InSeine amounts of Vin

After getting un expresso et un croissant aux amandes for a not so petit dejeuner I went to the local park and sat there for a while in quiet contemplation. In my contemplation I realised hated quiet contemplation and I needed le internet to sort out my day. (I had bought Thomas Picketty's - Capital in the 21st Century in hardcover in Amsterdam to read, but it is a ponderous tome and not ideal for walking distances with). Luckily I had already saved the location of the nearest Orange shop into the Googles. I acquired a SIM and then headed to the catacombs, but because I was in Paris it was shut. Anyway I went for a walk around the Montparnasse area, found a nearby brasserie, had some vin with chicken and mushroom. Then after a few more vins I went to the Seine via the Super Marchet for a bottle of rouge and just watched life and the local canards go by. Seeing so many canards swimming around I naturally got hungry again and wandered back home via a brasserie and had some "margret de canard with foie gras".

Typical start

Foie gras et magret de canard

On Monday most of the musee and other attractions are closed in France so I grabbed a rental bike and rode to Versailles. It was great seeing areas of Paris, the outskirts and towns in between that I might not have visited otherwise. Once at Versailles the weather changed the worse and I realised I hadn't eaten yet. I ducked into a cafe a bit out of the way and grabbed a rillettes baguette and rose, it was delicious and fatty, I love it how they don't even bother to hide the lard. It had started storming so I decided to ride it out with a couple more glasses of rose de provence. Finally after the storm disappeared it was too late in the afternoon, so I rode back to Paris. The ride back was completed in a similar time, I suspect that the rose and fatty rillettes helped me out.

Look closer Lenny! Oh you're the biggest gate in the world and covered in gold.
14 CARAT GOLD!

The next day I had a Parisian petite dejounier (sans cigarette) of just un expresso as I was meeting my godmother Sandy and her husband John. We met for lunch at Caillebotte which as well as John pointed out was an impressionist painter also had the namesake for a small cool restaurant in Montmarte serving a modern take on French food. I had some foie gras for a change and then vegetables and a cut of steak I don't think I have had before(it was the side{cote} but was a strange shape). It was a lovely coincidence that we were in Paris at the same time to catch up and share some travel stories as they normally live in Perth which is nearly as far from Sydney.

After lunch I braved the rain and went out into the Citi area. I had a couple of drinks at one of the touristy bars nearby the Seine and started chatting to this a couple sitting next to me called Sammy and Pilli. The guy Sammy was from Paris and the girl Pilli was Mexican, studying French. We got talking and decided to move somewhere cheaper to keep drinking. So we grabbed some bottles of wine from the local super marchet and cups and drink them by the Seine. I really like this past time. Anyway it turned out Sammy had been to Australia and had worked in the mines just as a kitchen hand for a bit over a year which then funded a few years of travelling for him. They were nice people who loved travelling and drinking wine also.

They shutdown the bridge for half a day because they thought the locks were making it unstable.

Bike lock? Common guys this is getting ridiculous.

For my last full day in Paris I was booked in for a bread making course. This was a small class of 5 people 3 Americans, one other Aussie lady and me. The guy that ran the course was American but had been living in Paris for about 5 years and was a baker in the states. We made baguettes, fougasse(french focaccia) and brioche dough which made a platted bread, some chocolate chip things and some kind of pull apart with orange rinds in it. The baguettes were a lot of work. The way you flip the dough to stretch it was pretty hard work we were only using about 2kgs but in bakeries they do it with 10kg. Anyway afterwards we enjoyed the fruits of our labour with some wine. It was a interesting class and heaps of fun. One thing I learnt was the French government controls the flour/water/salt ratios if you want your bread to be called a baguette but soon they are going to start using less salt in the interest of public health so in a few months French baguettes might be tasting differently, quelle desastre!

Making the dough

Oh ho ho ho *french laugh*

The day had fined up so I took a bottle of champagne my baguette and some saucissan to Sacre Cour and ate the remaining fruits of my labour and had the champagne overlooking Paris. Some local Police came and told me and some others to finish the wine and cork it and put it away, but once they were gone everyone just pulled their booze back out and resumed drinking. When in Paris....

People enjoying Sacre Cour's grassy knoll.