Paris holiday
We’re in Paris again for our annual summer holiday. We’ve been coming here for several years, long enough to have built up a routine that is probably a little out of the ordinary. We stay at the Citadines in the 14th arrondisement (district) in the southern part of the city and while there are no views of Sacre Coeur or the Eiffel Tower, there are four groceries, two green grocers, bakeries, wine shops, butchers, fishmongers, pharmacies, cheesemongers, and two open air markets within a short distance. Even better, a bus stops right outside the hotel door that leads to Chatelet in the heart of the city and a metro stop about a block away. It’s perfect. Here’s a view from our balcony.
Paris is a little sleepy in the late summer. Traditionally, most French people take August as their holiday but many start in late July so some of the shops and businesses are closed and there aren’t as many French people on the street. On the other hand, since it is summer this is peak season for tourism. Yesterday we spent some time near Notre Dame and on the Ile St Louis and I think we overheard more American English being spoken than any other language including French. For the record, we’ve also heard quite a bit of British English, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, and Hebrew.
Yesterday being our first day, we took it easy getting used to the time zone change and heat. Our first visit was the Jardin Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulougne, the large park in western Paris. The Jardin was born in a time when Paris had three separate zoos. This one was designed to acclimatize animals to life in France but it was eventually closed and changed into a delightful children’s amusement park. There is still an aviary left from the old zoo days, but the emphasis today is on open green space for playing and picnicking, amusement rides, and keeping cool. There was a definite charm and quaintness that you don’t see at Six Flags.
When it came time for lunch, we headed to Taverne Henri IV, a cute little place at the foot of the Pont Neuf. The menu isn’t very extensive but the food and the place were nothing short of perfect. My true love had an heirloom tomato, burrata, and dried ham salad that was absolutely delicious. I thought it was interesting that the tomatoes were sitting in a wire bowl on top of the bar. The burrata surprised me a little as well. We’re big fans of tomato and buffalo mozzarella salads and I assumed that burrata cheese was simply a variant name of buffalo mozzarella. Wrong. It’s a shell of buffalo mozzarella filled with a mixture of shredded mozzarella and cream, giving it a very different texture and taste. 
From there, we visited Ste Chapelle which we hadn’t seen in years. We also had a thought of going to Notre Dame, which we hadn’t seen since 2004 but a huge queue in the bright, baking sun soon disabused us of that notion. Instead we headed over to Ile St Louis for ice cream and then walked up the Boul’ St Michel shopping district. On Ile St Louis I saw what might be the most specialized store I’ve seen in a long time – a store based entirely around French olives. Oliver’s & Co. carries jarred olives, oils, tapenade, pitting tools, gifts, and all manner of French olive products. Given how expensive the real estate must be, it’s a statement of the particularity of French tastes (as well as tourists in France) that a shop like this can thrive.
