Easter Vacation Begins

Pâques weekend is here and so is my friend, Becky from California, who will be one of the 4 traveling on our big CAR adventure throughout France. We don't leave til after church tomorrow, so we had a fun day in Paris to kick off the vacation.

Canal St. Martin
is a little known canal off the beaten track from tourist town with periodic bridges that give nice views and shops lining the banks. We stopped in Stella Cadente and guess what? A skirt that I sort of adored, but not 180euros adored, from last fall, was there on sale. Super on sale. Buyable on sale. And in my size. A good morning start :-)

La Durée
Then we headed for some lunch. Julia, another assistant friend, clued me in to this little classic cafe that specializes in macarons. There are 3 locations, but we went to the one on Rue Bonaparte.
Becky was super sweet and treated me as an early birthday present. And can I just say wow!?!! We scouted out what looked best in the patisserie shop that's part of the restaurant, and settled on the St-Honore en Rose and Divin.

The St-Honore was a big cream puff stacked with more mini cream puffs, each glazed with rose vanilla frosting, and inside there was a vanilla-almond cream along with a rasberry jelly. Whole fresh raspberries were sprinkled throughout the composition as well, and a rose petal gave the finishing touches.

The Divin was a caremelized nougat-merengue like cookie with vanilla cream, rasbperry jelly, and raspberries inside. Both were absolutely to die for. And our waiter was cute (like most French waiters) and was so tickled with our reaction when we saw our choices, he let us snap a photo despite the photos-forbidden rule.

Walking out the door, we couldn't resist getting two mini macarons, since that's what La Duree does best. Chocolate Passion Fruit and Caramel Fleur de Sel (Salty Caramel). I think I might just have to go back, every other day :-)

Picasso
Becky was a tourist trooper and thought it best to walk all the way to our next stop, the Picasso Museum in the Marais. Let me add that the weather forecast for the day had been clouds and rain, yet up until this point of 4:00pm, it was nothing but perfect spring breezes and soft clouds amidst blue skies. So we took advantage.

The museum modernized this cool old building by peppering it with brightly colored window panes and then putting up a big mirror-like wall that reflected half of the building.


I wanted to learn a lot more about cubism and Picasso's style, but there wasn't much info, so I'll have to go back sometime and see if there's an audio guide. BECAUSE I got in free, kudos to teachers! I love that deal.

Velib
And then by this time our feet were sort of screaming, so to make it to our last stop on Champs d'Elysees, we velibed, and meandered through some unseen (to us so far on this fine Saturday day) sights, including the Opera Garnier, which is beautiful no matter how many times you walk - or bike :-) - by it.


And tomorrow - our driving adventure begins!