I Prefer Paris

Lille Part Three: Great Food Finds

Although my visit to Lille was short, I did discover two great food finds.

Meert is a sensational old world patisserie, confiserie, ice cream parlor,salon de tea, and restaurant, a visual delight and a gastronomic treat for the sweet tooth. Opened in 1761, it became reputable for its ice cream and the count of Lille declared it the best in the world. I came across Meert on Friday night after the patisserie part was closed and I nearly broke the glass to get a taste of the amazing looking chocolates and sweets. I contained myself and went the next morning for breakfast, although I did dream of Meert and counted different flavors of chocolate truffles instead of sheep to get to sleep.

The Louis XVI style tearoom built in 1908 is most inviting with its creamy vanilla walls, high ceilings and plush forest green velvet chairs. I enjoyed a strong put-hair-on-your-chest coffee served on fine white china and a flaky, but not too buttery croissant. The icing on the cake was they served three chocolates along with the coffee and croissant. You have to love a place that serves chocolate with your morning breakfast.

I quickly finished so I could fully give myself over to the patisserie and chocolate shop. I could have spent the whole day there but my boring, rational mind said I had to get the 1:24 train back to Paris. The shop had only been open for 30 minutes so I watched  the the staff stock the shelves with the most beautiful tarts, and glazed, fruit topped loaf cakes and brioche as my sweet tooth reared its ugly, ravenous head. I tore myself away from the patisserie to visit the chocolate, tea, and sweet shop next door. I savored the precious moments I had and took in (without sampling anything believe it or not!) the boxes of pastel colored marshmallows, chocolate bars in foil resembling gold bricks, appetizing jars of jams, and stacked boxes of intriguing caramels.

Elegant tearoom at Meert

Pastries & sweets at Meert

My friends Jerry and Daniel from Monterey told me I must dine at L'Esaminet de la Royale, their favorite restaurant in France. They said they had been going there for years and had become friendly with the vivacious owners. With that winning recommendation I booked a table for Friday dinner. The restaurant was charming and Jacques, one of the owners greeted me warmly. I immediately told him him that Jerry & Daniel sent me and he couldn't have been more gracious. He profusely praised the boys and sent them his best regards. It goes without saying the service was great. I started with two slices of two different types of jellied vegetable terrines topped with white asparagus spears, served with a glass chilled avocado soup. It looked gorgeous and tasted even better than it looked. It was a perfect light, summer dish and the soup was one of the best chilled soups I ever had. Calves liver was simply prepared but a little on the thick side accompanied by a potato gratin and fresh steamed vegetables. Dessert was an fresh apple tart with a caramel and vanilla syrup. The apples on top barely had any sugar on them so that you fully appreciated the intensity of the syrup. Many thanks Jerry and Daniel for this memorable and special meal.

If you love good art, excellent food and great architecture, a trip to Lille is a must.

Meert
27 rue Esquermoise, Lille
Tel. 00 33 (0)3 20 01 84 21
Closed on Sundays
www.meert.fr

L'Estaminet
37 rue Royale, Lille
Tel.  00 33 (0) 3 20 42 10 11
Lunch Monday to Saturday
Dinner only on Friday night
Reservations necessary

Jacques from L'Estminet de la Royale- Monsieur Friendly

Carbo loading

New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook. First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte’s professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.

Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday
Minimum of 3 students, maximum 6 students.

Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Lille Part Two:The Old Quarter

The highlight of Lille besides lille3000 was the old quarter of the city. The mishmash of architectural styles including Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Flemish, and La Belle Epoque was a welcome contrast to the dominant uniformity of the Haussmann buildings of Paris. Around every corner was another great photo op, a building, park, street, courtyard that surprised and thrilled me. Lille has been under Flemish, Burgundian, Spanish and finally French rule in 1667, hence the varied architectural style. In the 19th century it was an industrial capitol that thrived in metalwork, chemicals, and linen and cotton textiles. Much of old Lille was recently restored and redeveloped and now has the feel of the Marais in Paris and Soho in New York with fashionable restaurants and boutiques.

Charles de Gaulle was born in 1890 in the old part of the city and his house is a museum that includes the bullet ridden Citroen which he was driving when the OAS attempted to assassinate him in 1962.

Here is just a small sample of my photos.

St. Maurice

 
Hospice Comtesse

Place De Gaulle

Eye Prefer Lille?

