Wine and cheese tasting in Paris

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This morning we walked over to the Luxembourg Gardens to have a look at those since they are quite close to the Latin Quarter where we are staying. As we walked there we actually noted that we are not all that far from the Montparnasse Tower - the hideously ugly office skyscraper that mars the skyline of Paris!! Well, it was probably further away than it actually appeared and just seemed to be looming over us?!

From the gardens we planned to take the blue line directly from Luxembourg Station to Étienne Marcel Station. Fortunately we noticed on the way into the gardens that the station is closed today!! Plan B - we walked through the gardens and then to St-Placide Station on the fuchsia line and we changed to the blue line at Châtelet. That is what you have to love about the Paris underground, even if one route is disrupted there will be another option!!

From Étienne Marcel someone took us the wrong way (Bernie's sense of direction is as bad as mine when we're in the Northern hemisphere!) so we walked about five minutes in the wrong direction before we realised and turned around to go back. It was just as well we had time to spare before arriving at our wine tasting!! Despite the wrong turn, we rocked up at O Chateau with five minutes to spare and at about the same time as the other participants.

We were escorted to the tasting room out the back where our sommelier, Rémy, introduced himself before asking the participants to share their name, their country of origin and their relationship with wine. Rémy told us that O Chateau was formerly the home of Madame de Pompadour, the official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 until her death. Apparently, in the basement there are still bottles of wine that were bought by Louis XV!!

Rémy then told us that we could ask for top ups if our original samples were not big enough and joked that it was not a problem for him if the Australians (and Canadians) got shit-faced!!! It came out later that he is married to an Australian and has worked in Australia so may have some familiarity with the drinking habits of Australians?? I'm not sure why the Canadians were bundled in with us? Are the Canadians renowned for being big drinkers too??

All joking aside, Rémy then talked us through the intricacies of wine tasting and recommended which cheeses and meats we should pair the wines with. A generous spread of four types of cheese, bread, salami and prosciutto was on offer along with the wines. We tried five wines - a real Champagne, two whites and two reds. The wines were all around the €20 mark. Rémy told us that the average amount paid for a bottle of wine in France is about €3.60 and if you know what you are doing, you can buy good French wines for around €5.00/bottle!! You just have to make sure that you don't buy what the French describe as 'table wine' (which is produced outside of the 'appellation' system) or Beaujolais Nouveau - which is pretty rough and ready!!!

Rémy talked us through the French appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) system which makes a bit more sense to us now. It's all about where the wine is from, rather than what grape it is made from. However, if you get to know the regions each of them is generally associated with a particular type of grape so if you like a chardonnay you make sure that you buy wine from the region that produces mainly chardonnays.

Full of wine, bread, cheese and meat, but not drunk (Rémy's samples were nothing like Hector's!) we started heading back towards the Louvre to have another go at some silhouette photographs. We walked most of the way underground through the massive interchange stations of Châtelet Les Halles and Châtelet. Sophie's Louvre 'shot' that we were trying for, continued to elude us although we took a couple that were close?? Unfortunately, even though the Louvre is closed on mardis, there were too many people passing through the passage in the north wing to take the photo that Sophie had described to us.

Since it was so close, we returned to the Palais-Royal to see if we could improve on the photos we took of the forecourt yesterday. Today there were even more barricades up and the site proved to be even less accessible today than yesterday. We shall have to be satisfied with the photos that we have already taken!!

After a couple of hours back at the hotel we ventured out for dinner. What a party atmosphere in the Latin Quarter tonight!! It is the summer solstice and the fête de la musique is held all over Paris to celebrate the shortest night of the year. The celebration is embraced very enthusiastically in the Latin Quarter with performers on literally every corner. There was folk music, rock music and jazz being played - all within metres of our hotel.

After eating, we spent nearly an hour listening to various bands playing. About 9.00pm we collected our tripods from our room and headed out for some more night photography - which makes for a pretty late night on the longest day of the year!!! Tonight we took photos of the obelisk from the Jardin des Tuileries and Tour Eiffel from the Place de la Concorde before ending up back at the Louvre ... again!!

Back at our hotel after midnight (again) the party was still in full swing in the Latin Quarter, but we were so tired from all of our walking around Paris that it didn't matter - we could have slept through anything!!

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