This, of course, is all fairly normal as we often have quite a bit of planning overlap between trips but Montreal happens to be a city that I am really looking forward to.

Our Eastern Canada Adventure is going to be a driving trip from Halifax to Montreal spread out over a period of about 3 weeks. While it is technically possible to drive the approximate 1200 km in couple of days taking the major highways, we have no intention of taking such a quick route. Spending lots of time exploring the small towns in between Halifax and Montreal is really what this trip will be about.

However, after all is said and done, I can’t help but keep thinking about Montreal.

Part of the reason for this is that I was reading the newspaper yesterday and it was the 40th anniversary of Expo 67 which was held in Montreal in, as you might imagine, 1967. I was pretty young in 1967 (not even in school yet) but I actually remember going to Expo 67.

One of the things that I cannot help but think about when I think about Expo 67 is the theme song called Ca-na-da that was (from what I was told) hugely popular at the time. Well, maybe hugely popular is a bit overstating it.

See the link to the song here.

For those of you listening to this song and are dying of embarrassment, join the club.

The Montreal of the 60′s doesn’t really exist anymore and but spending several days there on our trip this fall is something that I am very much looking forward to. Lots of planning is still yet to be done for the details of our itinerary for this Adventure and that will continue over the next month or so.

Baden

However, in all honesty, I think that this word has a bad rap and carries with it the wrong definition.

I remember talking to someone who went out of their way to stress that when they vacationed to some far-off place, they were not tourists but travelers. You see, the term traveler is a fashionable word used frequently nowadays and usually by someone who wants to set themselves apart from the person who may travel in an organized tour group. What the distinction is really stating is that “my way of travel is better than yours”.

We’ll I’ve got news for both the traveler and the tourist. When all of us all in a foreign city and being seen by local people, we’re all considered tourists. It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing shorts with white running shoes and black socks or not.

I got to thinking about all of this the other afternoon as we were walking along one of the streets of Paris on the way home. We noticed that on every street corner for about 3-4 blocks there were people standing there with a clip board and were asking people questions when they were waiting to cross the street.

However, when we approached them they just looked away as if knowing that we were not from around here.

This was all very curious to me as we we dressed like most other local people on the street (I made sure that I left my white running shoes and black socks at the hotel) yet it seemed like we were wearing a sign that said “tourist” or something.

Final days of Paris
I’m writing this final chapter of our Paris Adventure today (Monday) which means that we will be flying home tomorrow. The last few days haven’t really been too different from the first few and we have continued to keep a pretty leisurely pace with very little structure of our days. Most mornings, over breakfast at a local cafe, we would typically talk about what our agenda might be but inevitably, we would end up doing something a bit different than that.

On Saturday, we decided that we would walk along the Champs-Élysées – one of the most famous streets in the world. The Champs-Élysées has the Arc de Triomph at one end and the Place de la Concorde at the other.

We decided to start our walk at the Louvre so all in all it was about a 3.5km walk from end to end but in total we probably walked closer to 7 or 8 kms that day which is probably typical of most of our days here. All in all it’s a good thing that we get this much exercise considering all of the food that we have been eating. As a general rule, I have found from experience of previous vacations that if we are in an area and don’t have a car I will lose weight on that trip. If we have a car on the other hand, we get virtually no exercise and all bets are off about weight gain.

As you probably know, when you’re eating in restaurants or cafes 3-4 times a day, you just can’t eat the same way as you do at home.

It was for this reason that Barb and I were thinking that the next time we come to Paris we wanted to explore renting an apartment and skip the hotel. Especially in Paris where we are so familiar with things we really don’t need the services of a hotel (we never eat in the hotel restaurant) so an apartment would probably be much better for us if we’re hoping to experience life as a true local. Perhaps then those people doing the surveys on the street corners will ask us for our opinions.

Fromage s’il vous plaît
If there was one thing that stands out for us on this third trip to Paris it has to be cheese. It was not planned but we just happened to have time after time when we would have cheese as the highlight of several of our meals. There were at least two visits to fromageries (cheese shops) where we would purchase several different types of cheese to take to the park to have our lunch. There were another 4-5 times where we would have something like a salade chaude chèvre (warm goat cheese salad) or an assortment of cheese as the meal itself. It’s really hard to describe this with just words but all I can say that if you consider yourself a cheese lover, you cannot begin to imagine what unique varieties of cheese there are here to be experienced.

