Mrs. Schott - Part II

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Lying in the dark in the hotel room I waited for Nancy to finish her conversation on the phone with Mrs. Schott, the woman whose voice sounded mature and strong when I answered. As they talked I imagined her – a stately, “older” woman who sees Europe from the upper floors of five star hotel rooms.

At last Nancy hung up and told me what Mrs. Schott told her had transpired since she had delivered Nancy’s abandoned passport to the hotel concierge. (See last post.)

“After doing what I thought to be a good deed yesterday for you, what happened today was a surprise. I was heading to a charity luncheon – a charity for children. So on the way, I had my driver stop at the chocolatier to pick up candies for the children. He had to wait in the car at the curb while I walked up the alley to the shop’s door. Suddenly a thief grabbed me, tore the ring off my finger, took my purse, and threw me to the sidewalk!”

The hard fall onto the concrete had broken Mrs. Schott’s shoulder, and she had spent the day at the hospital. A cast not being possible, she had to wear her arm in a sling.

“But I would like to meet you and your sister tomorrow if you have time.”

So Nancy had arranged for us to visit her in the morning in the lobby of the InterContinental on our way out for the day.

Next morning en route the few blocks between our modest little hotel and the luxe InterContinental we remembered a florist near Place Vendome, so we headed straight there to pick up a nice (expensive) arrangement for Nancy’s injured benefactor. She picked the bouquet bottom, center.

At the InterContinental the concierge escorted us to Mrs. Schott sitting in a cool, dark corner of the lobby where it seemed every staff person was attending to her. Tuxedoed men floated to her with trays and greeted her with obvious concern about her injury.

You can’t imagine Nancy’s and my surprise when we saw her. There she was standing up to greet us, a willowy six-foot tall elegant young-ish woman reminding us of Princess Diana (who died two months later just a few blocks from that spot). We spent a short hour with Mrs. Schott and her sweet pooch Redford. We bonded, and she even said she would send her driver around for us later in the week to go out for the day. She also wanted us to come visit her in Switzerland where she and her husband oversaw their European-wide hotel chain.

You can barely see the empty left sleeve of her white sweater gracefully pinned up to accommodate her slinged arm against her chest.

Our hearts were a-flutter when we left, feeling as if we’d met and befriended royalty. If we’d known she would not follow through on her promise and collect us in a couple of days, we would have asked more questions, like which hotel chain? But as we explored Paris day after day for the remainder of our two weeks and waited for a call from Mrs. Schott, it never came, and we wistfully put our visions of a grand European friendship to rest. I have tried in vain to locate a hotel chain connected with the name Schott.

Mrs. Schott - Part I

"OH NO! I don't have my passport!!"

What should have been a pleasant, relaxing moment to eat croissants and sip café crèmes in the tiny hotel dining room before a day out in sunny Paris turned into panic. My sister was frantically rifling through her bag looking for what couldn't be found. Suddenly she remembered we had stopped at the nearby Hotel InterContinental's bathroom on our way home from dinner the night before, and she had hung her little passport bag on the bathroom stall door! She lept from her chair and ran out the door "I'll be back!" leaving me and my croissant very nervous.

When she came back less than an hour later, this is what she told me.

After running the few blocks to the InterContinental, she slipped into the cool, elegant lobby and straight to the Concierge who was standing at his perch. Before she could utter a word, he said calmly with a welcoming smile, "You must be Ms. Hart, we have been expecting you."

He went on to explain that a certain Mrs. Schott had found Nancy's passport bag hanging on the bathroom stall door and delivered it to him with explicit and emphatic instructions: "Place this passport in the hotel safe, and if you do not see Ms. Hart this morning, we will contact the American Consulate to see if she has contacted them."

With relief and gratitude filling her heart, Nancy asked if he had stationery for her to write a thank you note to Mrs. Schott, a guest in the hotel. She wrote a lengthy, heartfelt message and returned to me in our tiny, shabby hotel lobby where every half minute felt like an hour to me. She held up her passport with a radiant smile.

That night, after traipsing through Paris all day up one side and down the other, our legs throbbing and our eyes drooping, we fell into bed early and slept hard. When the telephone rang suddenly at 10, with a stranger's voice telling me she was Mrs. Schott and could she please speak with Nancy, I was suddenly wide awake and handed Nancy the phone, whispering "IT'S MRS. SCHOTT!"

Next post I'll tell you what happened with Mrs. Schott. I promise it won't take me two weeks to tell the rest of the story.

