I really didn't want it to end; but here it was, our last day in Paris. We decided to spend our last morning doing what we've done so many times in the City of Light. I went to the corner Boulangerie, of which there were three and had a croissant at the apartment. And then we headed on over to Rue Montorgueil and had our Cafe Allonge at Café du Centre like we've done so many times.
No, it's not about the coffee really. Even the caffeine snob…the Missus loves this. It's about watching life walk past you and breathing in the city.
It's not unusual for us to spend an hour or more here.
Café du Centre
57 Rue Montorgueil
75002 Paris, France
And of course, once we were done, we headed off….well, with no goal in mind, just to do that Flâneur thing. Which brought us to the Passage des Panoramas.
Where we could do that "other" thing we'd really embraced called lèche-vitrine ("licking windows" i.e. window shopping).
As we exited the passage I had an idea. Since we were close to Galeries Lafayette, why don't we head on over. Now we had already seen the holiday displays earlier during our stay, which were admittedly a bit strange this time around. But there was one other thing I'd always meant to do at Galeries Lafayette and I thought since it was a pretty nice day, this would a good time.
So we headed on over and entered the store.
And headed on up to the rooftop terrace, where you get great views of Montmartre.
And the Eiffel Tower.
We enjoyed the view!
Soon it was time to get some lunch. We decided to stay around the apartment and just go back to Maison de Chengdu. We had enjoyed this simple Sichuan restaurant a block from the apartment so much that we had already eaten there twice.
We were seated upstairs this time.
This time around it was a three-out-of-three. We got our two favorite dishes from our previous visits, the Intestine Dry Pot and Green Beans with pork. Both were just as good as on previous visits.
You can read about those dishes in my previous posts on Maison de Chengdu.
The "new" dish was the Sautéed Mountain Yam, what I call yamaimo.
Whoa, in spite of the underwhelming look of the dish, this was quite good. The slippery mountain yam had achieved a bit of sweetness when stirfried. Yes, it was slippery, slimy, but quite nice with the earthy-sweet wood ear. It was so simple, yet quite satisfying.
Looking back, I think we were quite lucky to have selected where we stayed. Heck, our favorite simple, straight-forward Sichuan restaurant was a block away. And yes, the dishes we had here were better than the Sichuan in San Diego. Isn't that sad?
Maison De Chengdu (古味成都)
16 Rue Volta
75003 Paris, France