51 rue Montorgueil

Our neighbours are Da Vinci and Monet. Well, the wonderful places that house their masterpieces. We are holed up on the Seine between Saint-Germain Des Pres and the Quartier Latin on the left bank. But, I would have as much hope of speaking Latin as I would French. Thank goodness Lydia can say je ne parles pas francais.  I just have a dumb stupid look when people ask us for directions. I don’t know why on earth anyone would think we are French as we have the map and GPS constantly in our hands. We spent our first night in a little café just around the corner. Our wander back along the twinkling lights of the Seine reminded us we were indeed in Paris.

We woke and walked for miles. Through the Quartier Montorgueil – a total foodie paradise. We stopped at 51 rue Montorgueil to look at the most fabulous patisserie, Paris’s oldest. The chocolate éclair and mille feuille seemed to have our name on them but we resisted their call. We wandered through Le Marais and Les Halles for hours. We could have well and truly eaten the whole front window of La Maison Stohrer the amount of walking we did. Along Rue du Faubourg we strolled and scoured the streets in the triangle to Avenue Parmentier. Marche des Enfants rouge, the oldest food market in Paris. The market has existed since 1615 and was named after the red uniform worn by the children of the neighbouring orphanage. Well the sights, sounds and smells of Paris were all intermixed with Moroccan, French, Italian, and Japanese cuisine, and exceptionally malodorante poisson competing with the wonderful fromage. The Parisians (or probably US tourists) were all sitting along the pavement sucking on their gauloises with their glasses full – the adage it is five o’clock somewhere in the world so appropriate as the wine glasses are as full at 9am as midnight. Well we were once again reminded we were in Paris with the sparkly collared chien enjoying his gauloises sitting on his chic Parisian madams knee in a very chic Bistrot.

We wandered on into Pere Lachaise. I think Lydia thought I was a bit weird wanting to wander through the beautiful Parisian tombs but a trip to Paris for me would not be complete without visiting Abelard and Heloise. We popped by to say hello to Jim and Oscar and then strolled back for a much shorter nap of our own.

La Tour Eiffel was peering over the top of buildings as we headed on foot in that direction. Through the Jardin des Tuileries and then up (and down) more than 700 steps to look out across the beautiful city in the evening sunlight.