Paris: day one.

I am currently on vacation in Paris, yippee !! Land of great food and a photo to be taken around every corner. I will be using the blog to share my photos and experiences and of course the food.

We rented a lovely two bedroom apartment in the 6th arrondissment. We made sure our place had a full kitchen so we could eat in when we felt like it. Check out the skeleton in the corner.

While the kitchen was just what we had hoped for we needed immediate sustance and opted to find a place to eat nearby.

Our first meal in Paris consisted of three different quiche-like pies with vegetables, cheese and chicken. Many pastry shops have places for you to sit and eat while admiring the cases of scrumptious treats.

One of our first excursions was to the nearby Luxembourg Gardens. We are so happy to be only a few blocks away from this beautiful park.
And so surprised to see this beekeeping class in full swing on a cool weekday afternoon.

Apparently beekeeping in the gardens is a long tradition here.

We loved the artistic hives and water fountain for the bees.
Another unexpected treat were the rows on rows of very carefully tended espaliered fruit trees. There are over 6,000 varieties of fruit trees and fruiting bushes, all tended into amazing shapes.

In a more formal part of the gardens they have twenty statues of famous women from French history.

St Genevieve is the patron saint of Paris and Genna's namesake.

In the late afternoon the park was full of school children playing, people strolling and men playing the traditional game of boules. We spent sometime watching them play. During my time here with my family ( eight years) we played many games of boules in our nearby park.

We ambled through the park to the Odeon Theater. On our last visit to Paris fifteen years ago we stayed in the Hotel Michelet Odeon. Walking these streets brought back great memories of this earlier trip. It also brought back the memory of a great covered market. Our sense of direction did not fail us and eventually we were strolling through the stalls of beautiful product.

And prodigious cases of cheeses. This is why I came to Paris :-)

The man at the cheese counter was very helpful and friendly, we picked out two goat cheeses and one soft sheep cheese for our dinner. At another stall we gathered what we would need for a salad. A stop at our local bakery for the baguette, and we were ready to return to our place to make dinner. The baguette suffered some depredation on the way home.

The produce was very fresh and made a great salad, including some Belgian endive.

I made a version of my honey mustard dressing for the salad. A plate of the cheeses made the meal complete.