I should point out that almost all of these cheeses here are unpasteurised. Pasteurization is a process that kills bacteria and lengthens the shelf life of a product but unfortunately it also kills some of the flavour in the process.

I happen to know that you can get unpasteurized cheeses in Vancouver. We have purchased some from Urban Fare in Yaletown. I’ll warn you that it will not be cheap but if you’re looking for the real thing, you may want to splurge every now and then.

Luxembourg Picnic
On Sunday morning, we were leaving to have our breakfast and were listening to the church bells ring and the nearby Notre Dame cathedral. It was getting a little warmer every day and it was expected to be over 25 degrees on Sunday with the higher humidity that we experienced when we first arrived last Monday coming back again. Everyone that we had spoken to had said that the higher than normal temperatures just started about a week before we arrived and was not expected to last. As a result of this, we have definitely experienced the best weather of any of our trips to Europe so far on this one.

We happened to be walking through the Montparnasse area just a little south of our hotel and happened to find a fromagerie open. It being a Sunday and many stores being closed it was a (pleasant) surprise and we immediately changed our plans for lunch and bought some of the best goat cheese that they had. Another store at the boulangerie (bakery) and a small fruit stand and we had everything we needed for lunch.

We were close to the Jardin du Luxembourg (Luxembourg Gardens) which is a large park in Paris so we decided to grab a bench under a shady tree and enjoyed our delicious fare.

It being the weekend, there were lots of local Parisians enjoying the good weather in the park and there were even children sailing their little boats in the small pool that was at one end of the park.

And finally …
Today being Monday and our Paris trip coming to a close tomorrow, we had one more meal of note this afternoon that I wanted to share. In truth, there were quite a few meals that I didn’t talk about that I wanted to share but I would had to have written much more than I did if I did not pare down some of my notes.

This morning I made a visit to a kitchen supply store that I had talked about on my last trip to Paris called E. Dehillerin. There are of course many different kitchen stores in every city in the world but E. Dehillerin stands apart as perhaps the most unique.

The fact they have been in business since 1820 is part of what sets them apart but it’s really their product selection that does it for me. What makes them unique is that they are really focused on the professional cook and not the consumer. As a result, you can buy things at E. Dehillerin that you don’t see at many other stores.

For example, if you happened to want to purchase that stock pot that measures 36″ across (and you could stand in) to cook for that party of 100 that you were planning, this would be where you would get it. You could also get a wooden spoon here that was about 4 ft. long to use with that stock pot.

Being a professional cook-focused store, the you must know what you want before arriving at E. Dehillerin and do not expect to bother the sales staff to much. I am certain that when they are asked something by a neophyte, the surly clerks no doubt are thinking “away from me with your foolish questions”.

Unfortunately I didn’t buy anything at E. Dehillerin today. I bought my mandoline from them the last time that I was in Paris but because we are travelling with only carry-on luggage and our space is limited, I didn’t want to get anything that would not fit into my luggage – which basically meant that there was room for nothing.

Anyway, getting back to our final great meal this afternoon for lunch, we happened to stumble across a small restaurant called Le Petit Zinc (11 rue St. Benoit) which was just about a 10 minute walk from our hotel.

When we sat down and saw the menu, we immediately knew that Le Petit Zinc was going to be an expensive meal – even by Paris standards. We limited what we ordered to just a small number of items but as it turns out we had one of the best meals in Paris here today and were only slightly above our average meal costs.

I had order a soupe poisson (fish soup) and Barb a cheese platter (of course!) and a Grand Marnier soufflé to follow.

The waiter raised an eyebrow when Barb placed her order as technically she was breaking protocol by ordering twice from the dessert menu but we like to live life on the edge so we sent him away despite his concern.

The fish soup came with a side dish of freshly grated cheese and with this combination into the soup it was an incredible flavour and nothing like I had ever tasted before.

After Barb had finished her cheese platter, her soufflé was brought out in a small pot. They also brought a small glass (about 3 inches high) which they filled with Grand Marnier and they left the bottle on the table.

Barb offered some of the soufflé for me to taste and my only regret was that I did not order one of them myself. Quite simply, the soufflé was the most delicate and best tasting dessert I had ever tasted. It had a crust on the top which was dusted with powdered sugar and the inside was a light airy cream that got progressively thicker towards the bottom.

One of the first things that Barb asked after her first bite was: “can you make these?”

I pledge to you here and now that my life will now be dedicated to making a soufflé like the one that we tasted today. No doubt, many will end up in the garbage before I am finished but in the end it will all have been worth it if I can duplicate this recipe.

