our last day in france. sarah wanted to sleep in this morning, but i wanted to squeeze out every possible moment i had in the country. so i got up early to head to the Marmottan museum because i found out that they possess my absolute favorite painting. Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise, the very painting from which we get the term “impressionism.” i got there right as they opened and quickly made my way to the Monet room. the rest of the museum was basically the Marmottan house and had original furniture and art from the Marmottans, and i wasn’t too interested in it. the Monet room was actually two interlocking rooms, one circular, one rectangular. the circular room had nothing but waterlily paintings. the other room had various other paintings including a couple of his haystacks, one of the many of Rouen cathedral, one of the famous Houses of Parliament, and, of course, Impression, Sunrise. i spent about 20 minutes just looking at the painting. it completely captivated me.

however, that was about ten minutes too long and i was now running late for when i was going to meet up with sarah so we could go to lunch. we had planned to go to a restaurant that we had heard great things about in order to have a traditional french meal. the museum was over in the same area as the Eiffel Tower, something we had yet to see, so i hopped on the metro to get off at the station in front of the tower, snap a few pics, get back on the train and head back to the hotel to get sarah. inevitably…..i got lost. got off at the wrong station and ended up about a mile away from the tower. of course i didn’t know i was that far away as i thought the gigantic tower was closer than it appeared on the horizon. i booked it over towards the tower, again about a mile, got my pictures and then decided to try and find the metro station that i thought i had gotten off at. i couldn’t. fifteen minutes later, i was now about a mile and a half away from the station i had gotten off at and just going in circles. i probably should have just asked someone where the nearest stop was, but i wasn’t thinking clearly, nor did i really want to look like the dumb, lost tourist that i was. so i booked it back to the station and got on the train. i was supposed to meet sarah at noon. i didn’t actually meet her until about 12:50. but all was well as she was just finishing getting dressed.

i changed because i was dripping with sweat after running all over Paris and being bundled up because of the frigid weather, and then we headed out to the restaurant. which apparently wasn’t open for lunch. only dinner. they were to open at 7:30pm, so we decided that we would just come back then. when we got off at the station near the restaurant (absolutely starving) we had noticed (more like smelt) a sandwich stand nearby. so we decided we would act like real Parisians and get a sidewalk panini sandwich. all the cool kids in Paris were doing it. sarah got a chicken curry panini. i’m……not really sure what mine was. i asked for a bacon and mozzerella one, but that’s not the stack that the guy pulled from. he pulled from the “langue et mozzerella” stack which was next to the bacon stack. if i know my french correctly, “langue” means “beef tongue”. so it’s possible that i had a tongue sandwich. the reason for the ambiguity is that the french don’t do bacon like we do in the states. they do thick slabs of bacon, as opposed to thin strips. so my sandwich could have been bacon. but it also looked like tongue. and came from the tongue stack. at any rate, it was VERY good and i just chalked it up to a unique experience in Paris.

after we had eaten our sandwiches we headed over to St. Chapelle to see the small chapel. brilliant stained glass in this chapel, supposedly the most famous stained glass in the world apart from Chartres. it was very nice that the sun decided to shine this day, one of the few, maybe two, that it had. it made the glass that much more vibrant. after the chapel we went to the Arc de Triomphe at the head of the Champs d’Elysees so that sarah could have a Paris shopping adventure. it was fun seeing all the famous Parisian stores, even for me. of course sarah had a blast and it was much easier for me to say “no” in stores like Louis Vuitton than it would have been in like…..target….or something. the prices were just outrageous. i think the cheapest thing we saw in that store was a small brass, yes, brass, keychain that didn’t even appear to have the Vuitton logo on it, for 75 euros. ridiculous. we spent most of the afternoon and a good part of the evening walking down the famous street, killing time until we were to go to our restaurant.

we got on the metro and headed that way about 6:30. we got to the restaurant about 6:50. so we still had a good amount of time before it opened and definitely did not really want to be the first ones there when it opened up for the evening. although it probably wouldn’t have made much difference because we spent a long time looking at the posted menu while the staff inside were right by the door. worried that it would be awkward for us to just stand there, tapping our feet, until it opened, we walked around a bit and got some croissants (which weren’t very good it turns out) for our long day of travel starting the next morning. about 7:25 we slowly walked back to the restaurant and stood at the head of the street until we saw other people going in. i know. stupid. but oh well.

