Occasionally Interesting, often not

Going to give props to the outfit through which we rented our apartment at 41 Quai de Bourbon, on the 6th floor: www.parisaddress.com. There are a number of sites that offer short term apartment rentals. Parisaddress's site is by far the best, and their prices are pretty good, though in one case that we saw, the same apartment was listed on another site and was cheaper. I was asked, how do you trust these guys? After all, you're sending them a lot of money. It's true that it was blind trust, but everything was fine. The payment can be made online (the deposit is mandatory online, but you have the option of paying in person on arrival). One thing to note is that you might need to clear your US credit card with your issuer before attempting the online payment -- I had to do this; it was declined otherwise. The payment is via Societe General, a major French bank, so in terms of security, that seems fine. Their communication was prompt and professional, and they were pro-active...

And so Tuesday rolled around, our last full day in Paris. This day was reserved for shopping and chocolates. We wanted to visit some additional outlet type places and we wanted to visit some of the chocolatiers listed in NY Times travel article we had read. (http://travel.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/travel/14journeys.html) We first stopped by a couple of shops near the apt. One shop is particular has a very nice selection of scarves. It's interesting to see that google street view is pretty out of date in terms of what's on Rue Saint Louis en L'Ile, as this particular store can't be seen. One of the discount outlet streets is Rue Alesia, conveniently located at the Alesia metro stop. We stopped for a quick bite first, at one of the ubiquitous "traiteur asiatque" places that seem to be all around Paris. I guess that in the old days, asian immigrants started laundry places and restaurants. These days, it is these asian deli places that they start (and also a number o...

Now it's Sunday. Up somewhat early to visit the marche at the Bastille. Lots of stalls and quite crowded. Mostly food stalls, but a bit of everything. We bought from: (a) some costume jewelry, (b) fruit, (c) flowers, (d) honey, (e) some turkish delight, (f) some organic juice, (g) some moroccan fried stuff, (h) some asian fried stuff. Then it was off to the Opera Garnier. Got there early enough to wander around a bit. It's really quite grand inside -- lots of gilt and ornamentation. The auditorium itself is relatively intimate compared to larger modern venues. Our seat was the last row of the main orchestra, which we got to via a tunnel and some stairs. Interestingly, our seats were only accessible by walking through the row in front of us. The view onto the stage, and the acoustics were very good, and the ballet, Cranko's Eugene Oneguine was very good too. Turns out it was the opening performance of the series. After the ballet, we were hungry, so we made a quick trip to Q...

After the big lunch, we got the metro to the Opera Garnier to take a look. Then we decided to see what might be available to get tickets for and ended up with two orchestra tickets for Sunday to see the ballet Eugene Oneguine. We then took a quick stroll through the Galeries Lafayette, which was full of Asian tourists. Things, of course, were very expensive too. We decided to go to the discount area in Montmartre, and found success digging in the discount bins of a chain called Sympa. The 2nd day of our trip was May 1, a French public holiday. We got up somewhat late, and took the Babobus to the Eiffel Tower, site of large lunch #2, at Jules Verne. We hadn't anticipated the size of lunch #1 the previous day at Guy Savoy, but we hadn't eaten dinner the night before, nor breakfast, so were reasonably hungry. It being a holiday weekend, the crowd at the Eiffel Tower was Huge! Long, long lines snaked everywhere. Jules Verne has its own elevator to the 2nd level, and there was even ...

Just got back from a wonderful week in Paris. Walked a lot, ate fantastically, shopped, cultured ourselves, and to top it off, had pretty decent weather (i.e. it didn't rain!). Let's do the highlights: a very expensive lunch at Pierre Gagnaire, a wonderful ballet at the Opera Garnier, some successful shopping expeditions. We arrived on the only day we had any rain to speak of. Met at the airport by Shuttle Inter, who got us into Paris and back to the airport efficiently. We used parisaddress.com to book an apartment on Ile St. Louis, and after coordinating with them on the cell driving into Paris, were met outside the apartment a couple of minutes after we arrived. Gabriel settled us in, and after we had done some unpacking, we went to the flower market on Ile de la Cite. Then it was about lunchtime. Went to Itineraires on Rue Pontoise just across the river in the 5th. Very good start to the trip; the meal was excellent, and capped off with a fantastic souffle for dessert (Cafe...