DAY 3: Toupary restaurant (La Tour Eiffel and Musee d'Orsay)

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DAY 3 of a week in Paris - Tuesday

La Tour Eiffel & Musee d'Orsay

It's taken a while, but we are waking up to our third full day in Paris. Well, to be honest, I want to skip the day for now and jump straight to evening. I can't wait to tell you about one of my favorite spots in the city. I'll tell you later about the other stops on our itinerary, ok? (I had problems with the HTML for my itinerary, strangely enough, so I am not posting it. I'll figure it out next post hopefully.)

The Toupary restaurant may not be the best reviewed or have as fine a cuisine as Taillevant, for instance (I'll tell you about that Michelin 3-star restaurant one of these posts), but it is one of my favorite spots to eat in Paris. As I've said before, I think my simple palate would be happy with a grilled sandwich at a gas station in France, so maybe you shouldn't trust me. But I do love me some good food. And I am willing to spend money on it if the experience warrants it.

That said, the food I've eaten in my four or five meals there has been superb and the service terrific. But the main reason I chose it in 1997, alone for lunch in the second week with my sister Nancy after we learned in the first week we liked spending our time and money differently, was for the view. It is on the fifth floor of the Samaritaine Department store - which has since closed (is there anything else in the building now, I wonder?).

You can see the Pont Neuf from my table in the top photo, my favorite bridge in the city. It's rather a cliché to love this bridge, as there have been countless movies about it. But that's OK, there are reasons for it. It is at the point of the island for one thing, and it's just so darn picturesque.

When I excused myself to myself (you must be polite to yourself when you go out alone) to go to the ladies room, I was tickled to find this gorgeous view there too. Of course I had to take my camera with me as there was no one to guard it at the table, and wasn't it handy to photograph myself in the mirror that stood in front of this marvelous sight? I nabbed the orange card for my scrapbook.



Again when Don and I went to Paris for our 25th anniversary in 2003, I wanted to eat there to celebrate. Do you see our water glasses reflected in the window?



But below are the glasses we wanted to steal. I don't think I've ever been tempted to steal before this (and later I did steal a Guinness glass from the Guinness factory in Dublin), but this was just too sweet! Because they knew it was our big 25th anniversary, they brought our champagne in this special glass set. We asked if we could purchase one, but they didn't have them to sell. So, we seriously contemplated hiding them under Don's sportcoat. Ha. But we didn't do it, although it might have been fun to meet Inspector Clouseau.



We asked the waitress (rare female in this male dominated profession in Paris) to snap our pic, but this is the result. It's probably not her fault, since the light was behind us.

Champs-Elysées

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DAY 2 of a week in Paris - Monday

Le Louvre et Champs-Elysées

• BREAKFAST: la patisserie below the apartment
• Le Louvre
• LUNCH: Angelina tea salon. 226 Rue de Rivoli (between Rues d'Alger and de Castiglione)
• Tuilleries
• Madeleine Church & Place de la Concorde
• Place Vendome
• Arc de Triomphe - view Paris (daily 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.)
• Champs-Elysées - TODAY'S POST
• DINNER: La Boutique à Sandwiches. 12 Rue du Colisée (between Rue de Ponethieu and Ave des Champs-Elysées)
• Buddha Bar (8 rue Boissy d'Anglais, near Place de la Concorde)

Next on our itinerary after the Tuilleries is the Madeleine Church, which I have posted about here and here.

So today I'm sharing just a little bit about the Champs-Elysées. Because I have never been a person of means - or a shopper (maybe they go hand in hand) - I have not spent much time on this fashionable avenue.

I have already told the story of meeting Catherine, an American woman traveling alone like me. I first noticed her at the café in the photo of me at top drinking a café crème (taken by a Chinese couple who first asked me with gestures to take their picture). Funny how you notice other Americans in a foreign city. Catherine and I didn't speak there, but later in the day when we saw each other in a totally different part of the city, we stopped and introduced ourselves. Has that ever happened to you? You're in one of the world's big cities, and you see the same people in different spots, sometimes even on different days?

This little hour at a café on my solo 2006 trip is one of a few Champs-Elysées memories.

