My daily morning spread! Even the honey and jams are scrumptious! Gonna miss this :)
The pace slowed down a bit today (thank god). I still probably clocked up a ridiculous number of km's, infact possibly the most in a day yet, but it was slower, quieter and all round lovely.
Started with a trip to the flea markets in the south with Diane in her old little french beauty of a car. We wandered around there for a couple of hours and scored a few nice little items each (including a gold mounted vertebrae for the desk. Ha!). Then got to cruise the freeway/ring road around Paris before being dropped at the Bassin de la Villette- a wide canal in the north east.
I was looking for lunch, and after a chat with dad that morning also thinking about mussels..... And then..... Voila!!! Say no more!!
What was really special is this old French couple that were sitting next to me. They didn't speak a word of English, but were determined to teach me how to eat mussels properly, the 'Parisian' way. Now for all I know, it is the correct way in many places, but in that case I must be uncultured, because I had no idea of this! Quite simple - just use one of the mussels as the tongs to remove the meat from the others. I'm sure you all know this, but it was such a delight to have this little lesson :) and it was a more enjoyable way to eat! As for the dish itself - so simple, I think just white wine and not much else, (not much sauce to mop up - and it was so salty you wouldn't want to anyway), but boy did those mussels taste good. Another simple yet perfect dish!! So often we're adding condiments and such to enhance flavour, but its all in the food if done well (which I would fail dismally at doing myself.... Not a good track record with mussels anyway!). And you can tell that they food is real, don't get sugar or savoury cravings all the time here. No preservatives or added salts/sugars makes such a big difference.
From this big canal, there is a much narrower one - St Martins canal - which heads back towards the centre of town for quite a few km's. So I basically walked the whole way...
And mid way along the walk the heavens opened up! I found the most amazing and perfect ice cream/yoghurt stall. Damn, those strawberries were amazing, and the ice cream and the choc. This was so so nice to indulge in. So good. Hello Paris.
My walk led me to the town's cemetery. Lovely place to get lost in. And yes, Jim Morrison is here, but his grave unfortunately is not worthy of a photo... Here's some others though :)
Edith Piaf's grave!!!
And Oscar Wilde....
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