the restaurant, by the way, is called Le Petit Prince du Paris and is located on the Rue de Lanneau in the Latin Quarter, or 5th arrondisement area. i unwaveringly recommend this restaurant to anyone that goes to Paris. it was the gastronomical highlight of our trip.

when we finally went inside, it was a very pleasant surprise that the maitre’d spoke english and he asked us if we had reservations. we didn’t. so he said, “i can seat you, but can you try to be out by 9:15 because we have reservations coming in?” as a reminder, it’s 7:30. he’s asking us to be out in two hours. this was strange to us as i guess we’re so used to a fast food, get it in under 30 minutes or its free kind of culture. we told him it wouldn’t be a problem and he was happy to seat us. it’s a very small little restaurant with a ton of charm. the quintessential romantic french dinner kind of place.

after we were seated, the waiter came over to us and he too spoke english! it was so nice. he didn’t seem to speak as much as the maitre’d, but he spoke well enough for us to understand him. his first question was directed at sarah (i don’t know if it’s a french thing or what, but it seemed that the waiters and waitresses always addressed the female member of a couple. i noticed this several times, not only with us but in watching other people as well. i didn’t know if there was something wrong with me, or maybe they just like women a whole lot over there or what. strange, haha) and he asked her if she needed some “helps” with the menu. she said she did and he proceeded to translate the menu for her. the entire menu. it was amazing. granted there were only about 15 things on the menu, but it was still so nice that he took the time to do that. he even explained several of the wines for us so we could make a good choice in that department as well.

Le Petit Prince is a fixed price menu place, but doesn’t include a dessert like most of them do. dessert was extra. the fixed price was for an entree and a plat, or an appetizer and an entree in american terms. for my choices, i chose escargot for an appetizer and veal medallions in a foie gras (goose liver. apparently a delicacy in france and we even passed a store one of the days that sold nothing but foie gras) sauce for my entree. the escargot was excellent, but it was not what i expected. i expected a plate of snails still in the shell with the fancy getter-outter instrument that i’ve seen on tv before. instead, it was about a dozen shelled escargot with bowtie pasta in a pesto sauce. although i was slightly disappointed that i didn’t get to play with my snails, the escargot appetizer was VERY good and i was content that i didn’t leave france without having tried it. the veal medallions were also very good and the sauce was excellent. i had my doubts about it but it “cest magnifique!”

if you know sarah at all, what follows will shock you. to your core. you will never guess what she had for her appetizer. i don’t remember the full title of it, but it definitely included the word “lapin”. for you non-french speakers out there, that’s bunny. yes. bunny.

sarah elizabeth cozart ate a bunny.

not only did she eat a bunny, but she did so knowingly and willingly! remember that the waiter had translated everything for us. and she liked it! it was strange bunny too. it was shredded bunny meat mixed with a sort of streusel-like crumbly sweet concoction, served in a bell jar with cinammon sprinkled around it’s accompanying plate. i tried some of it and it was definitely very good. but i am still shocked that she ordered it. i had to ask her several times if she was sure she knew what she was ordering because i just didn’t believe it. not only did she eat a bunny, she also ate a lamb! her entree was a lamb stew with a saffron (which apparently is the most expensive spice in the world) creme sauce which was also very good. for dessert i had some kind of sweet breadish kind of thing with seasonal fruit and sarah had a dessert of two sorbet (apparently, according to our french friends at the restaurant, pronounced sorbeT, hard “t”, as opposed to “sorbay”, like i’ve always thought it was pronounced) scoops and a mint liquer.

we didn’t get out by 9:15, but that was not our fault. we were actually waiting on them. but our experience at Le Petit Prince was memorable. we will definitely go back to this restaurant, even if we only have one day in Paris. we decided that it can be “our little place in Paris”. again, to anyone who reads this and may be going to Paris, do not leave the city without going to this restaurant. you will not regret eating there.

after dinner we strolled back to Notre Dame to see it at night and, again, just stood there and looked at it for a while. we didn’t want to leave because that was basically it for our trip. we figured that the longer we stood there, the less we’d have to think about leaving the next day. but seeing two men get arrested in front of the cathedral and seeing the french police rough someone up a little was enough for us to think, “i think we should be getting back to the hotel.” so we did, and thus ended our travel in Paris.

the next day, we got up around 6:45am and headed to the airport for our 10:15am flight back home. well. back to montreal. then toronto. then atlanta. THEN home. it was a long day.