Palais de Beaux Arts

New! Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes
I am happy to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Cooking Classes. Come take an ethnic culinary journey with me and chef and caterer Charlotte Puckette, author of the bestseller The Ethnic Paris Cookbook. First we will shop at a Paris green-market for the freshest ingredients and then return to Charlotte’s professional kitchen near the Eiffel Tower to cook a three-course lunch. After, we will indulge in the delicious feast we prepared along with hand-selected wines.

Cost: 185 euros per person (about $240)
Time: 9:30AM- 2PM (approximately 4 1/2 hours)
Location: We will meet by a metro station close to the market
Class days: Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday
Minimum of 3 students, maximum 6 students.

Click here to sign up for the next class or for more info.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Best of 2008: Champagne Tour

I am taking a blogging break this week, so I've posted my best and most popular posts of 2008. Enjoy and I'll be back next week. 

From July 24, 2008

Trong Nguyen, who is the marketing director of a small company, Paris Champagne Tour, generously offered me a one-day tour of the Champagne region two weeks ago.

I had the same excitement level about going to Champagne as when I was a child and my parents told me we were going to the New York Worlds Fair. Trong is a kind, mild mannered Vietnamese man and he picked me up at 8AM for the two-hour drive in his car along with two sweet, young girls from Australia & New Zealand, who were working in Hong Kong as au pair’s. He was thoughtful enough to supply a thermos of hot coffee and croissants for the early morning ride.

It was a perfect weather day, warm and sunny with that special color blue sky you only see in France. Just 30 minutes outside of Paris, the landscape turned rural with green grassy fields, cows, horses, and farms. Trong gave us a very thorough and lively history of the Champagne region and our first stop was the vineyard next to Bollinger and Louis Roderer. He showed us how the grapes were grown and planted, explaining that three type of grapes were used in Champagne: Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, both black grapes and Chardonnay, a white grape. After, we went to a top of a hill that had a romantic windmill with a breathtaking, expansive view of the area. We were taken to a small, family run winery called Godme, where the pleasant, warm Madame Godme personally gave us a tour. She shared in great detail about the entire process of Champagne making, starting with how the grapes were stored and finishing with adding the right amount of sugar, corking the bottles, and the storing and shipping of them. As you know I am not a connoisseur of any sort on wine making, so all of this was a fascinating education to me. Even though they are considered a small winery with only an output of about 150,000 bottles a year, the small staff of eleven people that includes most of the family works ten to twelve hour days almost the whole year. At the end of the tour, Madame Godme popped open a few bottle for us to sample, and she generously poured five various vintages. They included a dry, semi dry, and a rosé, which was my favorite and I bought a bottle for a decent price of 16 euros.

I was a little plastered after 6 flutes of Champagne at 11:30AM on an empty stomach, so the timing for lunch couldn’t be better. In Reims, the center city of the Champagne region, we ate at the charming Brasserie Boulingrin dating back from 1925 with the original wine workers mural intact. I enjoyed a three-course meal of a fresh shrimp salad, rack of lamb with potato puree, and yummy, refreshing dessert of poached nectarines with creamy rice pudding. It was Trong’s favorite restaurant and local hangout, so the staff went out of its way to treat us to excellent service. The next stop was the magnificent Reims Cathedral, the jewel of the crown of Reims. Larger than Notre Dame and completed earlier, at one time it was the most important church in France. In the original church before it was destroyed by a fire in 1211, it was where Clovis, the first king of Franks, was baptized by Saint Remi in 496. I was most impressed with the abstract stained glass windows, especially the newer ones installed in the 20th century including a series by Chagall.
We ended the tour with a visit to the posh Veuve Cliqout, one of the most prestigious brands in the world. Completely contrasting the visit to Godme earlier that day, this was a slick, much more touristy experience. A lovely young woman dressed in a well tailored, black uniform dress took us down to the massive chalk caves and explained in a more formal way how the Champagne was made. She told us that Veuve Cliquot aged their Champagne for three years, 21 months longer than the required 15 months and also spoke about how the vintage years were determined. Spoiled by Godne’s generous offerings, I was disappointed by the paltry one glass they poured but the macaroons accompanying them made up for it. I have to say I thought the Godme was better.

We left Reims at about 5:30PM and we all slept off our over indulgence of Champagne from our delightful day before arriving back in Paris at about 8PM. I had a chance to talk to Trong in depth and he told me he had a big, high- salary corporate job and gave it all up to follow his passion for winemaking and Champagne, which shows in his extensive knowledge and unbridled enthusiasm. I highly recommend this tour and I think it is an excellent value for 130 euros. If you do take the tour,please tell Trong I sent you. 

www.parischampagnetour.com

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Strasbourg Christmas Market: Part 2

Here are the night photos of Strasbourg and the Christmas Market. As you can see the city takes on whole different magical quality.