The first happened with Nancy in 1997. We had not yet heard of Sephora, the cosmetics store par excellence. So when we walked into their flagship store on the Champs-Elysées we felt we'd entered a magical realm of womanly dreams come true. What aided that fantasy was a tall beautiful model in a maxi-length black coat and one white glove opening the door for us. Throughout the vast store were many other beautiful male and female models/sales clerks dressed in the same costume. The room's walls were lined floor to ceiling with women's perfume on one wall and men's cologne on the other, then make-up down the center. Any product queen would feel she'd died and gone to heaven. We saw dutiful husbands (or lovers) leaving with pretty little bags that we assumed contained tiny bottles of perfume. In the middle of our browsing, suddenly we were being rushed out of the store. There was a bomb scare! We were able to go back into the store after a few minutes to finish dipping white paper dipsticks into perfume bottles to sample scents. (Imagine how the avenue would have smelled if a bomb had gone off. Ok, somber but fragrant thought.) I was a dutiful wife and bought my husband a bottle of cologne (was it Dior?).

Now, of course, Americans can go into a Sephora in any shopping mall or even JC Penneys. But for us, the experience was part of the Paris mystique.

Don snapped this in 2003

Another Champs-Elysées memory was with Don in 2003. I posted about the gracious French doctor - Giancarlo - who owned the apartment where we stayed on the tiny island Ile Saint-Louis. He refused to settle for handing us a key to the apartment in a café and instead insisted on picking us up at the airport! And not only that. Knowing from our emails that this was Don's first visit to this gorgeous city, he took the extra effort to drive in on the Champs-Elysées en route to the apartment so that Don would see the best and most interesting approach right off the bat. So much for a French reputation of rudeness! On this crazy heart-racing drive he also told us how the city hires cleaners who every night wash graffiti off the city's white buildings, leaving them pristine and fresh every morning. Oh, and one more thing. At Rond-point at Place de Charles De Gaulle the circle around the Arc de Triomphe, suddenly all cars - which had been driving at breakneck speed - slowed to a crawl. Giancarlo explained that in this circle of pavement, insurance does not cover drivers!




One of the happy discoveries while walking with Nancy, in the 1997 photo below, was the Allée Marcel Proust, just at the start of the Champs-Elysées, and parallel with it. It is a pretty park-like walkway, quiet and protected from the hustle of the busy avenue.




We found Allée Marcel Proust just after watching President Clinton's limousine speed by on his way to the presidential palace to see Jacques Chirac. Clinton was in Paris to give a NATO speech.

Jardin des Tuileries

DAY 2 of a week in Paris - Monday

Le Louvre et Champs-Elysées

• BREAKFAST: la patisserie below the apartment
• Le Louvre
• LUNCH: Angelina tea salon. 226 Rue de Rivoli (between Rues d'Alger and de Castiglione)
• Tuilleries - TODAY'S POST
• Madeleine Church & Place de la Concorde
• Place Vendome
• Arc de Triomphe - view Paris (daily 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.)
• Champs-Elysées
• DINNER: La Boutique à Sandwiches. 12 Rue du Colisée (between Rue de Ponethieu and Ave des Champs-Elysées)
• Buddha Bar (8 rue Boissy d'Anglais, near Place de la Concorde)

In most of my trips to Paris, I have sought to stay near the center of the city so that every day's jaunts end up back here, at the Tuileries gardens. It's beautiful in the morning, as the sun rises behind the Louvre, and it's more beautiful in the evening as the sun sets behind the Arc de Triomphe and the obelisk at Place de la Concorde (the direction of the top photo).

At the end of a long day of walking, I feel like the fellow in the statue above - utterly spent and ready for sitting in one of the green metal reclining chairs by a fountain.



There is great people watching, especially the kids who rent toy sailboats and push them around the pool with their sticks.



Of course the flowers are fabulous, as are all the flowers in Paris. I've noticed year after year that the garden designers around the city do unique things each year. One year I was surprised and pleased to see thistle in the Luxembourg gardens. Wonderful!

But each visit there have been irises.



You can buy an ice cream.



You can sleep in the shade.


You can bring your lunch and eat with a friend.






Above is me, and below is my sister Nancy, in 1997, the year our mother passed away with Alzheimer's. We treated ourselves to two full weeks in Paris - my first visit since I studied abroad in college in 1975.




I can't say that after resting in the Tuileries we necessarily felt like doing Pilates, but it was nice to watch this lady doing hers with the Louvre in the background.



I leave you with this final sketch by Fabrice Moireau, from his book Paris Sketchbook.