By this time tomorrow (Vancouver time), I will be back home and Paris will be a memory for us and the thoughts of our next Excellent Adventure become the next thing that we will begin to focus on in the upcoming months. In all likelihood, we will not be returning to Europe for a few years as our next few trips will take us to other parts of the world.

Without a doubt we will return to Paris again – perhaps as a singular destination like this one or as part of a broader trip to France as in our previous two visits. Paris will always hold a special place in our hearts and will always remain to us as our favourite city.

For those of you whom I added to my blog subscription just before our Excellent Paris Adventure, I will remove you when I get back home. If you wish to stay permanently subscribed to my blog, you can add yourself by clicking on the subscription link on my blog home page.

Of course you can always unsubscribe at any time that you wish.

Thanks for joining us on this adventure and our next travel adventure will occur again in late September but as regular readers know, I post many other articles throughout the year on both travel and cooking subjects.

Until next time …

Barb and Baden
ExcellentAdventure.ca

I should qualify what we mean by best because I think that people may have different opinions about what this means. First, we’re not talking about great bargains. As a general rule, most things in Paris (and Europe by and large) range from slightly more expensive to quite a bit. There are exceptions to this like wine which is typically cheaper here but as a rule, don’t come to Europe if you’re looking for a cheap vacation.

What we do mean by the best shopping is the sheer selection of high quality products in single, large locations. Namely, the department stores.

By far the biggest and best department store in Paris (in our opinion) is the Galeries Lafayette located on Boul. Haussmann. Right next to Galeries Lafayette is a department store which we consider the #2 called Printemps. Between these two stores, they take up about 6 city blocks.

Galeries Lafayette is comprised of the main building which had 6 floors pretty much dedicated to women’s wear. One whole floor is just women’s shoes.

Notice to all men: under no circumstances should you ever consider going to the women’s shoe floor. The carnage is simply unbearable. In fact, stay away from the entire main building of Galeries Lafayette. Only agree to meet your wife on neutral ground like on the street.

Wisely, Galeries Lafayette (as well as Printemps) both have dedicated buildings for men’s wear. Between the two department stores, there are a combined 9 floors of men’s wear.

The building called Printemps de la Mode is the main store for women’s wear spread across 7 floors.

If none of this were enough, both stores have dedicated maison stores for all kinds of house wares. No fewer than 11 floors (in total) are dedicated to house wares.

Barb and I have long ago agreed that we don’t shop together. Even if we weren’t in Paris where the men’s and women’s stores were actually in separate buildings, we have found that it is best four our relationship to just say goodbye and meet back at the hotel on our own schedule.

What this all usually means is that Barb will go her way and I will hopefully see her back at the hotel some time before we fly back to Vancouver (4 days from now).

I, on the other hand, will go through the combined 8 floors of men’s wear, try on several jackets, purchase one and be out the door under 90 minutes.

Suffice to say, while Barb and I both enjoy shopping in Europe, we have a slightly different approach to it.

The Search for Coq au Vin
Coq au Vin is one of those traditional French dishes that really sounds more fancy than it really is. Basically just chicken cooked in a wine sauce, it really isn’t all that difficult to make but for some reason Barb has been trying to find Coq au Vin on the menu on every trip to France that we have made and has never seen it. On Tuesday night she was finally able to find it.

At a restaurant called the Auberge de la Reine Blanche (30 Rue Saint-Louis en L’ile), we were both able to enjoy a nice relaxing dinner but most importantly, Barb was able to cross off Coq au Vin from her list.

Speaking of relaxing dinners, we have been finding ourselves eating later and later every night. As I write this (on Thursday night), we have been sitting down for dinner approaching 9PM. Most of this is due to us coming back to the hotel in the late afternoon (around 4 or 5PM) from a full day exploring the city and then having a quick snooze. Often, this quick sleep turns into us waking up after 8PM so hence the late dinners.

Not that we mind. We deliberately don’t pay much heed to the time while we’re here so eating later isn’t a huge concern for us. We have been ending our evening with a stroll along the Seine for an hour or so and have found that this has been the best way to work off some of that late night food.

Speaking of late night food, the all time record for us for eating late was on our trip to Spain about 4 years ago. On that particular vacation, we found that showing up at a restaurant at 9PM meant that we would be dining alone and that people would typically be coming in just as we were finishing. As a result, we gradually shifted our schedule to start eating later and later. By the last half of our time in Spain, we were usually eating dinner between 10 and 11PM!

