty Degas ballerina sculpture and I remember how much I love Gauguin. We see it all and walk through Saint Germain des Pres and queue up at Laduree because I think macarons are Paris-in-a-dessert and we eat pistachio eclairs in the shade of the church, watching pigeons try and mate. We even walk home, because I have promised that on this trip there shall be falafel, from L’as du falafel, and the previous night they are closed, so they must be open tonight, but they are not, and we can’t work out why. In the Marais, on a Sunday night, tired and hungry, and wanting fish. I suggest Bofinger, never having been but it suits our requirements. We end up having a surprisingly good and cheap meal of oysters and fish with choucroutte (I didn’t think it could work, it did) and crème brulee.

We slept to the sound of light traffic on Rue du Rivoli, to sponge up all the senses of Paris.