Angelina Tea Salon

DAY 2 of a week in Paris - Monday

Le Louvre et Champs-Elysées

• BREAKFAST: la patisserie below the apartment
• Le Louvre
• LUNCH: Angelina tea salon. 226 Rue de Rivoli (between Rues d'Alger and de Castiglione) - TODAY'S POST
• Tuilleries
• Madeleine Church & Place de la Concorde
• Place Vendome
• Arc de Triomphe - view Paris (daily 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.)
• Champs-Elysées
• DINNER: La Boutique à Sandwiches. 12 Rue du Colisée (between Rue de Ponethieu and Ave des Champs-Elysées)
• Buddha Bar (8 rue Boissy d'Anglais, near Place de la Concorde)

The little clipping from Access Paris calls this the Rolls-Royce of tea salons, and I imagine it is.

It sits under the shady colonnade on rue de Rivoli - a fashionable and expensive street of touristy shops and hotels. This is where you're likely to pick up a sight-seeing bus for a two-hour tour of the city (a good idea to get the lay of the place). You can find nice souvenirs on this street, even not too expensively. But of course, you have to get off this tourist rue and off into your own discoveries. I have a sweet story to share from this street one day soon, my favorite Paris story.

Angelina is a nice stop after a long day along the Seine. The Tuilleries gardens are just across the street, next to the Louvre, so you can walk over there after tea, sit back in the sun for a while to rest your weary legs, and feel drops from the fountain blown by the wind while you watch children push toy sailboats with sticks.

I wish I had images of Angelina besides the napkin I took away, above, but you can read a lovely post about it at The Paris Traveler. So I will give you instead images I do have from another tea salon, across from eastern-most end of the Louvre.



These little tea stops are wonderful with a friend, but they are equally fine alone. A place to stop on a long stroll up the Seine, to write down reflections on what you just saw - because you know you'll forget. To drink a cup of tea or café crème, maybe nibble on a madeleine or croissant.

Or watch the world go by.




226 Rue de Rivoli (between Rues d'Alger and de Catiglione)
PARIS Métro: Concorde or Tuileries

Day 2: Le Louvre

DAY 2 of a week in Paris - Monday

Le Louvre et Champs-Elysées

• BREAKFAST: la patisserie below the apartment
• Le Louvre - today's post
• LUNCH: Angelina tea salon. 226 Rue de Rivoli (between Rues d'Alger and de Castiglione)
• Tuilleries
• Madeleine Church & Place de la Concorde
• Place Vendome
• Arc de Triomphe - view Paris (daily 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.)
• Champs-Elysées
• DINNER: La Boutique à Sandwiches. 12 Rue du Colisée (between Rue de Ponethieu and Ave des Champs-Elysées)
• Buddha Bar (8 rue Boissy d'Anglais, near Place de la Concorde)

Right next door to the Tuileries gardens, the Louvre sits like a grand jewel in the center of the Paris crown. Dating back to the 12th century when it was a fortress, then a residence, its history is long and complex (of course).

I have us visiting the Louvre on Monday, but in fact Nancy and I visited a second time on the following Sunday in 1997. The reason? We wanted to see more, and we're cheapskates - you can get in for free on Sundays. The downside to that, of course, is that you have to wait in line for quite a while. I think we waited an hour. But if you are in Paris more than a week, it's nice if you can make a couple of visits here, and spread out the vast collections. They say if you stopped in front of each work for 15 seconds it would take a month solid to view every work in the museum.





Personally, I find large museums incredibly daunting, and not too pleasant. Walking the long galleries of the Louvre - as long as a football field or two - is torturous for me. Like mall walking, when fatigue sets in because the pace is too slow. I much prefer the small house museums, such as the Picasso and Rodin.

But you must go, of course, and to see the collections in bite sizes is my recommendation. I never plan to visit for more than two hours, and I set out to see specific works.

On the first visit I recommend "Louvre Lite" - seeing the highlights, which gets you moving at a faster pace, you can even jog between them if you wish:

• Mary Magdalene by Erhart on the Lower Ground floor - my personal favorite; read here to see why.
• Venus de Milo on the Ground floor
• Mona Lisa and Winged Victory on the First floor

The handy map they give you displays the highlights.










