Welcome to chapter 16 of our travel adventures— A Summer in France: Paris, Week 4. This is the final post in our Summer in France series. We are flying home tomorrow.
Air Balloon Flight
Since we arrived in Paris, I’ve been trying to take Danny aboard the Balloon de Paris. It’s the world’s largest balloon, according to their website. The balloon is also an airborne lab measuring the ozone quality and many other atmospheric conditions. The color of the balloon actually changes according to the air quality. General public flights ascend about 500 feet. The balloon’s scientific flights can ascend to 1,000 feet high.
Located in a park along the Seine not far from the Eiffel Tower, it’s about a 30 minute walk from our apartment. I checked the website daily for tickets and flight availability. However, every single day the flights cancelled because of wind conditions.
When I checked the website this morning and saw it was open for flights, I was really excited. So we immediately headed over to the park. There were only 5 people in line ahead of us. The balloon was coming in for a landing, so the ticket office called the pilot to see if they could sell tickets for another flight. The pilot said yes! Five minutes later we were finally holding our tickets in hand.
Then as the balloon tried landing, the wind gusts picked up and the passenger basket started swaying left and right and continued to do so until it finally landed. Once everyone left the gondola, we were so excited to board next. However, the pilot came up to me and apologized saying he cancelled all remaining flights the rest of the day due to the wind. Dang it! We were so close. We collected our refund, but I’ll continue trying all this week and keep you posted.
Palais Garnier
Built between 1861-1875, the Palais Garnier, or Opéra Garnier, is the Paris Opera House. It can seat approximately 2,000 people. Because of its opulence, among all the buildings constructed in Paris during that time period, this one was the most expensive to complete. This was also the setting for the 1910 novel Phantom of the Opera.
As with most buildings and monuments in Paris this trip, they are all undergoing cleaning and repair due to the 2024 Olympics next year. I’ve included an older photo from a few years ago to show you the facade without the scaffolding. The remaining photos are from our visit today.
There are no words to describe the beauty, architecture, or lavish decor of the Opera House, so I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.
Place Vendôme & Texas History
The Place Vendôme created in 1698 is a very large square in the heart of Paris. It is now home to ultra luxe hotels such as the Ritz, top fashion designers and brands as well as luxury jewelers. So, we certainly weren’t there to shop!
You may be wondering what does this luxury square have to do with Texas history? The building with all the mirrors on its facade is Louis Vuitton. Reflected in one of the mirrors is the 17th century mansion across the street with a blue wooden door and houses Chopard Jewelers, Hôtel de Vendôme, and other shops. If you happen to look very carefully between the door and window just above the lantern, you’ll find a plaque.
The plaque reads: Embassy of Texas
In 1842-1843 this building was the seat of the Embassy of the Republic of Texas in Paris.
By the French-Texan Treaty of 29 September 1839, France was the first nation to recognise the Republic of Texas, an independent state between 1836 and 1845.
In December 1845, the United States annexed Texas and it ceased to be an independent country. Texas then became the 28th state of the Union…and that’s “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey used to say. Who knew?
Rue Montorgueil
It was time for lunch, but before we made it to the restaurant Danny peeked inside a pastry shop and couldn’t resist the mille-feuille. What’s wrong with dessert as the pre-appetizer?
Rue Montorgueil is a street that is lined with restaurants, cafés, bakeries, cheese shops, wine shops, produce stands and florists, etc. It’s also home to Stohrer, one of the oldest bakeries in Paris (1730). Au Rocher de Cancale restaurant opened in 1804. However, our lunch destination is L’Escargot, founded in 1832.
I love escargot, but this is the first time I’ve ever had them stuffed with Brie and nuts along with the garlic butter. The entire meal was delicious.
