Aix-en-Provence

We decided to take a trip down to the south of France for a little break from the gloomy Parisian winter.

Our first destination was Aix-en-Provence.  It seemed like there was a fountain tucked into every corner of the older part of the city and every restaurant had outdoor seating.  It was warm enough for us to have lunch outside one day, and sitting in the sun you could almost imagine what it would be like in the summer, people watching while sipping a chilled glass of rosé wine.

Being in the south of France in the winter meant that we missed out on the high season for tourists. When we were visiting sites like Cezanne’s last studio (preserved pretty much as it was found on the day he died) or the Cathédrale Saint Sauveur we had them almost completely to ourselves.  Our few days in Aix were relaxing and restorative and I look forward to going back someday.

Surprise ending?

We were discussing movies in French class this week and my French teacher commented that she had recently seen Lincoln.  She enjoyed it very much, but was surprised to learn that Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated.  I mentioned this to J, and the next day he took a survey of four of his non-American co-workers.  They were all roughly familiar with Abraham Lincoln and his place in American history, but only one of the four knew how he died.

While I don’t expect that people in other countries would pay much attention to American history, we both found it odd that people who knew who Abraham Lincoln was and were aware of the Civil War and his role in abolishing slavery would not know that he had been assassinated.  I guess Lincoln will have a surprise ending for at least part of its international audience!

Le Vieux-Port

We just returned from vacationing in the south of France.

This was the view from our hotel room in Marseille.

Notre Dame

Notre Dame is on the Île de la Cité in the very center of Paris.  We live a little over a mile away and when it is nice out I will often walk past the cathedral on my way to other places in the city. There is always a long line of people waiting at the entrance, so the only times I've been in the cathedral while living here have been when we've had visitors. 

On one of the very few rain-free, blue-skied days we had in January, I went a little out of the way while running errands to walk by Notre Dame.  Apparently 5:30 pm on a weekday in January is not a peak time for visitors as there was no line to go in. I decided that an impromptu cathedral visit was in order.

I had never visited Notre Dame in the evening and it was really lovely, quieter and less crowded.  They have chandeliers and spotlights illuminating the cathedral both day and night, but with only the last bits of daylight filtering through the stained glass the atmosphere was a little more mysterious.

No line at the entrance!

The line at the entrance over the summer stretches across the whole picture

Port de l'Arsenal

The Arsenal links the Canal Saint-Martin with the river Seine.  This picture was taken from the pedestrian walkway on top of one of the locks used to connect the two waterways.

Macarons

One of my favorite French treats is the macaron.  You can find them almost anywhere in Paris: frozen ones in the grocery store and fresh ones in every bakery.  Ladurée is an old Parisian patisserie that is famous for their macarons, beautiful salons de thé, and other decadent desserts.  In fact, it was the bakery where someone first thought of putting together the two almond cookie shells with a filling to make the modern macaron cookie. It has been my go-to macaron source for years.  I was recently in the neighborhood of one of the Ladurée salons de thé and I picked up a salted butter caramel macaron to eat while walking through the courtyards of the Louvre.  It felt like a perfect Parisian moment.

Last year one of my favorite sources for restaurant recommendations in Paris put together a list of five great places for macarons.  Reading the list inspired me to do a taste test of my own.  I picked up a few macarons from the top three patisseries on the list: Pierre Hermé, Ladurée, and Gérard Mulot.  I bought the same flavors from each bakery to allow for a direct comparison and ended up with caramel and chocolate macarons from each.

I set up our tasting so that J would not know which cookies were from which store.  We cut each macaron in half, tasted one flavor at a time, and ranked them.  They were all delicious, but the best cookie in each category was the perfect combination of good texture, good filling-to-cookie ratio, and rich flavor.  I was surprised to find that we both consistently preferred the Pierre Hermé macarons, followed by those from Ladurée, with Gérard Mulot coming in third place.  I would still recommend visiting Ladurée to have lunch or dessert in one of their beautiful tea rooms, but I think we will be visiting Pierre Hermé to buy macarons again soon.

Frozen Tuileries Garden

Lyon

J tends to be a much more adventurous eater than I.  I remember being charmed by a story he told me on our first date about eating sautéed cubes of fat on a trip to China.  The cubes of fat didn’t sound particularly appealing, but the fact he had been willing to give them a try definitely was.

Regardless of our pickiness or lack thereof, we both have had to be a little flexible and fearless on occasion when dining out in France.  Restaurants often do not have English menus and a lot of regional dishes have a name that cannot be directly translated to English.  Ordering in restaurants can be a little bit like trying to speak French for me: I always hope for the best but things don’t always turn out the way I planned.

We took a short weekend trip to Lyon, the third-largest city in France.  We had read a lot about Lyon being a gastronomic capital of France, and while we did not dine in any of the 20+ Michelin-starred restaurants in the area, we did visit a bouchon to try some traditional Lyonnaise food.  I was aware that the food was going to be pretty “meaty,” but had no idea that many menus were going to be dominated by offal.

On the first night, we went to a restaurant with a modern approach to Lyonnaise cuisine and it was amazing.  But even J’s adventurous palate was defeated the next day when a bowl of pied de veau (veal foot) showed up at our table as “the salad of the day” in a set lunch menu.  He tried it (I did not) and was not a fan.  I once had described something to him as tasting like “garbage in my mouth.”  I think he finally understood that feeling when he ate the pied de veau.  When the time came to choose our main courses, well over half of them involved some sort of tripe or head.  We were a little nervous but both managed to find something delicious that did not involve unusual animal parts.  Lyon was beautiful and we had a great time, but I think the thing we will always remember about this trip is the pied de veau.