Next post: Angelina Tea Salon - a less overwhelming subject.

a tale of two hotels: part II - Hotel du Vieux Marais

DAY 2 of a week in Paris - Monday

La Louvre et Champs-Elysées

• BREAKFAST: la patisserie below the apartment
• La Louvre
• LUNCH: Angelina tea salon. 226 Rue de Rivoli (between Rues d'Alger and de Castiglione)
• Tuilleries
• Madeleine Church & Place de la Concorde
• Place Vendome
• Arc de Triomphe - view Paris (daily 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.)
• Champs-Elysées
• DINNER: La Boutique à Sandwiches. 12 Rue du Colisée (between Rue de Ponethieu and Ave des Champs-Elysées)
• Buddha Bar (8 rue Boissy d'Anglais, near Place de la Concorde)

After spending our first of two weeks in the Hotel Saint-Roch, the shabby not-so-chic hotel I'd found online for us (last post) until Nancy's friend's apartment was available, we threw our things into our suitcases, hopped into a taxi and headed for rue du Platre in the Marais. There is a lot of history and buzz around Le Marais district of Paris, and it's a highly desirable area of residence. My sister's friend who owns the apartment is an opera singer in NYC, and she was lucky to get a prized apartment in this building that also houses the Hotel du Vieux Marais.

As I mentioned in the last post, there are always certain things you expect that don't happen on a trip like this, and things you don't expect that do. When those unexpected things turn out to be life-long loves, they are good indeed.

One of the unexpected things that wasn't so lovely was that this apartment in the Marais was a 4th floor walk-up. We had spared nothing packing our suitcases for two weeks in Paris. We must have been pretending we were Ms. & Ms. Gotrocks, taking dresses and as many shoes as we wanted. So we had BIG suitcases. But since we weren't Ms. and Ms. Gotrocks, we had to carry those suitcases up four flights by ourselves. But once we were up there, it was great, complete with floor length balcony windows (ours is the top floor in the photo above, just hidden under the hotel card, my sister in her own room and me on a futon in the living room with those tall windows.

So I'm getting to my life-long love discovery. Our first morning waking up in the apartment we decided to try out the patisserie in the ground floor of the apartment building. I went for a café crème and a Danish-looking pastry. We sat outside under an umbrella in the spring sun, watching local residents hurry by on their way to work. This is not a tourist district.



We met pretty Ellen, another American from Boston, who was staying in the hotel. We invited her up for some wine and cheese later in the week, another nice reason to stay in an apartment if you can - they cost no more than a hotel per night, and you have a kitchen, washing machine and lots of room. In the photo above I'm not talking to myself, I'm talking to Ellen. In the photo below, Ellen and Nancy are there looking pretty at our table.



All right, I won't keep you in suspense any longer. My life-long discovery. That Danish-looking pastry was called pain aux raisins (bread with raisins). Although I tried to find its equal at many patisseries in Paris, I never found one as phenomenally delicious as at this little patisserie in the Marais. The secret is that within the spiral of dough and raisins is custard. Yes custard. The delicate brioche dough, combined with custard, is the most delicious thing I've ever tasted. The little woman who bakes them is not terribly friendly and doesn't seem to know a word of English, but the woman knows how to bake.



The afternoon before we left Paris after our two week stay, I ordered 18 of these to pick up in the morning, on our way to the airport. I had brought Ziploc bags for who knows what reason. I packaged up my treasures, snuggled them into the suitcase, and took them - a little flatter - to the office two days after arriving home. I shared them with my colleagues, and they declared that even two-three days old, these were the best tasting things they'd ever eaten.

Now, when I return to Paris, I always try to find an apartment in the Marais - not only for the desirable neighborhood, but for this little patisserie and its pain aux raisins.



I found this photo online at a Flickr page. Hope they don't mind.

a tale of two hotels: part I - Saint-Roch

DAY 2 of a week in Paris - Monday

La Louvre et Champs-Elysées

• BREAKFAST: la patisserie below the apartment
• La Louvre
• LUNCH: Angelina tea salon. 226 Rue de Rivoli (between Rues d'Alger and de Castiglione)
• Tuilleries
• Madeleine Church & Place de la Concorde
• Place Vendome
• Arc de Triomphe - view Paris (daily 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.)
• Champs-Elysées
• DINNER: La Boutique à Sandwiches. 12 Rue du Colisée (between Rue de Ponethieu and Ave des Champs-Elysées)
• Buddha Bar (8 rue Boissy d'Anglais, near Place de la Concorde)

My love of travel planning for Paris began in April 1997 when my sister told me she was taking me to Paris in three weeks, for a two week stay. It was just after our mother had died of Alzheimer's, after Nancy and I had cared for her - Nancy particularly, for six months before we found a lovely home for seniors with dementia. When Mom passed away that March after eighteen months in the home, Nancy and Don began conniving secretly about a vacation for her and me, and where would Ruth want to go? First word out of Don's mouth was "Paris" - even though I hadn't really ever talked about it since a 3-day visit there in my college days. I think he just thought of the most romantic destination in that instant.