Paris from the top
As I mentioned earlier, we had made several visits to the Eiffel tower on each of our three visits to Paris but there was one this that remained that we wanted to do in this category: to go up to the top of the Eiffel tower.

Given the hugely popular appeal of the Eiffel tower, it’s not too surprising that getting to the top of the tower involves braving huge lineups to get tickets before you even set foot in the tower.

Depending on how adventuresome you are, you can take the stairs or elevators to the first or second platforms but only an elevator will take you to the very top level. Since we wanted to go to the top, we were getting tickets for the elevator.

I’ve already mentioned that the whole Eiffel tower thing is pretty high on the touristy scale but quite honestly, you really have to put this all aside because the view from the top of the tower is pretty spectacular.

It goes without saying that you should try and do a trip up the Eiffel tower on a sunny day because the entire city becomes visible from end to end and you’ll come away with some pretty great photographs. At the time of this writing, the trip to the very top of the Eiffel tower costs €11.50. Consider this money well spent.

Our favourite Parisian Pizza
On one of the days that we went to Boul. Haussmann to do some shopping, we made a point of stopping in at one of our favourite restaurants for lunch: Pizza Pino (27 Boul. des Italiens).

Pizza Pino happens to be the only restaurant that Barb and I have been to in Paris on all three of our visits. After going there the fist time in 2002, we have made a point of seeking it out at least once every time we are here. In every case, we always order the same type of pizza: the Palerme.

As you might be able to see in this picture, the unique thing about the Palerme at Pizza Pino is the egg that they add into the centre of pizza. We had heard of an egg pizza before we went to Paris the first time but now of course we look forward to it each time.

Take our word for this. If you’re in Paris, get yourself to Pizza Pino and order a Palerme. You won’t regret and and you’ll thank us for the advice.

While on the subject of pizza, I can’t help but reminisce about the very best pizza that I have ever had. It wasn’t in Paris but in Naples.

On Our Excellent Italian Adventure – Part 7 (I’ll have to put the link to that article on my blog when I get back home), I had talked about going to myself to Naples while Barb, Peter and Liz went to Pompeii. In Naples, I happened to stumble upon a restaurant called Pizzaria Trianon and had pizza lunch that will be the benchmark of pizzas for me for the rest of my life.

I’m finishing up this segment of our Excellent Paris Adventure on Friday night and while we have more than three days left before we come home, I will post the final installment of our Excellent Paris Adventure in a few days.

Baden

Continue reading the final chapter of our Excellent Paris Adventure …

This is often easier said than done but our experience has shown that we are usually fully used to our new time zone within 24-36 hours.

We were fortunate enough to get our room on the rear side of the hotel as the front side facing Rue de la Harpe is incredibly busy and we would probably have heard people into all hours of the morning. Despite the street that the hotel is on being pedestrian-only (for the most part), there are so many restaurants nearby that there is a lot of foot traffic.

Speaking of being woken up in the morning, we seem to have this consistent pattern of being woken up in the morning when staying at hotels by construction crews who are working on nearby buildings. Barb and I were recollecting that more than once we remember guys on scaffolding walking around looking in our window when we were waking up (of course with the windows open the night before). Fortunately, this did not happen this time. Of course, we still have 7 more nights to go so anything is possible.

Beaucoup de pain aux chocolate
It would just be criminal to come to Paris and not have not have croissants for breakfast. Croissants with a nice café creme (coffee with lots of creme) is just a great start to a Parisian morning and it just can’t be beat.

But wait, it can!

Many trips to Paris ago, I discovered the natural evolution of the simple croissant. By combining a strip of chocolate to a croissant and shaping it in a rectangle shape, you have the pain aux chocolate.

It’s amusing that just a week or so ago I received an email from my friend Frank (whom I stayed with on my German Adventure 6 months ago) whom I had told about our upcoming trip to Paris and he had recounted all of the pain aux chocolates that he had eaten over the years in Paris.

All I can say is that it’s lucky that I don’t have access to this kind of food close to where I live as it would be difficult to not eat this kind of breakfast every day.

Parisian Picnic
Speaking of decadent eating, we decided that today we would pickup some food from a local market and have lunch in a park instead of eating inside. The weather was still cooperating and it wold have been a shame to not take advantage of it.

