After our lunch at Restaurant La Mosquée de Paris we headed back across the Seine back to the apartment. There was one shop that the Missus saw on our way to the Jardin des Plantes that She waned to check out.
Aux Merveilleux de Fred is a chain of shops with branches all over France, London, Europe, New York City, and even Tokyo specializing in, well, Le Merveilleux, a meringue based dessert.
The Missus wanted to try this so we bought a couple for our "le goûter" (afternoon tea).
Aux Merveilleux de Fred
24 Rue du Pont Louis-Philippe
75004 Paris, France
We dropped by the apartment and after storing the Merveilleux, we noticed that it was still fairly early in the day. We had passed the National Archives Museum a couple of times on our walks and had noticed that there was a special exhibit on Epidemics being held for a couple of months. Since the special exhibit was free, we decided to head on over.
The National Archives Museum was formerly known as the Musée de l'Histoire de France and is located in the Hôtel de Soubise which was originally established in 1371! It's quite a grand looking mansion.
We walked thru the entrance and then up the stairway to the exhibit.
And there were boards with information and timelines of the various epidemics in France's history.
Along with documents, paintings, and other displays along the way.
There were no English translations on the labels, but when I'd come across something like this, I would go ahead and use Google translate.
Which usually did a good job in translating. In the case above:
"Instructions and memories necessary both to prevent contagious disease and to get rid of it when a city is attacked, by means of quarantine."
And sometimes, like in the case below, no translation was necessary.
There were also interesting drawings, paintings, and photographs that documented moments in history.
And lest you think this was all about long ago history, I found this photo to be quite compelling. It is a photo of the Louvre on the first day of the Covid shutdown in Paris, March 17, 2020.
After viewing this, we toured some of the other rooms of the "Hotel".
And then did a quick walk thru the gardens, which would be a nice place to relax during better weather.
All in all, a nice 90 minute stop for us.
Heading back to the apartment, while the Missus relaxed, I took a short trip out to the Carrefour for some tea. After all, we needed that to pair with our Merveilleux forle goûter, right?
These were light, not overly sweet. Not something we'd seek out, but nice for a pleasant afternoon tea.
We then settled in for a nice afternoon nap. Upon awakening, I went ahead and checked emails and such. Night came upon us quite quickly. I hadn't made reservations for dinner on this evening. We'd be spending so much time in Paris that I just made reservations for ever other night. We had been quite disappointed with lunch and the Missus wanted some "comfort food". We were pleasantly surprised with our spur of the moment selection on the first night in Paris that we decided to return to Maison De Chengdu.
We selected our favorite dish from that visit; the Intestine Dry Pot and it was indeed a winner again.
Crisp pork intestine, nicely moderated spice, a bit of ma, just a nice dish with rice.
We also selected a dish we saw several of the tables of Chinese customers order the last time; the green beans with pork.
Another winner here! The beans still had a nice crunch…there was some "wok hay" going on, smoky tones, a touch of spice, a good amount of savory soy sauce and white pepper.
In "bean mode", we also got the long beans with pork.
This one was a bit on the bland side.
This was a nice dinner, straight forward Sichuan style cuisine, something I wish we had here in San Diego.
Maison De Chengdu (古味成都)
16 Rue Volta
75003 Paris, France
We had a nice post-dinner stroll; something that we should actually do more of here at home as well. Life was good!