Day 5 - Thursday

To see our photos from today, click here.

We slept in until 9:00am this morning and decided to walk along the nearby Rue Cler to look for a place to eat breakfast. Throughout our travels we have seen so many “open air” restaurants (of course, that’s not what they’re called, but they are hard to describe if you haven’t seen them). The restaurants open up to the outside so it doesn’t appear that they have doors. Small tables (usually round) with chairs behind and to the sides allow people to eat meals, or sip espressos or appertifs, talk with friends and watch the continual parade of people walking by. We ate a leisurely breakfast (good strong coffee, juice and delicious croissants with strawberry jam) at an outdoor table, and enjoyed people-watching.

We decided to visit Sainte-Chappelle this morning, since it was a beautiful day, and we had read that the stained glass windows were best admired on sunny days. Sainte-Chappelle is a cathedral built in 1248 by King Louis IX to house the supposed Crown of Thorns. The fifteen separate panels of stained glass contain more than 1,000 scenes from the bible. The pictures I took do not do it justice! When we arrived there we were dismayed to see a long line to the entrance, however we ended up talking most of the time with a very nice family from Boston. We did not go into the Conciergerie, but did take a picture of it from the outside. This is the prison adjacent to the cathedral which was the last stop for the 2,000+ people (including Marie Antoinette) who were headed to the guillotine.

From Sainte-Chappelle, we headed to the Sacre-Coeur Basilica, located at the highest point in Paris. We had the option of taking the funnicular (cable car) but opted for the stairs instead. The view was magnficant (notice the lack of skyscrapers in Paris!) and the atmosphere in the church very reverent, considering the number of people going through it. On the way down, I counted the steps we had climbed (289) which coincidentally was the same number of shops Jana and Chelsea went in during our stroll through the streets of Montmartre! Just kidding....we had several hours to walk around before the restaurant (recommended to us by Jana’s French teacher) opened. Great shops - vintage clothing, art galleries, jewelry stores and book/stationary shops. Chelsea bought a shirt and Jana bought a dress.

We had bypassed lunch today so that we could enjoy a nice dinner at “Refuge des Fondus.” As you might be able to tell by the photograph, the outside of the restaurant is nothing special. We had visited its website, found it opened at 5:00pm, and arrived at 4:45pm ready to feast. We were dismayed to see, from a sign on the window, that it didn’t open until 7:00pm. We decided to continue to shop, stopped and had a piece of quiche (well, Jana and Chelsea had pastries) to tide us over, and returned at 7:00pm. It was well worth the wait!
We were the first ones to be seated, at the end of one of two long tables that stretched from one end of the restaurant to the other. Another couple came in shortly after, at which time we realized how lucky we were to be the first to arrive. Check out this youtube video to see how most people are seated in this restaurant! (note: it’s only 2 seconds long, so don’t blink). A plate of appetizers was served to us first, which included cubes of cheese, salami, pepperoni, bologna, olives, pickles and spicy potatoes. This was accompanied by a small glass of wine. We were given a choice of beef or cheese for our entree; the girls choose cheese, I choose beef. A generous cup full of raw beef chunks was placed in front of me, with a plate of four sauces. Fortunately I was warned by a dinner companion that a pot of boiling oil in which to cook the beef would be following. While the girls dipped bread chunks in the cheese fondu, I cooked my beef and enjoyed it in the provided sauces (of course, we shared). As you can see from the pictures, our drinks were provided in baby bottles. Our waiter Andre was quite the character, and we enjoyed the company of our dinner companions, Chris and Jennifer, from Toronto, who were on a three-week honeymoon through Europe. To get a feel for the atmosphere in the restaurant, you can watch this youtube video. Our meal ended with desserts of fruit, cheese and chocolate cake.

Our day concluded with a walk back toward the Eiffel Tower, to view it again in the dark. At 11:00pm the city was still alive with activity! (we did get somewhat lost on the return to the hotel, but that’s another story.....)