Thoughts & Reflections

Tag: France

Visiting Versailles

A visit to Paris is never complete without a visit to Versailles as well. Mindful of the crowds, we made the palace our first stop on our first full day in France. After a little hassle buying our train tickets (coin-only vending machines are so not our friends) and figuring out which train would get us there, we boarded an early train that arrived just as the château was opening for the day.

As we approached the gates, we could see the long queues for the security check and I walked very quickly to the ticket hall knowing we’d have a long wait ahead of us. There were signs everywhere cautioning the presence of pickpockets and sure enough, there was a commotion at the head of the line that involved a thief, an Asian tour group and a fight. Thankfully the guards came quickly though the line was stalled as they sorted things out.

There were plenty of people wandering inside the Palace by the time we made it inside. It was a slow moving procession at first but we squeezed through the larger groups and there was a bit more breathing room once we got past the Royal Chapel. Versailles is a lot like other grand palaces open to the public; it reminded me a lot of Schönbrunn Palace, where we just walked from room to room admiring all the grand furniture, richly decorated walls and large portraits of royalty hung in every room.

I think I liked the larger halls better since there was a lot more space and not as dimly lit as some of the royal apartments were. The Hall of Mirrors was spectacular, especially by daylight with the sun reflecting off all the mirrored panels, gilded decorations and on the sparkling chandeliers. I also liked The Battles Gallery, not only for the grand paintings of famous battles involving France but also for the beautiful glass ceiling above our heads.

We exited the palace from the back which led to the great gardens that formed Louis XIV’s backyard. The grounds are huge, spreading out literally as far as the eye could see. Sculptured lawns, broad allées and plenty of water features to catch one’s eye. The most prominent thing to see from the steps of the palace is the Grand Canal as it stretched further and further back. At the end closest to the palace, rowboats are docked along the side, available as rentals to traverse the canal.

There are several admission tiers to the Palace of Versailles. P and I bought the Passport, which includes the main Palace as well as two smaller ones some distance away. A tram runs between all three palaces but it costs extra. We opted to just stroll through the gardens but the map does not reveal just how extensive the grounds really are when traveling on foot; in hindsight, the price of the tram would have been well worth the cost because we were exhausted by the time we reach the Grand and Petit Trianon.

Unfortunately for us, we had arrived too early. After the grueling hike to get there, we found out that both the Grand and Petit Trianon would not open until noon, which left many people (us included) wandering around the nearby gardens to kill time. I suppose that was a good thing after all since our sore feet deserved a much needed rest.

We ended up visiting the Petit Trianon first since it was slightly closer to where we sat waiting for the palaces to open. There was a lovely and tiny courtyard through which we passed to get into the Petit Trianon and once inside, we saw it was really petit, when compared with the main palace. It’s much more comparable to the large mansions of modern day.

Petite as it may be, there are some lovely and large (by modern standards) gardens around the Petit Trianon. Winding paths around the back run parallel to a small lake that eventually leads to a sculpture of Cupid in the Temple of Love in the English Garden. Taking another route would bring a visitor to the French Garden. The garden connects the Grand Trianon to the Petit Trianon and we were hoping to use it as shortcut but alas, it wasn’t opened that day.

We ended up retracing our steps from earlier that morning and entered the Grand Trianon by its main entrance. After seeing so many elaborate rooms, they nearly all looked the same after a point. There were fancy rooms, more paintings but also a lovely peristyle that connected the different wings and provided easy access to the gardens out back. We didn’t stroll through the grounds this time, having seen enough trees and landscaped shrubbery.

After five hours at Versailles, I think we covered about 85% of the entire estate. Our feet really were too tired to do any more walking; there were plenty of cobblestones in the courtyard and the grounds weren’t always level so we did walk uphill at some points. My only regret is that we skipped out on the Hamlet near the Petit Trianon. It would have been interesting to walk through but I do think it would have to be on another visit.

July 2, 2015
Three Meals a Day in Paris, Part 2

I hope I didn’t make people too hungry with the previous post—I have a tendency to do that with food posts on every blog I’ve created in the past.

I had my first crêpe in Paris at Crêperie Suzette in the Marais district. It was lunchtime and tempting as it was to go sweet, I opted for a savory galette instead. Since I am anti-fromage, I ended up with the only one that did not include cheese (mine came with topped with spinach, cream tomato coulis and basil). And of course, I cannot say no to a pot of (Darjeeling) tea. P went for something different and ordered the colorful Niçoise salad.

For the second night in a row, we stuck to dinner near the hotel and it was more Middle Eastern food. This time, we went to Zarame, a Lebanese restaurant. The two of us ordered shawarma plates; I think P had the chicken and I went with a mixed plate of beef and chicken. The platters were huge: slices of marinated and roasted meats with sides of potatoes, hummus, baba ghanoush, and salad. There was also a basket of warm fluffy pita bread for dipping into those delicious mezzes. And I washed it down with a pot of mint tea.

