Paris Day 2 - Sunday – le Marais & Tapas

I heard Shawn get up sometime around 9am on Sunday, I drifted off back to sleep, woke up sometime later in the morning, then Shawn came to wake me around noonish. I have to admit, I did feel refreshed & much more well-rested than the previous day. We slowly got up & got ready to head out to le Marais district (4e arrondissement) – the place to be on a Sunday, where all shops are open (most close up on rest day Sunday in Paris) in this primarily Jewish quarter. As we entered the area, we heard loud, beautiful young voices singing in Hebrew and as we approached the sounds, we expected to see some sort of demonstration or parade, but we realized it was about a dozen kids in their young teens, just singing & playing clapping hand games. I wondered if this scene resembled how it is in Israel.

Our main goal that day was to eat the world famous falafel at L’As du Falafel on des Rosiers (touted the ‘best in the world’ by stars like none other than Lenny Kravitz). There are a few other falafel places around here, but none with this resto’s rep. The place on the corner across the street from L’As has a guy shouting out ‘falafel! Shwarma!’ to passerbys to try to get sales, but L’As has a long lineup, no advertising required. They take your order while in line, so when you get up to the window, it’s made fresh to order right in front of you. The 4EUR50 each is so worth it – truly the best falafel we ever had – the pita is stuffed with about 6-7 falafel balls, and the shredded marinated purple cabbage and grilled eggplant makes this hearty sandwich special (too big to bite into, 1st ½ is fork only!). Apparently, it costs about 4EUR extra to sit down inside, so everyone enjoys their sandwich while slowly walking along des Rosiers. Right outside of the stand, we got asked by a British photographer to be photographed eating our sandwiches in front of another store front for some travel guide, so we happily obliged (& were quite flattered!).

After a lot of window shopping (& Shawn checking out the Boss store!), our strolling that day took us to a couple of nice little parks, Place des Vosges and a stop at a sorbet stand for some tart/sweet grapefruit sorbet that Shawn had raved about. We enjoyed strolling rue Saint-Paul, one of the oldest streets in Paris harbouring a labyrinth of back streets brimming with antique shops. We also checked out a little garage sale & thought of Richard when we took these pix :

We (well, I!) had one destination in particular in this district that we had to check out that I read about on the Net, which is a store called Les Trois Étoiles. It is tucked away on rue Rivoli, their address is 21 bis, which is like 21 A, I guess, but the thing is, 21 bis is not right next to 21, so we had to keep walking & found it recessed in further on the street. They have all kinds of oils, vinegars, liqueurs & eaux de vie in bulk – you get to smell & taste them & choose the bottle you want from 0,1 l to 1 l formats . We went crazy in there, trying to decide what to get who as souvenirs and also what to buy for ourselves! The girl was perfectly bilingual & served us in English & wrapped up all of our purchases for us in bubble wrap & strong tape for transport back to Canada.

For dinner, Shawn had planned an outing to a tapas restaurant in the Bastille district (Metro Arts et Metiers) called Les Piétons that he & Howie had enjoyed a couple of weeks ago during Howie’s visit. Our waiter seemed to be more Spanish than French, so Shawn managed to communicate our order to him, but since he had not brought us our 2 glasses of sangria we had ordered on arrival, we asked for them again. We chose a calamari and also a roasted red pepper tapas and each ordered a ‘plancha’ –toast & a topping served on a little wood board (we had one with tuna & one with smoked salmon, which Shawn loved so much – best he ever had he said, I found it very good!). We shared everything & everything was good, the calamari turned out to be sautéed & cooked in a sauce which was great for dipping baguette in (which we had to ask for!). We had some English speaking Europeans beside us (a group of people in their 20’s) so we had fun eavesdropping on their conversations! We wanted to order dessert, but by the time we finished eating & got dessert menus, it was getting late. Then, our waiter never came back to take our order – we saw him running back & forth from the front to the bar & finally when we got his attention, he indicated his shift was over! So, it was another long wait for our bill from another waiter, & of course, they double-charged us for drinks & we had to get our original waiter involved to straighten out the bill (he didn’t remember not bringing us our sangrias the 1st time we asked!). On our way out, we saw him eating dinner at the front of the restaurant with a table of chicks, trying to communicate in French with them!