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The
beautiful river
My
favorite flowerbed in the Champ de Mars, located along
Grasses
and rebar in the Branly museum’s garden.
Cattails
and rebar growing in water with duckweed in the |
Thursday, July 26 We went for a
walk yesterday down through the 15th arrondissement and back up through
the Parc Andre Citroen again. We
decided to walk back via the rue des Entrepreneurs so that I could see if I
could find the tabac where the two managers tried to rip off one of their
loyal clients who’s purchased a winning Lotto ticket (€35 million!). I didn’t find it, so it must be between
Square Saint Lambert and rue de Lourmel.
The reason we
did not go beyond Lourmel is that we decided to eat dinner at Le Blavet
(75bis rue de Lourmel, Telephone 01-45-79-08-16). This restaurant still has my “highest
quality/best value” rating. The one
update I would make to my write-up in my restaurant recommendations
is that Madame is much more relaxed this year. She even smiles a lot. We each had a croustade des escargots for the first
course. It came with a creamy garlic
and parsley sauce, and the crust was very light and flaky. The snails were cooked perfectly. Then Tom had a
filet mignon of pork, which was served with old fashioned mashed potatoes
topped with a slice of bacon! My main
course was expertly cooked slices of duck breast and au gratin potatoes. Each course had a perfect sauce. You have to be
hungry to dine at Le Blavet because you must order all three courses. And you must decide on your dessert at the
beginning of the meal. My dessert was
the soft chocolate torte, service in crème
Anglaise and rich dark chocolate sauce.
A cute dollop of whipped cream sat on one side of the plate, and on
the other was a little crispy pastry shell with a very small scoop of mint
ice cream in it. Tom had a very nice
strawberry mille-feuille. We highly, highly recommend this restaurant! You’re
probably wondering if we have been watching the Tour de France, because I
haven’t mentioned it much. Yes, we
have been watching it, and we have been reading all the news stories about
doping in both the French and English newspapers. Ever since we
learned that Michael Rasmussen lied to the news media about having received
two warnings from the Danish cycling authorities (he claimed he had received
only one), I lost all respect for him.
Every rider of his caliber knows something about PR, and one of the
primary rules about PR is that yes, you can put a spin on your answers and
you can slant the facts in your favor, but you never, never, never lie to the
news media. Rasmussen did
lie to them, and now it turns out he even lied to his team about his
whereabouts in June, the month before the Tour de France. His team asked him to quit, and he
did. Cheaters and liars are very
disappointing, but there are still good riders out there and we intend to
cheer them on. Now the yellow
jersey goes to Alberto Contador, the young rider with the Discovery Channel
team! And the American Levi Leipheimer
rises to third place! It is possible
now that two of the three on the podium on Sunday in Contador will
look unbelievably cute in that yellow jersey, holding one of those stuffed
lions! Before we were
hooked on the Tour de France, Tom and I never were ones to watch sports. We always avoided But the Tour
is exciting, unpredictable, and incredibly scenic. Vive le Tour. Time to go watch it. |
