Happy Thanksgiving!

I'll post more later - heading out soon to go to the market for Thanksgiving dinner fixins - but we wanted to wish our families and friends a very happy Thanksgiving. Yesterday was a perfect Parisian day: lazy morning, wandering around, outdoor café for people-watching, the Nutcracker at the Opera house (not the one you're thinking of, the "newer" one), and a late dinner with friends. That's a lot to be thankful for! Stay tuned for more....

A little Chicago in Paris

Last night, the four of us went to see a translated and adapted Camus play performed by Chicago's Trap Door Theatre called "Regarding the Just." It was...interesting. I just asked Tom to describe it: "It's as if the revolutionary cell was an interactive rock band." That works for me. Here's some info on it.

Before the play, we had some cocktails and snacks at Le Mary Celeste. A fresh, crisp kale salad with fruits and nuts, boudin noir with foie gras, tongue & grilled cheese sandwich, and tataki - sort of a Japanese version of carpaccio, but better with chili oil, nuts & veggies. The food pictures did not come out well, so here's the cocktail menu. Everything we sampled was great.

After the play, we went to a neat wine bar (I'm working on getting the name) where we shared a very refreshing bottle of Pouilly Fumé. It was a great evening!

And before I forget, we had a lovely late lunch at a neighborhood find called Clairière. 20 Euro for 2 courses: grilled vegetable plate & chèvre salad followed by daurade & steak tartare, washed down with a nice, little 13 Euro Corbières.

By the way, it appears Blogger and iPad work better together with shorter posts and fewer pictures, so apologies for the choppiness.

La Défense

La Défense is home to one of the largest concentrations of office buildings in the Paris metro. It sits in the Western suburbs and building started there in the 50s. According to Wiki, there are 1,500 HQ offices there with 15 of the top 50 in the world.

The tour was fantastic! A real estate geek's dream. We were able to get into one newer building and one older building, which provided a great contrast in style, function and form. Here are just a few of many pictures:

Yesterday I went to work

But don't feel bad. I scored us a personalized tour of La Défense through my company. While it's not on your typical tourist itinerary, given my business, I have always wanted to go there. And since we both love architecture, Tom was more than happy to join in the "work." But before the tour, another colleague had asked to meet with me, so while I did that, Tom wandered.

A familiar sight:

And a not so familiar sight:

Late night dinner after late night at the museum

Since we had a late lunch, we decided to have a late, light(ish) dinner at home. We teamed up to get dinner on the table quickly, but didn't sit down to eat until 10:30! (I hope Wally & Rita are reading this.) Tom is great with action shots of me in the kitchen.

We made an omelette aux fines herbes with truffle cheese (purchased at the Salon Sunday), and an endive salad with blue cheese and lardon vinaigrette (I said light-ISH!!) The eggs were spectacular - and incidentally, the French don't refrigerate their eggs (I hope my sister, Sue, is reading this ;-))

Blogger & iPad don't like each other!

And yes, I know there's an app, but even that doesn't work well. I just lost about an hours' worth of work! I think it doesn't like long posts, so I'll just do a little at a time.

Last night, we had tickets for an 8:30 pm time slot at the Luxembourg museum for a special exhibit. They stay open until 10 on Mondays and wow - highly recommend late night at a museum as we just about had the place to ourselves. The exhibit was about the French art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, and while we had seen many of the paintings before (all Impressionist), there were a few new to us; plus with good exhibits, it's always interesting to see how they group things together and how it's all laid out. No pictures allowed! If you want to see it, it travels to London and Philly after this.

We had a lovely walk there (about 3.5 km) and snapped a couple pictures. We don't know what this building is, but it shows that you don't have to be in the main tourist areas to see how lovely Paris is at night.

That's not to diss touristy places, of course:

Old friends in Paris

Well they're not old - you know what I mean. So seeing Tim & Teresa walking up the Rue Richer was such a treat! We've talked about going to Paris together for years and here we were! The restaurant we planned for lunch, Le Richer, doesn't take reservations and had about a half-hour wait so we went to a bar à vins called Le Sardignac - nice place, nice service, nice wine.

Lunch was excellent. We sat down about 1:40 and didn't leave until just after 4:00. Life is good, really really good. No pictures, if you can believe it, but we enjoyed mackerel, a soft-poached egg in a yummy sauce, steak tartare, a mushroomy, brothy dish with foie gras, daurade, duck, and beef cheeks - and a nice little bottle of Minervois. Great lunch & great company - always a lot of laughs. Anyway, here's their Facebook page since my descriptions didn't do it justice (yummy sauce? Sorry that's all I got!)

Did I mention we slept until 10:30?!?! It was wonderful. Anyway, don't have tons of pics,  but I loved the angle on this view of Gare du Nord (train station which takes you to London, among other places) as we rounded a corner.

And this is the nearby (very near) Rue des Martyrs dressed up for the holidays (stupidly early decorating is not just a U.S. thing):