Together Abroad: Sweet Escape: Paris Day One (Part 2)

A few steps away from our apartment and just a corner turn is a restaurant which has an open store outside selling crepes! We ordered chocolate nutella with banana crepe. My first taste of gastronomy in Paris. Little did I know I’ll have very few of them (authentic French cuisines) in days to come. That will be another story. Crepe was delicious. We continued walking while enjoying our crepe.

Waiting for our crepe

Taking picture of the crepe guy and our crepe in the making

Finally, Chocolate Nutella with Banana crepe. Delicious!

Streets and walkways were made of cobbled stones and heavy duty tiles, adorned with French restaurants, cafes and brasseries offering French cuisines and pastries, well most do anyways, Middle Eastern joints selling pizzas and kebabs and oh, I forgot to mention that our apartment was located on streets with bountiful jazz bars and lounges, just like the jazz bar beneath our apartment who was owned by the same guy who rented out the apartment to us. Grand and old looking buildings, institutions and palace. Pretty fountains, gardens and avenues to ease the eyes of passerbys. We're enjoying the sight of Paris already.

Le Baiser Sale Jazz Soul Club. We stayed above it.

Inside the empty club. It was only 12 noon.

One of the corner brasseries which looked expensive.

Oliver with his humongous DSLR!

Oliver with his HTC touch screen phone

Carousel in the middle of the avenue.

After finishing our crepe, we decided we were still hungry and haven’t had our coffee break for the day. So we stop at this contemporary French café Pomme de Pain and ordered our coffee and chocolate muffins.

Pomme de Pain

Chocolate muffin. Not so nice. :(

It started to drizzle. Luckily, we had our umbrella. We expected it because we checked the weather forecast a few day days earlier.

We decided to visit Notre Dame Cathedral. From Chatelet, we have to walk across Seine River through many connecting bridges.

The wind was chilly, fresh from the rain. However, the sight of Notre Dame Cathedral awed us. Of course, we didn’t waste photo opportunities.

Notre de Paris (Our Lady in Paris)

After tenths of clicks outside and inside the cathedral, we continued walking with no specific destination in mind. I guess we were just getting the gist of the city. During the walks, I thought I can’t believe I am in Paris because it has always been my dream destination. I thought how blessed I am to be able to fulfill this dream of mine. How blessed I am to be here. How blessed I am to be with Oliver. How thankful I am for all these blessings.

Almost 7, it was still bright. We had another coffee break in Starbuck. Bless Starbuck. I got Oliver a ‘Paris’ coffee tumbler as his early birthday present. Prior to this trip, I read up a lot about what to wear in Paris because Paris being the capital or city of Fashion and locals here tend to dress up more fashionably than their counterparts. I guess I dressed up okay. I had my khaki-colored trench coat which never fades out of fashion, my red beret which I am very thankful I bought last minute during my transit in Kuala Lumpur as it saved me from many bad hair days later in this trip and my boots. I miss wearing boots. It’s so chic and flattering to my thunder-sized pair of legs.

I was checking out the locals, mostly on how they dress up. Truthfully, they didn’t impress me much. One or two times, I saw someone dressing up exaggeratedly, imagine Cruella de Ville from ‘101 Dalmations’ with long fur coats and designer hand bags. Otherwise, they dressed casually in winter/spring attires.

Come dinner time, we had dinner at this restaurant which was slightly crowded. We were seated by a French waitress and given a menu which thankfully had an English translation. Set dinner menus range from 12-20 Euros consisting entrees, main dish, dessert and coffee/tea. Ala carte menus range from 9-18 Euros. Oliver and I went for the Ala carte menu each ordering Black pepper beef and chip and Smoked salmon with pasta, respectively. The food was nothing to boast about.