FYI, Danny did end his meal with another dessert, just like he started it. Notice in the photo that the crème brûlée is half eaten. The waiter brought it to the table. I grabbed my phone to take a picture and by the time I turned around, he had already eaten half. It was that good!l
🎶🎈Up, up and away in my beautiful balloon… 🎈🎶
We stayed up late last night, so now we are enjoying a lazy morning and an extra cup of coffee on the terrace before getting ready for the day. I checked the balloon’s website to discover that they are FLYING today! Woohoo. The website stated that the winds are projected to increase, so they may cancel flights at any time. We decided to forego our shower and fresh set of clothes until later to immediately start that 30 minute walk over to the park. I kept checking the site while walking and so far, so good.
We are one block away and my heart sank—it started drizzling. Oh no, this will mess up our flight plans. We noticed the balloon on the ground, but they weren’t selling tickets in the rain. So we waited. Just a few minutes later it stopped and the pilot came out and said “it’s a go”. We FINALLY bought our tickets and boarded the balloon. We knew the flight is only about 15 minutes, but it’s more than enough time to enjoy the 360 degree view above Paris.
There are only about 10 of us on board, so it’s easy to walk around the gondola during the ride to take photos. We slowly lifted off and were on our way. It was beautiful and calm, so the gondola swayed only slightly when there was a gust. The view is incredible and the pilot noted that we’re higher than the second viewing platform of the Eiffel Tower. Join us for a bit of our ride.
Porcelain shopping
My favorite French porcelain shop is M. P. Samie. This factory outlet type store has 3 floors of every type of porcelain and china item you can think of stacked on shelves, floors and in boxes. Everything can probably be found here and at a discount.
So what were we looking for? Well, Danny had a mishap with a large mug and unfortunately it’s now in pieces. But, we found a remplacement to leave in the apartment. This isn’t the first thing broken on this trip. We also ran around looking for a replacement crystal wine glass too. Though that one was my fault, as the stem snapped when I was drying it.
Parc Monceau
One of the routines that we’ve really enjoyed here are our picnic lunches in the park. Of course it’s a lot easier here with a high of 75 degrees, instead of a 100 degrees at home in Houston! Paris has a huge number of public parks and since I’ve never been to Parc Monceau, that’s where we headed today.
The idea for this public park came about in 1778. A designer was chosen to create an English style garden filled with structures from other ages and included informal landscapes. The park today is over 20 acres and includes a rotunda (1787), a classical Roman colonnade (1778), a small Egyptian pyramid (1778), an Italian inspired bridge (1861) and statutes of important artists and literary figures. Monet painted a series of landscapes here. Another interesting fact about this garden is that In 1797, it was the site of the first silk parachute jump, when André-Jacques Garnerin jumped from a hot air balloon, landing here where a large crowd was gathered.
Bistroy Les Papilles
I read about Les Papilles restaurant a number of years ago. We ate here on our last trip and it was incredible. It became my favorite restaurant in Paris. I made reservations for dinner on our last Friday evening in town. If you ever want to eat here, reserve well ahead of time and be sure to reconfirm you’ll be there the day of, otherwise they’ll cancel your reservation. They only prepare enough food for those confirmed.
It’s a special place that serves a typical French dinner in a very quaint setting. The chef goes out to the local market each morning and buys whatever has freshly arrived. He then creates a different 4 course menu daily. You never know what you’ll be served until you arrive, and there’s no other menu option available. It’s an adventure in dining. The restaurant also happens to be a “cave à vin” (wine shop) so you select your bottle from over 250 wine choices on the shelves.
Menu du Marché
The meal is served family style. We started with a gazpacho soup made with tomatoes, peaches, buffalo mozzarella and fried basil leaves. This cold soup was very welcome, as we had a high of 84 degrees today. This is unusually hot for Paris in June.
We then enjoyed an amazing veal dish with baby potatoes, carrots, parsnips, shaved fennel, roasted peppers and garlic with fresh thyme served in a beautiful copper casserole pan. Yes, that pan would make a great souvenir, but since we only had one they probably would have missed it 😉. The sauce is so good it could have been bottled and sold. We had a second basket of bread just so we could finish the sauce.
The cheese course contained a mild blue cheese with plums in a red wine reduction. We finished our meal with an apricot panna cotta. Absolutely delicious and we can’t wait to return! Now, we need to walk this off.
