LowCountryIslander

Day Two: Sunday, Sept. 21st, 2008

Today dawned a beautifully clear and sunny day and more importantly it stayed that way all day! Breakfast was included in the price of our hotel so we enjoyed croissants, jam, cheeses,juice and coffee in the breakfast room in the cellar of the Hotel Castex. A variety of yogurts and fruit was also available.

Since the group tour didn’t start until later this afternoon I booked a Context Paris (http://www.contexttravel.com/paris/) walking tour of the Montmartre neighbourhood. I had read about Context on Fodors and based on the glowing reviews decided to give it a try and since the Rick Steves’ tour would not be going to Montmartre I thought it would be nice to see another area of Paris.

Prior to leaving home Context Paris sent directions on where to meet for the walking tour. We were to meet at the Abbesses metro stop, so we hopped on the metro at La Bastille and rode to Abbesses. While doing my trip research I found the RATP website (http://www.ratp.com/) and under the finding your way tab you can type in a starting and ending address and the best public transport route comes up…really handy!

We got off the metro and proceeded to walk up the 200+ stairs at this metro stop…it’s not called “Mont”martre for nothing! Big Hint…we later found out from our Context guide there is an elevator. We arrived a few minutes early so had a seat in the park area surrounding the metro stop. Our guide Lilly arrived right on time and we had good fortune on our side, we were the only ones signed up for this tour, so we got a private tour! Lilly started the tour with a brief overview and history of the area and explained that the Abbesses metro stop is only 1 of 2 stops that still has the original canopy over the metro entrance. Really quite beautiful.

Lilly was an excellent guide, an artist herself, who lives in the neighbourhood (we even passed her apartment) was a fountain of knowledge about the area. We got to see some of the nooks and crannies of Montmartre including where some former and current artist’s studios are located, the St. Denis statue and several very interesting residential streets. The tour lasted about 3 hours and we ended at Sacre-Coeur.

Lilly was full of personality and really listened to our questions and comments and even gave us a great recommendation for a café in the neighbourhood for lunch. Unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the café, but it was in the area at the bottom of the first set of stairs coming down from Sacre-Coeur. Mom had her first croquet monsieur and I had a buckwheat pancake filled with ham and mushrooms. With 2 oranginas the total was €25.

After lunch we made our way through the throng of people at the bottom of Montmartre to the Anvers metro stop. From there we were just minutes away from the Champs Elysees. We emerged from the metro and there it was in all its glory…the Arc di Triomphe. After taking probably way too many pictures we started our stroll down this famous boulevard. Our goal: Lauduree.

I had heard so much about the Lauduree macaroons that I was a woman on a mission to try one of these incredible little wonders. Our original plan was to go in and sit down for tea and macaroons, but the tea room was fairly crowded and we needed to be back to meet our group by 5pm, so we chose to get a box from the carry-out area and enjoy them back at our hotel.

I will be the first to admit that I have an incredible sweet tooth and to see these absolutely beautiful looking macaroons I almost swooned…ok, maybe not swoon, but was bowled over at how pretty these sweet little morsels were…would they taste as good as they looked? We’d soon find out. I decided to get a variety of flavours and asked the young man behind the counter to put a mixture of 15 into a box. These are most likely the most expensive macaroons I will ever have but once I took the first bite, I am quite sure I will never taste a macaroon like Lauduree again. The flavours were vibrant and the macaroon delicate. I’m salivating just writing about them!

After our afternoon splurge on Lauduree macaroons (and, yes, I did savour them over the next few days) it was time to meet our Rick Steves guide and the rest of our group. We spent the next 2 hours getting to know Patrick, our guide, and the other 23 tour members. By 7pm it was time for our first group meal and we walked around the corner to La Petit Maison de la Bastoche at 7, Rue Saint Antoine.

I can honestly say that I was pleasantly surprised. Sometimes you just never know what your going to get at a group meal, but as far as they go, this one was pretty good (not the best, that will come later). The starter was a beet root salad, which was excellent and I thought I would never say that about beets! The main dish was roasted tarragon chicken with mashed potatoes and for dessert the best profiteroles I’ve ever had. Since there wasn’t coffee served at the end of the meal, once we said our goodbyes to the group for the night we found a little café on Place de la Bastille to have our evening espresso…a perfect end to a terrific day.

sandypaws3

LowCountryIslander,
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading your Paris trip report! I felt like I was there with you as you hopped a metro to one place or another. We plan to go back in April, and I can't wait!

I made note of Le Petit Bofinger. I love the Knopf mapguides and the Pudlo guide, though I only have the Paris guide.

