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Published: January 15th 2009
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Galleries Lafayette
The malls in Paris do NOT skimp on the Christmas decorations. Ahh, New Year’s Eve…I’ve realized that the older I get, the less I want to celebrate this changing of the calendar in the confines of a club, bar, or other establishment meant for partying. However, I also feel pressured to do something “fun”, or at least with the appearance of fun. So, when we heard that people in Paris celebrate New Year’s Eve by going outside and simply walking around the Champs Elysees, that sounded right up our alley!
We’ve already had the opportunity to do the museum-thing in Paris, so we decided to take a different approach this time. Arming ourselves with maps of restaurants, bakeries, and more Asian grocery stores than you can shake a red pepper at, we built a customized “random neighborhood” tour of Paris! And let me just say, we hit some gold mines. In the Butte aux Cailles, we found a cool little bar which serves homemade Rums that you can sample; on Rue Cler we found some great little stores and stands, where the vendors were patient enough to listen to our broken French. Rue Mouffetard has a little of everything, from bakeries to a karaoke bar, while Ave de Choisy houses arguably
Le Merle Moqueur
At Le Merle Moqueur, possibly the greatest Rum Bar in Paris... the best Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall in Europe. Paris just has so much to offer, that you can find virtually anything you want. Interested in cutting-edge designer clothing from unknown boutiques? Go to Paris! Want some organic wines from up-and-coming producers in the Loire Valley? Go to Paris! Need a specific fish sauce for one of your homemade recipes, and can’t find it in other nearby cities? You get the idea…but as a result, we had one of our best city trips, without seeing any of the real sights.
This type of travel is fun, as it lends itself to weird occurrences. My favorite was while we were walking through the Marche Saxe-Breteuil, an open-air market just south of the Eiffel Tower. One of the stands had some freshly-cooked chicken wings, and as Soph and I hadn’t had chicken wings in over a year, nor had we eaten breakfast yet, we decided to buy a little bag of them and scarf them down. Finding a park bench off to the side, we ravenously dug into them, breaking the all-important French rule of not eating with your hands. As we were doing this, an old woman walked up to a pile of
Les Invalides
Might have been cold, but there were still clear blue skies. boxes on our left, which were clearly trash, and started digging through them. Within a minute she had found a raw chicken breast, and she picked it up and put it in her bag! As she looked normal enough, I couldn’t tell if it was an issue of her not having enough money to buy a chicken from the vendor, or if she was simply thinking “hey - free chicken!”
The funny part of this story, however, is that as this was going on, one of the vendors saw us sitting on the bench, eating our chicken wings (which were awesome, by the way), and yelled over to us, half-mockingly, half-friendly, “bon appetit!” We smiled and yelled “merci” back, at which point the five Parisians standing in his line slowly turned their heads to us, and in succession, either sneered or completely ignored us, then turned back. Not even a smile! No issues with a woman going through the garbage and taking out raw chicken breasts, but don’t eat chicken wings on a bench! Guess they’re afraid the tourists are going to invade their market, which is a reasonable enough fear, because that market ruled. I mean seriously - they had awesome croissants, specialty cheeses, and chicken wings - where else on earth can you find all three of those in the same place?
One thing I would advise against visiting in Paris are the cafes. I know it sounds sacrilegious to skip these, but at the end of the day they don’t serve a quality product, and virtually all of them charge exorbitant prices. The coffee you’ll get will be decent, but the hot chocolates are often just cocoa packets with water, and the wines are borderline undrinkable. The only bright spot of these is that you’ll get to sit down for as long as you want, which is good for people watching in the summer, and escaping the cold in the winter, but they’re not the cultural experience they should be. That said, if you look hard enough - and do some good research ahead of time - there are a handful of stellar wine bars that serve some great stuff. They aren’t in places where you’ll just stumble across them, but if you have some mapped out, you can find them (plus, searching for some of them can take you off the beaten path, where you’ll find all sorts of other cool things). For something truly different, try The Baron Rouge near Bastille; not only do they have a huge selection of quality wines, but they also have oak barrels where you can fill an empty bottle and take it with you!
So yet again, Paris has proven itself to be a fantastic city, offering up everything we were looking for. And New Years? Well, after walking around the Champs Elysees, we headed to a bridge over the Seine, where we had a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower. No fireworks or anything, but it did light up at midnight, and everyone cheered, then went home. More or less uneventful, but really, it’s probably more fun that way. Great way to start another year!
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