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.