We were gifted a free dessert: Katayef, a Lebanese crêpe with a cream or custard filling, sitting in a pool of orange blossom syrup. It was a very nice and thoughtful way to end the meal. The staff was very friendly and the food was good (and healthy too).

Sunday is traditionally a day when most businesses (food and retail) are closed; that somewhat limited our choices of where to eat from the (incomplete because I left the other pages at the office) list I brought with me. I definitely wanted to check out Poilâne and with multiple locations in Paris, at least one of them was open on Sunday so that’s where we went for lunch.

The Le Marais location of Poilâne offers meal sets for different times of the day. The lunch set includes a soup or salad as a starter, a tartine or a salad entrée, a drink (wine or water) and coffee or tea. One can order à la carte as well but the lunch set was a a good deal for €14,50. I opted for the starter salad and the tartine sardines (sardines, butter, horseradish, wine vinegar, and herbs on sourdough); I was tempted to go for the tartine ecrevisses (crayfish tartine) but the sardine one appealed to me more and it was different, interesting and delicious. I finished off with a pot of green tea while P (who chose the tartine poulet) had a cup of coffee; our drinks were served with a little spoon-shaped biscuit on the side.

We did have Asian food one night in Paris, and of course it simply had to be Vietnamese. Fortunately, Time Out recently published a list of recommendations and after narrowing it down, we ended up going to L’Indochine. We were handed the French version of the menu (they did have English versions but we didn’t know that until another party came in well after us) but it wasn’t too difficult to read even with lapsed lessons in French. I ordered the Pho Dac Biet, which has beef served in various formats, including beef balls. P had the Pho Tai, which is more what I’m used to ordering at home. The bowls came in two sizes and we both chose the small. There were the usual accompaniments but what I liked was inclusion of shacha sauce, which is not an option at my usual Vietnamese places. The only disappointment was the lack of tripe in our bowls, but we got over it quickly enough.

Hot bowls of pho were perfect for the cool evening weather and we washed it down with limeade (me) and a mango milkshake. And I left room for dessert too. From the menu, I went with the Che Khoai Mon: a bowl of tapioca pearls with taro, pandan leaves and coconut milk. It’s definitely not something I’ve seen in New York Vietnamese restaurants (most of them don’t offer desserts). The Che Khoai Mon was different and tasty.

The last dinner (if one wants to call it that) in Paris was so plain compared to all others. We ended up walking from our hotel towards the Metro station and discovered a tiny Halal crêperie inside/next to an electronics shop. For all our walking along that street every day for a week, it was the first time we actually saw the shop, probably because we were walking on the other side of the street for once. Like La Varangue, the crêperie was a one-man operation. There were savory and sweet crêpes available but I wasn’t terribly hungry and went with a simple sugar crêpe. I wish I was more hungry though; the chicken tandoori crêpe sounded most intriguing and I wanted to try it too.

But that wasn’t the very last meal I had in France. This was:

Breakfast at the airport: a cup of tea and a vanilla whole milk yogurt from Paul, and a day-old (but still tasty) croissant from a bakery near the hotel. The yogurt was delicious and came in a black terracotta cup that I considered keeping but couldn’t come up with any good use for it (and there was no resealable cover). Actually, all the yogurt I had in Paris was good and that’s why I’ve been craving it since I returned, though I have yet to find one at home just as good.

June 22, 2015
Three Meals a Day in Paris, Part 1

After five days in Paris, I returned home and refused to eat croissants, baguettes, other Viennoiserie and French desserts for about a week. It’s not that our local patisseries and bakeries churn out inferior goods, but I just had too many sweet things far too often during my trip so I needed a short break from them all. (Though, I did end up craving strawberries and yogurt once I was home because I ate a lot of those things and did not have enough.)

With the exception of breakfast (included with our hotel booking, so the first meal of the day was ever constant), pretty much every meal we ate was something slightly different. From the tiny French restaurant for dinner on our first night to the hole-in-the-wall crêperie on our last, the food was pretty delicious no matter what type of meal it was.

Here’s a look at our main meals in Paris.

Our very first meal in the City of Lights was dinner at La Varangue. My guidebook referred to it as a ‘one man shop’, though Philippe, the owner/chef did have a young assistant the night we ate there. Tiny restaurant, simple but good food, and very reasonable prices. P started off with an appetizer of cassolette d’escargots which was fine but really, I don’t get the hype about eating snails—it’s totally not my thing. Entrées were confit de carnad (duck leg) for P and I had the filet de poulet (a moist chicken breast with potatoes and rosemary sauce). And we finished off with a slice of gâteau au chocolat, though it was hard to choose between that and the crème brûlée. The chocolate cake was delicious and not too sweet. I normally can’t eat much the first night I’m abroad but this time, it worked out well and we didn’t overdo things on our first day.