To read the full story from yesterday click here. To see more photos, click on Christmas in Strasbourg in photo albums section on the right sidebar
(For subscribers, you must go to www.eyepreferparis.com)

 

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Strasbourg Christmas Market: Part I

To get away from all the gloomy news about the unstable economic situation, I purposely made a concentrated effort this year on my blog to show the fantasy Christmas still holds. I took an overnight trip to Strasbourg the week before last especially to visit their famous Christmas Market. As you can see the nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn is mad for Christmas. I was relating a story to someone the other day as to why I like Christmas so much. When I was a kid I had to go to Hebrew school, which I hated, for two hours everyday after school. When I took the bus to go to school during Christmas time, we would pass the Italian neighborhood , where all the houses had the most extravagant Christmas lights and decorations. It was all so beautiful and magical to me, so when i arrived at school and lit the the very plain Menorah and played with the paltry dreidel for Hanukkah(please don't think I am belittling my background and Jewish heritage) it was quite a disappointment compared to my newly discovered world of Christmas . Not until I was a teenager did I celebrate a real Christmas and my partner Vincent is Italian, and he LOVES to go all out for Christmas, so there's never any lack of it in my household. We just finished decorating our tree as I write this.

Strasbourg is in Northern France in the Alsace region bordering Germany and  was founded by the Romans in 12B.C.The  Middle Ages was the golden period of the city when it was a Germanic Holy Roman Empire.  In 1681 Strasbourg became French , and was annexed back to German empire from 1871-1918, so it is equally influenced by France and Germany. In 1988 the city celebrated its 2000 year anniversary and was classified a world heritage site by UNESCO.

Strasbourg's  biggest event each year is the extensive Christmas market which has existed for over 400 years. It centers around the magnificent Gothic cathedral that was was started in 1176 and completed in 1439. Hundreds of merchants load their small stands with everything that spells Christmas. I went with my friend Pam Grant and we tasted, drank, and shopped our way through the market in the morning, taking it all in. After  a delicious lunch at Saint Sulpecce,a  quaint restaurant with traditional Alsace cuisine, Annie Demoulin, of the Strasbourg tourism office, gave us an informative tour of the city. We started at the church, where she went into great detail about its long history and also about  the Astronomical clock that has daily performance at 12:30PM of animated apostles marching in front of Christ. Afterward we we went to Petite France, the former fisherman's, miller's, and tanner's district with half-timbered houses with long sloping roofs dating back from the 16th and 17th century. We passed covered bridges and weeping willows along the river and canals and a horse drawn stagecoach made us feel like we never left the 17th century . A long, slow boat ride completed our tour of the city and now I was eager to see the Christmas Market come alive at night. The red, green, pink,blue, and orange lights were so much more vibrant at night against the brown gingerbread houses and dark red stucco buildings.  We were intoxicated , literally and figuratively by the hot mulled wine, and we sampled anything the generous merchants put in front of us including spice bread, jelly candies,many forms of chocolate, and yummy hot cranberry juice to warm us from the bitter cold.

We continued to walk every nook and cranny of the city, making sure we didn't miss one Christmas display, ornament, light, or stand. Tired, frozen and happy, we thawed out at our hotel that evening, satisfied that we had done it all.

It was interesting to see the sharp contrast of the city between day and night. I documented both in photos and today I am showing the city in the daytime. Yes, the city is festive for sure during the day , but nighttime lights  brings out an indescribable magical quality, which I will show you tomorrow.

Strasbourg Christmas Market
Till 12/31
Strasbourg is 2:20 minutes from Paris Gare de L'est by TGV train

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen-Part 2

Here are more photos of the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen.

I spent my last two hours on Sunday in Copenhagen at the world famous Tivoli Gardens which is the second oldest amusement park in the world, built in 1843.In the heart of Copenhagen , it's the city's most popular attraction with 25 rides, a theater, band stand, restaurants, cafes, and a scenic railroad.  It's founder was Georg Carstensen and he obtained a five year license to build the park from King Christian as an escape for people not to take politics too seriously.

The grounds were all spruced up for Christmas and it felt like a winter wonderland, with Santa on his sleigh receiving children on his lap whispering their Christmas wishes into his ear. A giant wooden reindeer, a tree with red hearts hanging from it, a band dressed in Santa suits, and festive lanterns and lights all over made me feel the Christmas spirit down to my frozen toes.