We ended up picking up a nice sesame baguette, some goat cheese and fois gras for lunch. We added some nice ripe strawberries and peaches and one or two pastries. Barb was even able to find a small, single serving of red wine as well.

We looked on the map and found the nearest park to be a place called Parc de Monceau and settled on a shady spot of grass for our bounty.

Of everything that we ate today for lunch, the strawberries had to be the biggest surprise. It has to be literally years since I have eaten such flavorful strawberries. Sadly, most strawberries that are found in stores are terrible and often white in the middle with very little taste. These one were red all the way through and incredibly sweet.

Of course, don’t get me wrong, goat cheese, fois gras and a baguette will never be a bad thing but you see I was expecting those to be great.

On the way home from our picnic (which lasted until at least 3:00), we decided to take a metro over to see the Eiffel Tower.

Of course, we had seen the Eiffel tower at least 10 times by now and there is not a more touristy place in all of Europe (with the dozens of hawkers selling those cheap miniature Eiffel tower replicas). However, all things considered, Barb and I could do nothing but just sit on a bench and look at the tower for a long time and be happy.

On our way from the Eiffel tower, we continued to walk along the bank of the Seine about three more bridges as I wanted to see the Statue of Liberty which is located at the Pont de Grenelle. The Parisian version of the statue is a smaller version of the one in New York (which, not everyone knows, was given to the US by the French).

Before I forget, I wanted to set the record straight that the picture of Barb at the top of the last Excellent Paris Adventure posting was taken before she went to her hair salon appointment. Here is a more current picture.

As it so happened, we were spending a leisurely morning just walking around the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area and decided to have lunch at a small shop called La Fromagerie 31 (64 Rue de Seine). Neither of us are sure what the “31″ part of the name means but Barb had heard of this place before we left Vancouver and decided to try it out after we just happened to find it by chance.

As you might have guessed by the name, La Fromagerie 31 specializes in cheeses. However you may think that you have seen cheese shops in the past, nothing can prepare you for this one. There are easily over 100 types of cheeses available and the vast majority of them are on shelves fully unwrapped. As a result of this, you are hit with a wall of the most delicious cheese smell as soon as you walk into the store.

It goes without saying that the lactose intolerant need not bother visiting this shop.

The vast majority of the cheese on the shelves have that white or dark green coating on the outside and a steady stream of customers who came to the shop either bought an assortment of cheese by the slice or whole blocks of cheese to go. The rest of us were there to have some kind of cheese-related food for lunch.

Barb decided to order a chef’s selection of 5 different cheeses (above picture) and mine was called a Tartine d’Oceane.

Barb was told by the waiter that she should start with one of the specific types of cheese and work in order to the strongest flavour. Mine was a soft white cheese on a slice of Poilâne bread covered with prawns and assorted vegetables.

We washed down both of our choices with a half litre of great local red wine.

Barb and I agreed that the cheese lunch that we had at La Fromagerie 31 was going to be one of the high points of our Paris trips. We’re both wondering how we might be able to buy some of the great cheese and bring it home with us and get it past the Canada Customs people. Luckily we have a few more days to think about that particular problem.

Baden

Continue reading the next chapter of our Excellent Paris Adventure …

As it turned out, there was quite a bit of room to spare (even with the hair salon grade assortment of hair styling accessories like flat-irons and round brushes that seemed to make it onto the packing list).

Our flight into Paris (by was of Toronto) was uneventful and us not checking any luggage made the exit out of the Charles de Gaulle airport faster than usual.

We had been expecting it but it was really quite surprising nonetheless to see that the temperatures were hovering in the 25-26 area. It was as warm now as we would expect it to be in July in Vancouver but everyone whom we have spoken to her about this have been saying that it only started to get this warm in the past 2-3 days. By the looks of it, we won’t be needing those pocket umbrellas and jackets that we brought with us.

Because we are travelling light, we decided to take the RER regional train all the way from CDG airport which we knew would take us all the way to our Metro station of St. Michel – Notre Dame. I should point out that we would never do this if we were carrying our regular (larger) luggage as there are lots of steps getting out of most Metro stations. As we found on our first trip to Paris in 2002 when we attempted this, it ended up being an embarrassing escapade of hauling one suitcase up (then down) a flight of stairs then going back for the next. All the while about 10,000 commuters were bumping into us on their way home from work.

Take it from me, if you have any amount of heavy luggage with you, take a shuttle from the airport while in Paris.

