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Paris was absolutely great. We did so much stuff that I'm not sure how I would go about summarizing it all. I think the highlights were our visits to the Louvre, Chantilly, and the Chateau de Vincennes/Bois de Vincennes, so I'll try to get it together to post more about those. We also ate a lot of fantastic food, including some very odd but unexpectedly good things like seaweed butter (butter with flakes of seaweed mixed in instead of salt), and sheep's milk yogurt sorbet on cucumber gelee with black olive tapenade on the side. (Also, creme brulee flavored with herbs is apparently A Thing right now in upscale Paris restaurants - I think I had one version infused with tarragon and another infused with Thai basil.)
I'm also pleased to report that the stereotype of French waiters as being stuffy and snobby appears to have little relationship to reality these days. With just a couple of exceptions, in everywhere from Michelin-starred places to random pizza joints in the suburbs, we encountered staff who were friendly, eager to be helpful, and very tolerant of the limitations of my French language skills. (In any of the touristy areas, it's pretty rare to encounter someone who doesn't speak at least a bit of English. Some conversations became a bit of a battle to see who was more eager to demonstrate their foreign-langauage skills.)
I did use odd moments of wifi access to upload a few photos to my G+ account. I'm going to try to get my full photo set up on flickr for those who are interested. I didn't take a huge number of photos - most museums in Paris allow photos, but for some reason it would have felt weird to me to be snapping away while in the Louvre or down in the catacombs, so most of my shots are of gardens, exterior architecture, and food.
The only real disappointment was the weather - it was pretty uniformly overcast, and on a couple of days it rained pretty hard. Mostly, we just bundled up and coped, but I think we did a lot less leisurely strolling around various neighborhoods than we would have with better weather.
I'm also pleased to report that the stereotype of French waiters as being stuffy and snobby appears to have little relationship to reality these days. With just a couple of exceptions, in everywhere from Michelin-starred places to random pizza joints in the suburbs, we encountered staff who were friendly, eager to be helpful, and very tolerant of the limitations of my French language skills. (In any of the touristy areas, it's pretty rare to encounter someone who doesn't speak at least a bit of English. Some conversations became a bit of a battle to see who was more eager to demonstrate their foreign-langauage skills.)
I did use odd moments of wifi access to upload a few photos to my G+ account. I'm going to try to get my full photo set up on flickr for those who are interested. I didn't take a huge number of photos - most museums in Paris allow photos, but for some reason it would have felt weird to me to be snapping away while in the Louvre or down in the catacombs, so most of my shots are of gardens, exterior architecture, and food.
The only real disappointment was the weather - it was pretty uniformly overcast, and on a couple of days it rained pretty hard. Mostly, we just bundled up and coped, but I think we did a lot less leisurely strolling around various neighborhoods than we would have with better weather.