After my sister stunned me with this news in my office it didn't take long for me to start planning the trip, which she asked me to do. Joy! Nancy had a friend who owned a Paris apartment (located above the second hotel in this tale, Hotel du Vieux Marais - in the photo at the right), but sadly it was only available the second week of our trip. So for our first week I found us a hotel online, Hotel Saint-Roch, which appeared cozy and charming, and was reasonably priced (under $100 a night).

The Hotel Saint-Roch was on rue Saint-Roch, which was named for the historic church of the same name located there. Geographically very close to the Louvre and Tuileries gardens in the center of Paris, I thought it would make a perfect launching point.

Well, certain things about the Saint-Roch were perfection, but the charm was a little ragged, and we found out it was nicknamed by Parisians "St Roach." Some things you plan, and they don't turn out so well. Other things you don't plan, and you are surprised by their astonishing beauty.

In spite of the imperfections of this shabby little hotel, there were perfect things:

* Location. I had been right about this at least, that after a tiring day walking the city, our legs shaking with weariness, we would be glad to be at the center of things.

* The beauty of music. So the thing we couldn't have known or planned was that this little hotel on a narrow street across from a big church would provide a serenade every evening as we walked rue Saint-Roch, exhausted with happy exploration, back to our room. Heavenly music shimmered down on us through the windows of the church. One night choir practice, another organ practice, yet another orchestra. We climbed the winding stair to our room to it, we undressed and washed the street grime from ourselves to it, we climbed into bed and fell asleep to it - our open windows conduits for a Paris lullaby as comforting as la Vie en Rose.

Next week I'll tell you about the second hotel in this tale, where we stayed our second week, and the discovery that would become one of my most important in Paris.

PARIS Métro: Pyramides or Tuileries

Berthillon ice cream

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Day 1 of a week in Paris - Sunday

The Islands: Ile de la Cité - Ile Saint-Louis

Berthillon

• Breakfast: Hotel? (not sure if la patisserie is open Sundays)
• Notre Dame; tour and climb tower
• Place Louis-Lepine - bird and flower market
• Sainte-Chapelle; tour and purchase billets for evening concert - LAST POST
• Lunch: Brasserie de Isle St-Louis -- Look for the stork!
• Walk Isle St-Louis; ice cream at Berthillion; Square Barye - THIS POST
• Supper: Sandwich or omelette?
• Evening concert at Sainte Chapelle - LAST POST

After reading about Berthillon in my favorite Paris travel guide - ACCESS - then finding the flagship store on rue St-Louis en Ile the main street down the center of tiny Ile Saint-Louis (the smaller "ship" island floating in the Seine, behind Ile de la Cité on which the Notre-Dame sits) and waiting in line for maybe 30 minutes, I was starting to realize that an ice cream cone in Paris was not going to be like an ice cream cone at Baskin-Robbins. Seeing customers leave with their small cone and one or two golf-ball sized scoops, instead of baseball-and-a-half sized scoops a la Baskin-Robbins, I noted that once again, the French culinary experience proved that if you eat smaller amounts of food made with expert skill from fresh, high quality ingredients, you will be satisfied with less.

There are unusual flavors, such as rhubarb, pear and grapefruit, but my favorite (not that I've tried them all) is strawberry, which my sister Nancy is enjoying, above, while she holds mine so I can snap the photo. The flavor is intense - as if condensed, and not overly sweet. One scoop is parfait pour mois.

I skimmed the history of ice cream at this informative site and learned that ices date back to 1100 BC! Berthillon began in the 1950s only. The Italians brought their gelato to France via Catherine de Medici - known as the mother of French cuisine (interesting that she, and it, were really Italian) - in the 1500s. She's the one, remember, who at age 14 married the Duc d'Orleans (who later became Henri II), also age 14.

This page on the Berthillon web site gives locations of the shops around Paris. But you will also find their ice cream sold in patisseries and restaurants around the city.

Here are two last images of Ile Saint-Louis, as this is the last post of Day 1 on the islands. The first is of the Brasserie de Isle St-Louis again, where we had omelettes, and the second is of the Pont St-Louis, the little pedestrian bridge between the islands where musicians, painters, body contortionists, magicians - entertainers of all sorts, set up their shows and hope for a few Euro in their boxes.

I loved the horn player with his child on his back.

Next post we'll move on to Day 2 of a week in Paris.

PARIS Métro: Cité