Day 3 in Paris

Rue Cler, recommended by Rick Steves, was a must-do on our list. It is an open market, with individual businesses selling specialized "foodie" type-things. There is a chocolate shop, a fromagerie (cheese shop), boulangerie, wine shop, fruit and vege stands. We bought a jar of foie gras pate at the supermarket, and paired it with a sandwich from the boulangerie, plus a croissant au chocolat.

We walked by the Musee de l'Armee on the way to our next destination

I didn't take a very good picture, but there's a moat out front where the two stone walls are at. We thought that was pretty cool... reminded me of Ever After :)
We walked by Saint Clotilde Church, which is still a functioning church.

We were walking by a residential neighborhood where a lot of embassies are also located, so I'm guessing they're pretty affluent. My future home, with my future front gate ~__^ If I can't have the Louvre, this will do just fine!


Angel wanted to go to Jean Charles chocolate shop, where she read they had the best chocolate-coated almonds (almonds covered in caramel, then dipped in Turinese Gianduja and tossed in cocoa powder). I never knew she liked that stuff... hunh... I made it a lot in school and I thought the concept was disgusting. Who knew. So now apparently I owe her chocolate-covered almonds when we get home. And by Her Majesty's orders, I'm to make these as well when we go home:




Notre Dame on Ile de la Cite was our next stop (again, unplanned detour... I think I wanted Berthillon ice cream, which was why we went to Ile de la Cite in the first place, but then I didn't feel like it anymore~ I must've been awed-out by the church... it is absolutely astounding... and to think that it was built in the medieval ages! I cannot believe how they even got it to be that tall and structurally sound to survive 900 years, especially since the stone ceiling is a series of arcs. How do you even get stone to curve into an arc? The detail of each sculpture is so finely tuned, and there are HUNDREDS of sculptures all around the church.


Although I will say that I expected the gargoyles to be much more sinister. They look like panthers!

It costs 8 euros to walk to the top of the tower, but free to go into the church. We went inside to see the stained glass windows. Those were amazing too, as the medieval artisans pieced together different color glass to make mosaic paintings depicting Jesus and other prominent church figures.

We walked by Saint Chappelle as well, known for stained glass windows, but did not go in. We wanted to catch the St. Germain market while it was still open, although it turned out to be a disappointment. The produce did not look fresh, and there wasn't much else in there besides a fromagerie. We did stumble across Gerard Mulot's patisserie (which now I am also supposed to make... the list just keeps on growing and growing :T)




Our purchases of the day (carrying around 4 liters of water, lots and lots of candy bars, one baguette, one cake, 4 jars of foie gras pate.... walking from St. Germain to our hotel which is just about 5 miles):




And yet again, SOMEONE was complaining that her arm muscles were twitching because we were carrying too many things. Le petit magot... muahaha She'll have arm muscles in no time!
David Lebovitz, a pastry chef living in Paris, recommended this Bordier butter, which we paired with a Gerard Mulot baguette and foie gras pate (also with Asiago Parmesan cheese we got from the Delta VIP sky lounge ^.^ hehe)