It’s a beautiful day for a boat ride on the Seine river. We’re cruising along on a “Batobus” boat – the boat version of a hop-on/hop-off tourist bus. We boarded at a dock near the Louvre Museum, then set off toward the Eiffel Tower, passing under Pont Alexandre III along the way. Pont Alexandre III is the fanciest bridge in Paris. Really nice.
The area we’re in now seems to be a fairly quiet part of town, at least from our vantage point on the river. As we cruised along, we passed barges that had been turned into homes. These were interesting to see, since no two were alike, and in many cases, quite a bit of creativity had been involved in the transformation from barge to personal residence.
We made it to the dock on the other side of the river, where the Eiffel Tower loomed over us. Even if you’ve seen it a bunch of times, it’s still pretty neat to see. We were satisfied to have our view from the boat, so while other people got on and off, we stayed put.
We left the dock and turned around, so we were heading back toward the Louvre and central Paris. Our next stop was the D’Orsay Museum. This part of the Seine is wide. As we approach the old central part of the city, the river narrows.
The D’Orsay Museum, (or “Musée D’Orsay”), is a great museum to visit. It’s not gigantic like the Louvre, but there are a lot of paintings you’d recognize there. Whistler’s Mother is sitting in there. Lots of Renoirs and Van Goghs. Oh well – can’t do it all on every trip. That just means we’ll have to come back again some day.
Next we came to where two islands, Île de la Cité and Île Saint-Louis, are in the middle of the river. Things really got narrow in there, and the side walls were high, so before you know it, it’s like you’re in a canyon. We hoped the guy driving knew what he was doing. Just then the Notre Dame cathedral popped up over the embankment – an awesome sight.
We made it past the islands and headed toward a large green area called “Le Jardin des Plantes.” It’s a combination park, botanical garden, and natural history museum that’s spread out over a large area. It’s another place that would be fun to visit – next time.
We stayed on the boat again, as it turned around and headed back towards Notre Dame. We got off at the next stop, which is back on our side of the river, near City Hall. There’s another restaurant we were interested in right around here somewhere, and it just so happens that it’s time for lunch. How about that?
Lunch
We found the restaurant without too much trouble. It was like most restaurants we’re typically drawn to – small, neighborhood places that aren’t too expensive, but reputed to have above-average food. This place specialized in cooking from the South of France.
Even though it was right in the middle of Paris, the restaurant had a country feel inside. The walls were decorated with antique farm implements. Everything was low key, (just like in the South of France, come to think of it).
The star of the lunch was a salad with different kinds of interesting, (and unidentifiable), meat in it. We’ve had salads like this before in Provence that were fantastic. This salad was no exception.
We really liked one kind of morsel in the salad, but we couldn’t figure out what it was. I was going to ask our server what it was, but before I had the chance to grab him, the last specimen had been eaten.
As far as I could tell, no one here spoke english. There was no way I was going to try to ask about something that I also had to try and describe in french. Besides, we both agreed that sometimes over here it might be better not to know. Sure was tasty, though.
To be continued…