Sandy

Anna1013

lowcountryIslander,

Thanks so much for putting up your trip report! Very much enjoying all the little details, especially about your meals and little treats on the side...I have to say, you are making me quite jealous about the macaroons from Lauduree. I have been to Paris twice, but I've still never been able to try them out there!

I have to say, I was pretty impressed with your hotel accomodations with the Rick Steves tour. I'm sure other might disagree, but I've seen some of the hotels(and there locations) with tours, and your hotel seemed really quaint and elegant. The rooms as you said are very small, but the lobby and breakfast areas seemed very cute!

I've never been that interested in going to Montmarte, especially since I've had a hard time as it is packing in everything I've wanted to see in Paris, but I never thought of doing a tour as you did. That's incredible that you got a private tour - I know you did this one with Context tours, but have you ever done one with Paris Walks? I was just wondering how the two would compare.

If you don't mind me asking, how much was the entire tour package?

LowCountryIslander

Anna1013,

Yes, I have to agree, the hotels we stayed in while on the tour were very much to my liking. I've been on other Rick Steves tours and had a very good idea of the types of hotels the tours get booked into and that was a major factor in choosing to go with RS.

I'm not able to compare Context Paris tours to Paris Walks because I've never taken a Paris Walks tour, but from reading the travel board here I do know that both companies usually get very good comments.

The price of the RS tour was $3295, but we booked it almost a year in advance, I do believe that that price did go up a couple hundred dollars. Also since I was a repeat RS customer for each tour I had taken with them in the past I recieved $50 off my tour price, which was another $200 off for me. The RS tour prices do not included airfare, that was purchased separately and I was vigilant last year combing the airline websites when we were ready to buy our airline tickets. I found open jaw tickets (arrival Paris departure Nice, with an overnight in NYC on the return) for $936 including tax.

plafield

Great report so far. Looking forward to more!

adrienne

Anna1013 - I've not taken any Context Paris walks but have taken a couple of their Rome tours and this is an excellent company.

I've also taken at least 10 Paris Walks tours including Montmartre twice. I've looked at the Context walk description and it is very similar to the Paris Walks Montmartre tour. The difference is the price. Context is 55 Euro per person for 3 hours; Paris Walks is 10 Euro per person for 2 hours. That's a big difference in price.

I think the Paris Walks folks do an excellent job and they are all certified guides. Unless you get an incredibly exceptional guide I'd be inclined to save the money and use Paris Walks.

I'm looking over the Context tours and see that they have really expanded in the last 8 years in both location and offerings and some of their Paris tours look very interesting. I would consider Context for some of their specialized tours but for something like the Montmartre walk or the Chocolate tour (90 Euro for Context and 25 Euro for Paris Walks) I would definitely recommend Paris Walks.

JMFMountain

Hello:

Thank you for your trip report.

Barbara and I are going on the same Rick Steves tour on May 2. We will arrive in Paris the Wednesday before the tour start day, Saturday evening.

We are debating wether to buy a 4 or 6 day Museum pass. Did the RS tour provide a 2 day pass for your Museum visits on Sunday and Monday?

How were the tour provided meals during the trip? Our 14 day Germany, Switzerland, Austria RS tour in September 2007 had average to poor dinners. No choices, just what was provided.

We greatly enjoyed this 14 day tour.
The hotels were great as was the guide and the transportation.

As first timers to Paris and France, we eagerly look forward to our May trip.

Thank you for your thoughts.

James

Fodorite018

I am really enjoying this, thanks Can't wait to read the rest!

A small note though, if you purchase the ticket online for the Vedettes cruise, you are not locked in for any date or time. We did this a year ago and just showed up whenever we felt like taking the cruise. It saved 4 euro doing that.

TPaxe

I have done both Paris Walks and Context Tours and prefer more the Paris Walks. Their Chocolate tour is fantastic and the guides are great fun, really the best. Also Paris Walks are much less expensive and have a better variety of tours.

Anna1013

lowcountryIslander,

Thanks for the information!


adrienne,

I never realized Context tours did tours in Paris(until reading this report), as I've only heard people taking them in Rome. Thanks for breaking down the two tour groups for me!

Underhill

For future reference, that should actually be "je ne parle pas français," not "je ne parlez pas."

LowCountryIslander

JMFMountain...

Yes, the RS tour included the 2 day museum pass that we used for Sunday and Monday.