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.
Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

My Nephew Prefers San Francisco

My nephew Elie Sasson, who lives in San Francisco, is following in my legendary footsteps. He just started his own tours of San Francisco in a unique way with his Green Dream van tours, the only tour company in the San Francisco using Biodiesel fuel. His specialty is showing budget/hostel travelers the real San Francisco at a remarkably reasonable price: only $38 for a five to six hour tour. Elie has lived in San Francisco for over 20 years and has traveled by backpack around the world extensively, so nobody knows more about budget traveling than Elie. See great neighborhoods like North Beach, The Castro, Twin Peaks, and the old 60’s hippie haunt Haight –Ashbury and experience natural wonders Muir Woods & Golden Gate Park, and of course, the Golden Gate Bridge. Have some oysters for me at Fisherman’s Wharf and don’t get locked in at Alcatraz. Elie is also available for private, customized tours like I do. Not only will he give the best tour possible, but he will recommend cheap eats, nightlife hot spots, and give you the weekly scoop along with a discount card.

He’s a great guy and almost as personable and fun as me, so let Elie show you the San Francisco he prefers in his hand painted dream machine.

http://www.greendreamtours.com

Subscribe to I Prefer Paris

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Weekend in Oslo

I was in Oslo, Norway last weekend for a family birthday celebration. One of the highlights besides the super fun birthday bash was the Norsk Folk Museum. Only five minutes from the city, the open-air part of the museum is in the country with rolling green meadows and horses. I loved the 17th and 16th century buildings with foliage and grass growing on the roofs.

http://www.norskfolke.museum.no/

Subscribe to I Prefer Paris

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Chartres en Lumieres

Every year since 2003, the city of Chartres hosts a light show on its historical church and other monuments & buildings around the city. I wrote a post about Chartres two summers ago and was always eager to go back, so my friend Heidi Ellison joined me last night to check it out.

The light show doesn’t start till nightfall so we took a 5:30 train and arrived at about 6:30.It was a crystal clear, dream of a sunny day with beautiful light and a crisp pre fall chill in the air. The city had cleared out from day-trippers visiting the church and we roamed the pleasantly uncrowded, narrow, winding streets in this charming village.

We had a leisurely dinner at the quaint but not cutesy Café de Cathedrale. It started to get chilly, so we each had pot a feu a grand mere (grandma’s stew). The three kinds of tender meat with potatoes and braised leeks & cabbage followed by a warm tarte tartin was just the hearty fare we needed to go out into the brisk night air to see the lights. We thought nightfall was at 8:30PM but according to Chartres time it’s 9:30PM, so we only had about 45 minutes to see all 20 sites in order to make our train back to Paris.

Above Photos © ParisUpdate.com

We scurried to the church and in a tower behind it, classical music was booming while someone controlled the light show. The illuminations were stunning and dramatic and the music set the mood back to an earlier century. Although mesmerized by the thrilling moment-by-moment changing of the projections, we had to force ourselves to leave to make the most of our time. Behind the church were two low buildings with long stone walls and the projections were portraits of historical figures moving horizontally across them.

I researched what the theme was this year and also the significance of the faces and figures I was seeing, but the official site didn’t have any information, nor could I find it elsewhere. Frantically trying to fit it all in, the last illumination, besides the church, was the best. It was small corner building of two stories and the entire façade was a mural with peasants toiling away.

A near full moon hovering in the background gave the evening a whole other dimension of romance, mystery and magic and I felt child like wonder ogling the lights with my mouth open, much like the glee I still experience when I see fireworks.

Chartres en Lumieres 2008
Till September 20th
Trains leave almost every hour from Montparnasse station
http://www.chartresenlumieres.com/

Subscribe to I Prefer Paris

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com

Le Vieux Lyon

I was in Lyon in June for the day and explored the old part of the city, Le Vieux Lyon. Some of the ancient architecture dates back to medieval times and the district is known for its traboules, which are passageways uniquely associated with Lyon used by silk merchants to transport their fabrics. I loved walking through the dark, dank mysterious passageways and finding spiral staircases, oddly configured archways, and decaying stone columns all in rich hues of pink and terracotta.

Subscribe to I Prefer Paris

I am pleased as punch to announce the launch of Eye Prefer Paris Tours, which are 3-hour walking tours I will personally be leading. The Eye Prefer Paris Tour
includes many of the places I have written about such as small museums & galleries, restaurants, cafes & food markets, secret addresses, fashion & home boutiques, parks, and much more.

I look forward to meeting you on my tours and it will be my pleasure and delight to show you my insiders Paris.

Check it out at www.eyepreferparistours.com