France – It's all about the coffee

On Friday night, our last night in Paris, we had dinner at Café Procope which first opened as a coffee house in 1686. It’s billed as the oldest continually running restaurant in Paris. It has lots of historical items on display, including one of Napoleon’s famous hats which he left once as guarantee of future payment for a meal he had there. They are obviously still waiting.

Most walking and cycle tours will go past here as the street is on is equally famous as it’s where the guillotine was first tested on sheep. There used to be steel markers in the road where it stood but they have been removed with recent road work.

Voltaire, Franklin & Jefferson all drank at the Cafe here and some of the first drafts of the US Declaration of Independence were written here. As well as Napoleon’s hat they also have Voltaire’s desk.

I was thus keen to have dinner there to try it out and take in some of the historical ambience. It’s more expensive than the other restaurants around it. The food was nice but not as amazing as some of the other dishes we have had elsewhere and overall I was a little disappointed in the experience, perhaps I’d overhyped how good it would be. Service was certainly on the galacially slow side.

After dinner we grabbed a uber over to the Eiffel Tower to get on a night tour of the Seine. The tour lasts about an hour and to make the most of the night cruise we aimed for the 10.30pm boat to see Paris all light up. This was a fantastic cruise, well worth the €13 tickets. They take the boat under 22 bridges where everyone makes as much noise as possible when passing under. This got annoying very quickly. Once the cruise was over we took the Metro back to the apartment. It was quite a long day, didn’t get back till close to 1am.

Our day started early with a knock on the door from the apartment manager, she was here to try an fix the internet. It’s virtually unusable in this apartment, I’ve been relying on the SIM card I have in the phone. Thank goodness I have 15g of data, but it means uploading video from last nights ride is not an option.

I’m not really a fan of this part of Paris, it was a last minute compromise given what happened to the one we booked, but I can’t complain to hard, it’s still Paris and only a short ride on the metro from the really nice areas. It’s not that much better here than it is between Gare Du Nord and Gare du Est IMHO

I did grab a Starbucks first thing in case I had the same issue as yesterday, however I need not have worried as I found a rateable coffee (7/10) right near the kitchen shop we visited. This is *the* store to visit in Paris if you are into cooking utensils. After we had looked and shopped here we grabbed coffee next door

Here is the kitchen / cooking store

After here we wandered a bit further away from the Les Halles part of Paris and found some pastry and grocery stores with interesting and wonderful products

It’s amazing the care the French put into displaying and looking after ingredients. It’s no wonder French food is amazing

Tinned Snails, COMPUTER SAYS NO!

We then found a small mall with all sorts of cool shops

There was one with steel letters on display. Of course I let my inner 13 year old out to play a little, bit unfortunately Sharon’s outer teacher took over and made my display slightly more high brow before we left

We are now also the proud owners of the French equivalent of Opal/Oyster cards. It took quite a bit to navigate the French bureaucracy, find someone who spoke English and get some photos printed, but we did it, we have them and no need now for paper tickets. Vive Le France 🇫🇷!! Vive la révolution 🇫🇷 🧀🥐🍷!!!!