As for the group meals, most were good, one was really stellar (in Arles). There were a few group meals that we had a choice between 2 starters, mains, and desserts, usually those meals were on the good to excellent side, the group meals where we did not get a choice were generally on the average side. This is why I did alot of research pre-trip to have a good list of restaurants to try on the evenings we were on our own for meals. We also had a picnic lunch provided one day by the guide which was very good.

It seemed to me the RS guides have some lattitude with the restaurants for group meals and can choose ones they feel will work the best for each group. So every group may not have the same restaurant experience.

More to come later.

LowCountryIslander

Day Three: Monday, Sept. 22nd, 2008

We started today with a group walking tour. We took a short metro ride to the Hotel de Ville and Patrick began the tour there. From the Hotel de Ville we walked to Notre Dame, all the way Patrick giving us the history of the island and the cathedral. Once we arrived at Notre Dame and after Patrick oriented us we had time on our own to go into the cathedral. We re-grouped after our visit to the cathedral and headed to the Latin Quarter for lunch.

We had about an hour before we had to meet with the group again so mom and I found a little creperie and ordered very tasty ham, cheese and mushroom crepes. We decided to take our crepes and eat al fresco on benches in front of Notre Dame. It was a picture perfect day with a great view and a lip-smacking crepe.

After our laid back lunch we took the RER train to the Musee d’Orsay. Included in the price of the tour was a 2 day museum pass, so after a short orientation about the museum we were on our own for the rest of the day.

We spent about 2 hours wandering through the museum. I don’t consider myself much of a museum person, but I enjoyed the Orsay, and thought the impressionist paintings were spectacular. When we were done at the museum we decided to take a walk through the Jardin des Tuileries and take the metro back to the hotel.

After a short rest I decided I wanted to get some pictures from the top of the Arc de Triomphe so headed back out on the metro and spent some time taking pictures from this great vantage point. I arrived back at the hotel right around 8pm and we decided to try a café/wine bar I had found via a recommendation on Fodors.

The café/wine bar was La Tartine at 24, Rue de Rivoli, in the Marais, metro stop St. Paul, but only about a 10 minute walk from our hotel. We liked this place very much. At first I was a bit concerned because there were only a handful of diners, maybe only 3 other tables, but the place was so inviting with the wood bar and tile floor, we had a good feeling about it.

As we walked in we were immediately greeted and asked if we would prefer to sit inside or outside. Since it was a bit chilly we decided inside and were shown to a table at the rear of the café. It turns out the café has entrances on Rue de Rivoli and the street running parallel (I believe it’s Rue du Roi-De-Sicile) to Rue de Rivoli.

I started with a Kir, my new favourite aperitif, which I continued to enjoy throughout the remainder of our trip, and mom had white wine. We decided we didn’t want anything too heavy, so mom had the salmon pave with basmati rice which looked wonderful and according to mom’s report tasted as good as it looked. I had the Roma salad which included 4 slices of buffalo mozzarella and tomatoes, salad greens, Parma ham, and an eggplant puree on toasted bread (so much for a light meal!). It was delicious and the vinaigrette dressing served with it was the perfect touch. We ended the meal with our usual espresso. The total for this meal was €54.50.

We had a nice walk back to the hotel and got excited about tomorrow morning when it would be time for the Louvre.

knoxvillecouple

A slightly different comment/question regarding the French phrase of the OP? When we were in Paris and touring with Michael Osman, I asked him about the best way to apologize for not speaking French when starting to converse with a local and specifically asked about saying "Je suis desole etc." Michael's comment, as best as I can recall, is that no one in France would ever use that phrase - that it connotes much more sorrow than would ever be appropriate (really desolate?), and that, besides, a French man would never apologize for anything.

True? Or just a bit of hyperbole from one of our best Parisian guides?

Sam

LowCountryIslander

In case anyone is interested here is a link to my kodak gallery photo album from this trip.

http://tiny.cc/aH2jK

I will warn you that there are 1485 photos in this album and it does take a minute or 2 to load the photos, but once that is done you can click through the slide show.

On this trip I used a new camera the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18 with 18X optical zoom

knoxvillecouple

LowCountryIslander,

Really some incredible photographs you have there - brought back many memories of our trip earlier this year to Paris, Provence, and Cote d'Azur. I haven't had a chance to look at ALL of them (and may never have that much time), but what I did look at were wonderful

Thanks!

Sam

LowCountryIslander

Thanks for the compliment Sam.

Over the years my photography skills have started to improve and I am getting much better at composing the actual shot. None of the photos in the album have been manipulated, what is in the picture is what I saw.

