Our Air France flight from SFO was quite pleasant – the crew was friendly, the food and drink were tasty, and we’d scored the best seats on the plane (1D and 1H – they give you a lot more room for your feet when you’re sleeping!). Unfortunately, there was another couple sitting in the seats when we got on the plane – they had 3D and 3H but claimed that they thought Row 3 was the first row on the plane. I think they were hoping to steal the better seats, but failed, though they did steal a bottle of water from Diane!
We took an unusual route across the Atlantic in that we actually crossed the Atlantic instead of following the great circle over Greenland and Iceland; despite that, we arrived in Paris a few minutes ahead of schedule. We were the first ones off the plane and the first ones to reach immigration, picked up our luggage, and caught the RER to Châtelet-Les Halles station, a five-minute walk from our AirBnb on Rue Saint-Honoré.
Our host, Rémi, met us and showed us the apartment (it’s small, cute, well-located, and has a view of the Louis Vuitton corporate offices). Our absentee ballots were waiting for us!
We did a little unpacking and headed out for a wander through the area. The Ministry of Culture building looked interesting, at least from the outside.
We’d stayed at an AirBnB a couple of blocks down the street back in 2013, so the area was familiar, but wanted to try somewhere new for dinner. Many years ago, I’d been at a W3C meeting in Paris with Tim Bray and he’d shared the secret of finding a good moderately-priced restaurant in Paris:
- Find a corner with several restaurants
- Pick the busiest one you can get into
- Enjoy
Following his advice led us to Créperie Saint-Honoré. Diane had one of the smoked salmon crêpes and I had the suprême smoked salmon salad – with drinks, we spent 50 Euros and were quite pleased.
After dinner, we walked around a bit more and found a restaurant that I’m pretty sure we’re NOT going to try, although it had a very long line of people waiting to get in – Au Pied de Cochon (“At the Pig’s Foot”).
Exhaustion was setting in, even though we’d slept a bit on the plane (it was a short flight with long meals), so we headed back to the apartment for the night.
Au Pied De Cochon! I had a lovely meal there in the early 1990s on Betrand Denoix’s recommendation. While pig’s feat are their most notorious specialty, I recall a very good selection of traditional brasserie foods as well. I arrived on a red-eye from Miami, and had a very nice breakfast.