Paris... that pretty much says it all

One weekend in Venice, the next in Paris... I could get used to this! (Actually I couldn’t... I am soo tired from all this traveling!) Well again, I have a reasonable excuse- my Uncle Larry spends every January in France for wine tasting and when I saw him and my Aunt Ida last spring, I told them that if they were in Paris this winter that I would meet up with them, and so I did! Well, my aunt couldn’t make it unfortunately, but Blake and I found some good deals and were able to meet up with my Uncle Larry for the weekend.

My Uncle Larry is known for having extremely good taste in wines and food, so Blake and I were pretty excited to meet up with him for a few meals. Blake and I had both been to Paris before, so sightseeing wasn’t a huge priority, and the meals were definitely the highlights of the trip.

We arrived in time for dinner on Friday night and met up with my uncle for dinner at a cute Bistro. The restaurants in foreign countries tend to seat you closer to fellow dinners than in the states, and so we ended up getting in a conversation with our French neighbors about wine. They were quite impressed, and I decided that we need my uncle to go to all the countries that hate America, or that think we are unclassy and uneducated. He could just go out to eat and convert them one by one. They loved him, especially when he said that French wine is the best!

On Saturday morning, Blake and I went to the Musee d'Orsay, which has a great collection housed in the old train station.

After a couple of hours there (and after being lost for a little while), we met up for lunch with my Uncle to eat some calves head. Yep... you heard me. Blake was brave enough to order the “Tete de veau” which Uncle Larry suggested, although I was pretty adamant about it not being served in the head of the calf, which is how it is supposed to be served. The waiter made a joke about letting the wait staff eat the best part, the eyes. Wait, actually, I am not sure if he was kidding or not. Hmmmm… But regardless, I consider myself somewhat adventurous when it comes to eating (oh, I eat some mushrooms now, fyi), but I draw the line at looking at the head of a baby cow while eating it. Blake took a picture of what it looks like on a plate:

It was better than I thought it was going to be- we tried the tongue, cheek, and of course, the brains. I wasn’t crazy about the brains, the texture was a little weird, but the cheek was really good. The whole time this French couple next to us keeps glancing over at Blake, and finally they asked him what he thought. He admitted that it was quite good, and they were very impressed with him and told him it was a very special French dish. Then we ended up getting in another conversation about wine with this couple, who now probably think differently about Americans. 4 down, and (insert number of French citizens) to go.

That afternoon we walked around the city for a bit with my Uncle and just enjoyed a pretty nice afternoon for January (it had been raining that morning). Nothing really “blog-worthy” there, just a nice afternoon with my uncle who is a great tour-guide. Blake got a few cool pictures of the city:



But back to the “blog-worthy” stuff… I told you already, the highlight was the meals with my Uncle! And Saturday night topped it all. It was a place called La Tour D’Argent, which is the oldest restaurant in Paris, dating back to 1582. The view of Notre Dame and the Seine was gorgeous, and the food was amazing. The restaurant served as inspiration for scenes in the Pixar movie Ratatouille.

My Uncle was like a kid in a candy store with the gigantic wine list (it has a wine cellar with over a ½ million bottles of wine!):

As an appetizer, we had eggs with truffles and learned the proper way to eat them to fully enjoy the aroma (no really, this is how it is done):

Blake and I ordered the pressed duck, which is what the restaurant is famous for. You even get a postcard at the end of your meal that gives you the number of the duck that you just ate (Lucky #1,075,664). My uncle had described the process of how they make pressed duck to us, and I remember being slightly disturbed by it, but luckily I didn’t read this article about the process. (Note- this is not for the faint at heart!) At first it was a little hard to digest (ha- pun intended!), especially since I used to have a pet duck (Hamilton) and all:

But I have to say, I got over it, and it was amazing. Seriously… amazing.

After dinner I was supposed to meet up with a friend of mine, Lori, who is getting her post-doc in Paris, but our cell phone ran out of minutes and we weren’t able to figure out where she was! It was terrible! But we will be back- I love Paris!

The next morning, Blake and I hopped on a train and headed to Versailles, which is about a half hour train ride outside the city. Here we saw the Palace of Versailles, which was pretty amazing. We were a bit rushed, and it wasn’t the best time of year to see gardens, but I was still quite impressed. Here are a few pics from the palace and the gardens:



To see all my pics from the trip (and some of Blake's too) check out my flickr gallery.

After Versailles, we headed back to the city, bought nutella and banana crepes (one of my favorite things, um, ever), grabbed our stuff and headed out of town. It was a great quick weekend, although it ended on a sour note at Charles DeGual airport. I hate that place. It is terrible. I don’t even want to go into it. Just try to avoid it all costs.