Toucan2

I'm enjoying visiting Paris with you

I love the walking tours. But with Montmarte I got particularly lucky. My friend's mother, who lives outside Paris, came in to spend the day with Laure and myself. She had taken some history classes on the area and proceeded to give us our very own personal tour. I haven't thought of that visit in awhile. So in addition to enjoying your memories, you are bringing back nice memories of my own!

ParisAmsterdam

knoxvillecouple,

Sure a French man will apologize...
my favourite was a policeman at the
edge of the town of Rocamadour 20
some years ago who stopped our van
and said,

"Desole monsieur, la ville est
complet!"

First time I ever found a town
'full'. LOL

LowCountryIslander

I just realized the sequence of the days/dates are incorrect in the above posts...sorry about that. I think my error was on the first/second day information.

Starting with this post the report now reflects the correct days/dates.

Day Five: Tuesday, Sept. 23rd, 2008

Today was our day to explore the Louvre. We walked around the corner to the metro and being a weekday morning you can imagine what the metro cars looked like, sardines in a can have more room. Not only were the metro cars jam-packed but the platform looked like a line to get free tickets to a rock concert! We had to let a few trains go by before we could even get to the front of the platform, fortunately at that time of the morning the trains are very frequent. My advice to anyone riding the metro while visiting Paris…go after rush hour! (or walk)

We only had to ride the metro a few stops to the Palais Royale stop and exited via a shopping mall to the entrance to the Louvre, no crowd at this entrance at all, but we did go through the security check point. We met our Louvre guide (Janice) at this entrance and donned our whisper system.

Janice was an absolutely great guide, a British gal who has lived in Paris for 25 years she admitted she came to Paris for the man but stays for the food…ahhh…my kind of lady! She had quite a funny sense of humour and was not a very tall woman; in fact she described herself as the size of a “garden gnome” at 5’2” but with the whisper system we had no trouble hearing her commentary and keep track of where we were.

In 2 hours we certainly only scratched the surface of the Louvre, but Janice was a wealth of information and she barely took a breath in those 2 hours! She definitely had a plan of attack and we made a beeline for the 3 “biggies”. The Venus de Milo, Winged Victory, and the Mona Lisa. All quite stunning in their own right, but I have to say Winged Victory is probably my favourite of them all.

Janice herded us through the museum like a captain leading her ship and we ended in a really interesting room. The Louvre has a room for the blind, with small replicas of several of the pieces that are displayed throughout the museum, so a blind person can touch the sculptures to get a sense of what it looks like.

By noon Janice had completed our tour and we were free for the afternoon until 4pm. Needing a little coffee pick me up, we decided to stop at the Starbucks in the Louvre entrance area for a quick coffee.

When we left the Louvre we decided to walk back to the hotel, it was a nice sunny day and we wanted to stop in a children’s shop we had seen the other day to pick up some things for the children of a friend. We made our way back to Il St. Louis and stopped for gelato at Amorano. We went back to the hotel for a short rest and while there we checked out the Italian restaurant across the street from the hotel.

Now, I know, it seems like I’m having way too much Italian influenced food here in Paris, however this particular Italian place I had read about on trip advisor when reading a review of the Hotel Castex and then to my surprise when I found the same restaurant listed in Pudlo as a good value my interested was piqued! Mom popped across the street and the owner was in the restaurant and through hand gestures, limited French and a little Italian thrown in there we managed to make a reservation for later in the evening.

At 4pm we went as a group to Sainte Chapelle. What magnificence stained glass windows. Since we were there later in the day and the sun was starting to sink in the sky the room was a bit dark, but I am sure that in the morning and early afternoon it must look very striking to see the windows in full light.

We spent some time walking along the Seine and went back to the hotel. We had made an 8pm reservation and it took all of 30 seconds to walk across the street to Cucina Neopolitana at 6, Rue Castex.

We hit the jackpot with this place! It’s a tiny place that seats maybe 20 and the kitchen is miniscule. Mom and I started with the antipasti platter of marinated vegetables, carrots, broccoli, eggplant, peppers, and a huge ball of mozzarella. We had a bottle of red wine and all was excellent so far.

The way this restaurant worked is there is a list of pasta dishes they would serve that night and the table selects which pasta they want, the chef prepares enough for the number of people at the table. Mom and I had rigatoni in a creamy sauce with asparagus and ham. It was served in the pan it was cooked in and we each helped ourselves. We had no trouble finishing the entire dish. It was absolutely delicious. We ended the meal with espresso. For all this (and a convenient location) the total was €75.

After the meal we walked back across the street and up to our room to prepare for our departure in the morning for the Loire Valley.