Paris Delivers
I vividly remember our first ride into Paris on the RER 5 years ago. For the uninitiated, what you end up seeing for the first 20 or so minutes is what I call the underbelly of Paris. By that I mean that you see this industrial, graffiti-covered area of the city that had us wondering if we had made a huge mistake by coming here. However, the real Paris soon emerges by the time that you get closer to your final destination and what you have heard and seen in movies and other sources about Paris is all true. Paris delivers on all counts.

Paris, Day 1
For almost every other trip to Europe that we can remember, we almost always end up arriving in the late afternoon. When the arrival time implies is that we would get settled in or hotel, go out for a nice dinner, then get back to the hotel and fall asleep.

No so this time.

Because we had a much earlier departure time out of Vancouver, we ended up arriving in Paris around 11AM. The caused us to not only have to wait for our room to be prepared (we dropped our luggage at the hotel) but we had tons of time available to us on the first day.

When I said that we had nothing booked or planned on this trip, I was not completely accurate. As it turned out, Barb had made an appointment (on the first day of our arrival) to get her hair done at a local salon. Apparently, she had done all kinds of research and found this salon that other people had raved about so most of our day was scheduled around her 5PM appointment.

We were both pretty hungry after we had dropped out bags at the hotel and as it was now around noon, we walked to the other side of the Seine and found a nice cafe to have our first Paris meal. As we were sitting at the small table looking out to the street, we both looked at each other and had that “Yes, we’re back in Paris” kind of look.

The view from out table across the street was the gates of the Palais de Justice (aka the law courts).

We walked along the river for a while really just enjoying the great weather and came across a nice park called the Place des Vosges. The park was one of those places where local people went at lunch (which by all appearances seemed to last at least 2 hours) and hang out. This alone would be a fairly accurate description under most circumstances but what first drew out attention was the immaculately manicured trees that went around the perimeter of the small park. There were literally “notches” cut out of the trees underneath that allowed you to walk under them or sit on the benches. It was quite elegant, very Parisian.

By the time Barb’s 3 hour hair appointment was over (by the way, she looked great), it was after 7:00 and we were both famished. We decided to go back to the area around our hotel where there were at least 50 restaurants within 3 blocks. The one that we decided to go to was called La Tourelle (5 Rue Hautefeuille).

As most of you who have been regular readers know, Barb and I like to find the restaurants that are small, out of the way and filled with patrons. La Tourelle was all of those. I won’t get into a whole bunch of details but we had an excellent duck dinner (I had a nice cold gazpacho soup starter) that night. The best part of the dinner was probably that it was a prix fixed meal (meaning one price for everything) which ran us 19 Euros each.

All in all, a perfect first day in Paris.

Baden

Continue reading the next chapter of our Excellent Paris Adventure …

Regular readers of my blog (and everyone else reading this for that matter) may believe that our current visit to Paris was spontaneous – based on the fact that I hadn’t written much on this subject over the past few months. In truth, Barb and I had been planning this since the beginning of the year. We just didn’t really go out of our way to talk about it so much.

Visit #3
As I am typically in the habit of doing, I’m posting the first chapter of this Excellent Adventure just before leaving to the airport. This being our 3rd visit to Paris (and 9th time to Europe overall), this trip distinguishes itself from what we haven’t done to plan our itinerary. On previous trips, we usually have a fairly well defined agenda in mind or at a minimum, a lengthy list of things that we want to see while we are in a far-off destination.

Not so this time.

If anything, the planning of this trip exclusively involved booking the flight and the hotel. And even the hotel was a re-booking of the same hotel from our last Paris visit in 2004. Everything else that we’re planning on doing will be decided on a day to day basis. If we just walk along the Seine or sit in a cafe for hours on end, we’ll consider the day successful.

The Best City of All
Without hesitation, Barb and I will quickly confess that Paris is both of our favourite city destination. The unique part of this trip will be the we have never been to Paris in the spring time as we have typically made a habit of going on our major vacations in the fall. We are still planning on doing a longer fall trip this year but we had decided that we wanted to make a short visit here at a different time of the year.

As I usually do, I’ll be posting updates of this Excellent Adventure every few days. I always carry a small notepad in my pocket and take notes of interesting things and eventually compose them on my Dell Axim PDA in the hotel. Depending on where I find Internet access, it will make my postings easy or more challenging but these days I no longer have to do much planning to get online.

My next update will be when we’ve arrived in the City of Light.

Baden

Continue reading the next chapter of our Excellent Paris Adventure …