We paid for breakfast at the hotel so that’s what we ate every day; I would have liked to have gone out to eat but with our crazy morning schedule, it made more sense to grab food downstairs and then head out to our first destination of the day. Each morning was a variation of eggs, meat (bacon, sausage or the charcuterie plate), beans, bread (mini baguette, croissants, or slices from rustic loaves), some veggies (tomatoes, cucumbers), fruit, and yogurt. And always a cup of tea and a glass of juice (orange or grapefruit). And this was why I avoided eating English or continental style breakfasts for at least a week after I returned home.

Lunch and dinner were slightly more interesting during the next several days.

A very late lunch at Fauchon on our second day meant there wasn’t as much variety left in the takeaway area of the café. I made do with a sandwich (smoked salmon with a yogurt dressing and mint), a green juice and a fruit cup that looked like a parfait of jewels. I was fascinated by the sandwich packaging; all of the sandwiches were stored in cute resealable bags ready to grab and go for an afternoon picnic.

The fancy takeaway lunch was followed by a very casual takeaway dinner. There are plenty of restaurants near our hotel and we ended up wandering down a street that had many eateries. Because of the late lunch, I wasn’t too hungry for dinner and ended up ordering a chicken sandwich (more of a wrap) at a Middle Eastern fast food place called Nassim. The sandwich was part of a set meal that also included fries and a soda; the mojito-flavored 7-Up tasted nothing like a mojito but a very sweet fizzy limeade. Maybe I should’ve grabbed the tropical flavored 7-Up instead.

Trying to cover all our meals in one post was a bit much so more food posts will be coming up, but I think we ate well enough on our first two days in France.

June 17, 2015
A Long Holiday Weekend in Paris

One comment I often get when discussing potential travel plans with others is, “Oh, you should go to Paris”. I don’t disagree but somehow I always end up somewhere else when I visit Europe. If the decision was mine alone, I would usually choose London since it’s one of my favorite cities in the world though I also want to visit other parts of the UK as well (Edinburgh, Oxbridge and Brighton are still on my to-visit list).

But now, I can finally cross the City of Lights off my list. I spent a very long (for me, that is) Memorial Day weekend in France and Belgium, traveling with my friend P. She wanted to take a trip this year and I happily agreed to be her traveling companion; it was a new experience since I’ve known her longer than most of my friends (she and my sister went to school together) but this was the first time we traveled together. P made all the arrangements and we set off for Paris on her birthday.

While this was my first trip to Paris, P had been there before some years ago but she didn’t mind revisiting the famous and heavily trafficked landmarks. Of course, there were visits to the Louvre (Mona Lisa, check. Venus de Milo, done. The Winged Victory of Samothrace, ditto.), the Place de la Concorde, Notre Dame Cathedral, and the Champs Elysées.

There was a stroll along the Seine on our first afternoon, crossing the river at Pont Neuf and browsing the famous book stalls on the Left Bank. We were lucky to see the Pont des Arts with love locks intact; Paris officials finally removed them last week and I can’t say I disagree with that choice. A few days later, we hopped on a boat for a one-hour cruise on the Seine, starting at the Eiffel Tower and heading west to the tip of Île Saint-Louis before turning back. And all along the river were Parisians sitting by the banks, chatting the night away with food, drinks and their friends.

We saw both the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe up close but did not climb to the top of either; the lines were insane for the former (even during late evenings) and we arrived too early for the latter to be open. One nice thing about visiting Paris this time of year is the long daylight; sunset began around 9:30pm and it was very hard to want to return to the hotel when there was still a lot of natural light outside. We made the most of it by wandering around the streets of Paris until it grew dark; even then, there were still plenty of people picnicking on the Champ de Mars or having a late (for me) dinner at the bistros.

People have asked me what my favorite part of the trip was and honestly, I don’t think there was any particularly outstanding moment in my mind. Because we were there for such a short time, we crammed as much as we could in the first few days and a lot of it went by almost in a blur. It also didn’t help that the weekend we were there happened to be a public holiday in France so while stores were normally closed on Sundays, many shops and restaurants did not open on Monday either so that meant all our shopping had to be done in between all of the cultural visits.

Even so, I think it was amazing how much we did see in such a short time though our feet were so sore every evening by the time we returned to the hotel. One thing I now have a temporary aversion to are cobblestone streets; walking on uneven, unpaved surfaces were brutal, no matter which pair of shoes I wore nor how often we changed them during the day. Stone streets are lovely to look at but not for ideal for walking hours on.

Stay tuned for more about my trip (and of course, the food).

June 8, 2015