Darcy's Paris Blog

Lunch at Sophie's house, and exploring more of Paris with Neil

On Sunday, I had a lunch invitation at Sophie's house; she'd invited Philippe's family and me to her place for seafood. I'd bought tulips to take her the day before, since I'd read that was the appropriate thing to do here, and turned up at her place (east of Paris, near EuroDisney) on time at 12:30. (Her two kids are adorable, by the way, particularly the 4-year-old boy -- looks like that kid from Jerry McGuire. When I met them, they said something to Sophie, and she translated that they wanted to kiss me -- so I kneeled to do the cheek-kiss thing they do here, just one kiss for kids, apparently. So cute.) I learned that Philippe's crew would be late due to his son's ping-pong tournament -- ah, the international sport of ping-pong. Basic timeline went like this: 1:00 start drinking (champagne with flavored liqueur;) 1:40 kids eat their dinner at the table; 2:05 adults sit down. At this point I was trying not to be climbing the walls, but since I really wanted to spend time with Neil and because only Sophie and Philippe were comfortable with English, I was pretty antsy. But again, Sophie was incredibly gracious and had a huge spread of raw oysters and steamed shellfish. (Oh, get this -- the oysters are a special kind that are, according to the French guys here, "born in France, then they go to Ireland to grow up, then they come back to France." They send them "to Ireland to grow up," which I find hysterical -- it's like boarding school for oysters.) These guys, too, ate twice as much as I did -- I still haven't figured out how these French guys manage to stay so skinny. It is definitely not from portion sizes, and fries do come with everything here. Eventually I took the first polite opportunity to slip out, since I didn't want to spend the entire afternoon grazing with Neil in town for such a short time.

I found my way back to the city with no problem, dropped off the car, and metro'd in to meet Neil at the pyramid entrance to the Louvre. We strolled through the Jardin des Tuileries and paused at the fountain to watch kids playing with the little boats. When we got to Concorde, I made the suggestion to go to the Jardin du Luxembourg, but for the second day in a row, as soon as I made that suggestion, it started sprinkling. I think that was the magic sign for rain that weekend. So instead we walked through the Opera quartier, with a halfway excuse of finding an Italian restaurant that Neil liked -- but really, that was just an excuse to explore a new quartier. We did a healthy dose of window shopping and did a close lap around the opera house, which is a beautiful building. We decided it was time for a coffee, found a cafe, and left after nobody came up to help us. Service was good at the second try, though, and after a quick recharge, we metro'd back to Neil's hotel. The hotel recommended an Italian restaurant on the George V, which was good for me, as I was in the mood for comfort food. (They did serve us the sweetest champagne I've ever had as an aperitif, though.) After dinner we decided to grab another drink, so we came across this bar off the Champs Elysees after being directed there from a sign on the door of another bar closed for renovation. The name was Charlie Birdy, which sounded a little off to me, but I was definitely game to try without another option. Turned out to be a great place, and felt like we could've easily been on 4th street. Dark lighting, big wooden bar, booths, couches, tables, groovy music, the whole thing. We sat down on a couch and started talking with this American guy hitting on two Norwegian girls (sisters, I think) -- he was making a good effort, anyway, and it seemed to be working with the non-married one. We had a couple of rounds there, and with the great drinks, great atmosphere, and friendly service, I decided I'd found a good hang-out spot.

Walked back to the hotel, where I caught a cab home. Another good night in Paris.

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posted by Darcy @ 11:58 PM