Paris Covered Passages
The covered passages in Paris are scattered mostly around the 2nd arrondissement. In another era, they were a way for people to avoid the dirty streets and bad weather. They are probably the origin of the modern shopping malls.
City engineers created long pathways, lined with shops and restaurants and covered with glass ceilings to allow for light to flow in. Today, there are only about 20 of the original 100 covered passages remaining. It’s a fun thing to do when the weather is rainy. We walked around and visited about 10 of the passages this morning and here are five of my favorites.
Galerie Vivienne is perhaps the prettiest and it opened in 1823.
Built in 1799, Passage des Panoramas is the oldest covered passage. It even has a rail car restaurant.
Passage du Grand-Cerf created in 1825.
The Passage Verdeau created in 1847.
Passage Jouffroy built in 1836.
Oldest house in Paris
Nicolas Flamel commissioned his home after the death of his wife in 1397. It was completed in 1407. It is now a Michelin starred restaurant.
Final 24 hours in Paris
We wanted to enjoy more of our favorite things to eat and see on our last 24 hours in Paris. The owner of our apartment stopped by with a bottle of champagne for us as a surprise gift. This was just after eating our delicious steak that came with a slab of foie gras on top.
Arènes de Lutèce & Rue Mouffetard
The Arènes de Lutèce (Arenas of Lutetia) are the remains of an ancient Roman amphitheater from the first century that could once seat 15,000 people. Theatre and gladiator battles were common here at that time. Today, it’s part of a park used for sports and other events.
Near the Roman ruins is Rue Mouffetard, one of the oldest streets in Paris from the Roman days. It’s now lined with shops, food markets, cafes, and boutiques. There’s even an old water fountain from 1624 still in use today. We spent the morning wandering around, then had lunch. On the way back to the apartment to start packing, Danny couldn’t resist a banana Nutella crêpe for dessert.
Au revoir…but just for now
It’s hard to believe that almost 3 months have gone by in the blink of an eye. It seems like just yesterday we arrived and tried our best to shrug off jet lag. We are both sad to be leaving tomorrow, but we know that we’ll be back. France is like a second home to us. This amazing trip has taught us how to travel for a richer experience that really works for us.
Lessons learned
First lesson learned is to travel slower. For our entire lives, we traveled in one or two week increments cramming in WAY too much. That’s my fault. I’m the over achiever with travel planning. By taking more time and slowing down our pace, we learned to live life more like the “locals” and actually had the opportunity to meet and engage with more people than in the past. Of course retirement now affords us the extra time to travel slow.
Part of “fitting in” for us is to quickly adapt to and respect the culture and routine of the places we visit. We’ve travelled this way for years and it has served us well. You can live the American way when at home, but enjoy and appreciate the differences of other cultures and their way of life while you’re there. I think travelling this way has helped us value and appreciate our lives back home even more.
More lessons learned
Other things we learned are the benefits of renting an apartment for at least one week per location. It gives us extra room to relax and we have a full kitchen to cook and a washing machine for clothes. Dryers are pretty rare in European apartments, so you do have to go to the laundromat for drying. Also, eating out 3 meals a day doesn’t work for us. We enjoy relaxing and having our morning coffee in our PJs. An apartment also makes a great base for day trips, so you don’t have to keep packing and unpacking to check into hotels all the time.
Finally, focusing on experiences when traveling provided us a richer and more memorable trip. So the time spent on a balloon ride, or that extra cup of coffee on the terrace, wandering around lost in a new destination, or participating in a spur of the moment festival, special monument or event that wasn’t planned is what makes the trip so special. Best of all, if you can share some vacation time with friends who join you on your journey, then that’s the icing on the cake.
Travel opens your heart, broadens your mind, and fills your life with stories to tell. -Paula Bendfeldt
Thanks for reading a Summer in France: Paris, Week 4. This is the final post in our Summer in France series. We look forward to our next travel adventures and we’ll be happy to share them with you.
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