Disappointment and Redemption

Yesterday was not particularly notable. We headed to the 6th arrondissement and grabbed sandwiches on the run for lunch. Mine had paper-thin slices of salami with a few small pickled gherkins and many intact pats of butter on a piece of hard, very chewy bread 16" long and 2" across at its widest point. I'm not a big fan of butter, but the sandwich was delicious. The salami's salty, meaty fattiness was enhanced by the butter but moderated with the sweet/salty/sour of the pickled gherkins. You can find these sandwiches being sold on the street from enclosed glass displays in front of almost every boulangerie (bakery) and snack shop in the city. A closeup of my buddy's ham sandwich follows, as I was a bit too enthusiastic with my sandwich to bother taking a picture.



We walked around Cour Saint-Émilion (map here) in the 12th arrondissement, a neighborhood that has a village-like feel and a designated street of restaurants and shopping. There's a small park on top of the Metro station with plenty of standing water for ducks to play in and a wicker facsimile of the Eiffel Tower.







Dinner was rather disappointing. We were looking to eat at a crêperie and located 2 that were close to each other: the first looked like a cozy sit-down restaurant run by locals, while the second was quite brightly lit and almost certainly part of a chain. It was raining, we had walked a bit of a distance from the first restaurant to the second restaurant, and the second restaurant had a greater variety of savory crêpe options (another great thing about restaurants in France is that they all post their menus out front so you can check out their offerings before going inside), so we went ahead and ate at the second, chain-y restaurant. The food wasn't terrible, but wasn't particularly memorable. I had a chorizo and Swiss cheese crêpe that had generous amounts of both but somehow muted all of the flavors down to a greasy muck. My buddy's crêpe had beef carpaccio, olive oil, parmesan cheese, black olives, and pesto, and still managed to be quite blah. Lesson learned and agreed-to: no more eating at chain-y places if a homier or more unique option exists.





Today ended up being quite a bit more fun. After getting off at Gare du Nord (map here) to ensure that we'll be ready when rushing for our early morning train to Amsterdam next week, we headed south towards the Seine. After walking and wandering for a couple of hours, we stopped by the Île Saint-Louis (map here) to find an excellent ice cream shop that my buddy remembered from his time in Paris. The island is quite small so we found Glacier Berthillon before too long. We considered simply noting its presence and heading off to dinner without trying some ice cream, but fortunately thought better of that plan. We each had a single scoop cone (simple in French) of coffee ice cream with crème Chantilly (whipped cream) on top. The whipped cream was dispensed from a large industrial machine -- like soft serve ice cream -- but was seriously delicious. It was airy but really coated the tongue and filled the mouth with flavor that persisted; I'd say it's slightly but noticeably denser than most whipped creams. The flavor was very sweet but not overly so, and definitely brought the richness of serious, high-butterfat dairy along with very clean notes of vanilla bean. Also importantly, it was not very cold, so the taste buds were able to function fully and appreciate the flavor (cold foods dull the taste buds; if you ever taste melted ice cream, it's sweet beyond measure because it needs to compensate for being served so cold). I have never had better whipped cream and doubt I ever will; I commented to my buddy that I could just go with a cone of the whipped cream and be terribly happy. And the coffee ice cream was fantastically good as well; I don't drink coffee but I do enjoy coffee ice cream. This ice cream was more intense than any coffee ice cream I've had before, with a focused burst of coffee essence -- including a measured but insistent note of bitterness -- that was supported by the rich unctuousness of the ice cream itself. The coffee flavor is the first flavor defined by the tongue after the initial sensation of sweet/cold/creamy; that flavor then expands in complexity for a short time, then the bitterness follows and kind of cleans the palate, making one ready and able to eat an unending amount of the ice cream without flavor fatigue. Even better, the cone came with a tiny spoon so that the whipped cream and ice cream could be enjoyed together, rather than having to consume them separately. I think some wars could be stopped if both sides were given massive quantities of these ice cream cones.







Dinner later on was quite good but the late night eating was even more interesting. This post is already long enough so I'll save descriptions of those meals for the next update.

Approximate number of miles walked today: 8
Number of metallic paint-clad robot-simulating street artists seen: 0
Number of channels available on Free.fr ADSL TV in the apartment: 300
Number of channels worth watching: 1 (Clubbing.tv has excellent dance music videos)