Paris 2014
April 27 - Paris - Ann's Birthday
Today was Ann's birthday. We started celebrating by eating at Hotel Muguet's breakfast room. I say celebrating because nothing is cheap in Paris. So the price we paid for our meal was in the celebration category. We had fresh orange juice which we squeezed ourselves in a juicing machine. The French coffee was good and strong and did not taste like wet socks, which is a common complaint in France. Croissants were flaky and the cereal and eggs were fresh.
After breakfast we walked over to the Musee d'Orsay and spent most of the day there. This included lunch in the cafeteria - pasta for me and salmon for Ann. It is always an extraordinary experience to visit this museum. The paintings are fantastic. We split up in the museum with Ann using a guide book while I listened to Rick Steves audio tour on my iPhone.
As we walked back to our hotel, we visited two other museums using our newly acquired six day museum pass. We were dodging rain storms on the way.
Ann's birthday dinner was at Chez Pierrot, a small bistro that was a five minute walk from our hotel. I made reservations for 7:00 through an online French reservation system. When we arrived, the waitress did not seem to know about it. No problem though, there were very few customers. It was a small bistro with a couple of fixed price menu selections. Ann had rump steak with a creamy pepper sauce along with potatoes and a salad. I had a appetizer of deep-fried squid and sardines, a main course of sole and salmon with ratatouille. We both had a peach tart for dessert. We split a bottle of Pouilly Fume.
We retraced our route and found our way back to the hotel without a map.