Wendy's Platter…travels

September 24, 2025

Arriving in Paris on Saturday, laden with luggage and past memories, I was a little nervous of what I would find. But Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz was right. There’s no place like home. I found Paris, once my home, the vibrant, exciting, enticing city that I loved the first time I saw it in 1969.

Wendy in 2025 looking a lot less like the Wendy of 1969 but with just as much Parisian passion.

Although there were many things on my Paris checklist, there were a few musts. First the food: go to a farmers market and pick the best and most interesting produce, charcuterie, and fromage; eat a crêpe on the street; devour a salambo (specialized cream puff iced with green fondant and crackled sugar); sop up the extra sauce from escargots dripping in butter and garlic with a baguette; savor a plate of gigot d’angneau (leg of lamb) with pommes de terre (potatoes); dip into a bubbling bowl of French onion soup dripping with cheese; drink an espresso at a café in the Latin Quarter; and…this is just the start of the list.

Moving on to places to visit: 4 Quai Kennedy, the apartment building where my parents lived during their 7 years in Paris; Passy, the area where we shopped plus one of the few metro stops above ground where you can see the Eiffel Tour as the metro goes over the Bir Hakeim bridge; Notre Dame in its newly restored state; ambling around the small cobblestoned streets in search of…whatever is there; and finding new treasures of the city.

With that checklist, we needed to get going. Navigating the Paris metro system came back to me as we found our way from the Gare du Nord to our Airbnb at the Bréguet-Sabin metro stop and walked around the corner. To say the studio apartment is small is not an understatement, although my nephew Skylar who lived in New York for several years and had to consider which doors and drawers to open or close before opening the refrigerator, could relate. That said, it was comfortable and we could scoot around even with the murphy bed down.

Once we unburdened ourselves, Nick realized that his phone was missing. He had it out on the metro as we approached our stop, but by the time we got into the apartment it was gone. After going back to the station, and many non-printable words and thoughts, we called ATT and had the lost phone was disconnected.

As it turns out, we had an extra phone for Nick. Only a few months earlier, we had switched from Verizon to ATT, but unbeknownst to us, our new phones were locked from other eSIMs until we paid off our new ATT phones almost three years hence. We discovered the problem the morning of our flight when we tried, proactively, to activate the eSIMS we had purchased for use in Europe. Our very helpful ATT guy gave us the quickest answer: buy a cheap unlocked phone (think burner phone) from Walmart or such. A few hours from takeoff, we were able to find a Walmart and get a phone. So when Nick’s phone disappeared in the Paris metro, we already had the option of the new phone for Nick. A phone call to ATT from Paris gave Nick a new number for this new phone. Not a great start to our Paris adventure, but with it behind us, we headed to the streets in search of an early dinner.

Our first cafe in Paris. Huge hunks of pâté de campagne plus a lamb shank with an eggplant and zucchini gallete. Perfect start to Paris cuisine.

Looking at several restaurants of which there were plenty, we realized that we were a little early for dinner and a little late for lunch. But Chez Janou was hopping and at 4:45 pm we were the last ones in the door for the lunch crowd. Our first meal hit several of the items on my food checklist. We shared a souris d’angeau avec pommes et une gallete au courgettes et aubergines. Although I knew that angneau was lamb, I kept thinking that “souris” was a mouse. And I was right. However, a souris d’angeau is a lamb shank, which is a favorite of both Nick and me.

[Side note: I am working on keeping off the many pounds I lost to help my ability to get around while traveling. However, I will not miss a bite of anything! So Nick and I, generally speaking get one dish or a dish and an appetizer and share. There always seems to be enough food for us both. And 10 days into this adventure I have lost two pounds…but then adding more than 10,000 steps a day to my previous regiment also helps!]

The lamb was swimming in a sauce with flavor depths that the French are famous for and we loved it along with the gallette, think frittata, of eggplant and zucchini. There was plenty of fresh baguette to sop up the sauce.

Endless mousse. Note my hand up trying to stop the waiter from adding more. Did I really do that?

Then there is dessert. The couple next to our table mentioned that the café was known for the chocolate mousse. That’s a slam dunk. Unsuspectingly, the waiter showed up with a large bowl of mousse, a large spoon, and a plate and proceeded to add mousse to our plate until we stopped him. Endless mousse? A deliciously scary idea. We could barely make it through the generous mound of chocolatey decadence, but we somehow managed.

Everything looked so good. I suppose it is not good ettiquette to just bring your own fork and have at it.

Sunday morning was the farmers market at La Bastille which was only two blocks away. Everything looked perfect and delicious. We could have just stayed and eaten our way from booth to booth: every kind of fish, meat, bread, pastry, cooked foods from every country, flowers, vegetables, and plenty of clothing, knick knacks, souvenirs, etc. The colors, aromas, the sales folks enthusiastically offering samples of their cheeses or grapes or salami were overwhelmingly seductive. We filled our empty backpack with pears, peaches, three or four cheeses, a hard sausage, figs, lettuce, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of wine. Our favorite dinner.

Before we left Brussels, Suzanne and Jan-Bernd had given us the contact information for their niece who lives in Paris and who were willing to show us around. We met Lise and her boyfriend Guillaume plus their dog Maggie on Sunday afternoon to begin what turned out to be the perfect personal tour of Paris through the eyes of this young and engaging couple aided by the always willing basset hound Maggie.

A hidden, to me, treasure of the Belle Epoque in Paris where strolling and socializing was the thing.

First up were the passages. I was unaware that these lovely, covered commercial passages created in the 18^th century existed. They were created by the city planners to allow the bourgeois a favorite place to stroll, socialize at a café, shop in the tiny shops all within beautiful stain-glass, high ceilinged, tiled passages leading from through the middle of the blocks on to another street. There are more than a dozen passages throughout the city and Lise and Guillaume showed us a half dozen or so around the Marais and Les Halles.

A few of the highlights of our walking tour: (closckwise) the Hôtel de Ville, the oldest clock in Paris, a medieval building, a water fountain that provided safe drinking water for all Parisiens.

While Lise concentrated on showing us the little-seen sights, Guillaume filled us in on how the sites fit into French history. We walked almost 4 miles that afternoon with a constant, well-informed, and fun commentary as we walked. What a treat!

Trying to be clever and actually talk French to the cook, I said “Vous êtes un artiste!” (You are an artist!) He laughed and said “”Non! Je suis un chef!” and then in English said “You can tell by the hat….”

In our research on Sunday night, Nick found the Musée Vivant du Fromage (cheese museum) which seemed like a must do. We booked a reservation for 2:30 and decided to walk/explore from our Airbnb by foot. Winding through the streets, we stopped for a crêpe to share for lunch as we walked. The 16” disk of buckwheat batter was spread on the hot griddle with a small, flat wooden spatula. As it cooked, he brushed on some butter, then folded it in half to add the mozzarella, tomatoes, and jambon de parme (think prosciutto), then folded that again to create a flat ice cream cone shaped sandwich. It was hot, meltingly delicious, and beat the pants off of fast food.

The gift shop had a selection of extremely local cheeses…local to within 100 meters of the shop. The interactive museum kept us all engaged, although Nick had a point of contention that, according to the board he was looking at, camels do not produce milk for cheese. Nick had camel’s milk cheese in Africa, but Nick chose not to argue with the fromager in his own building.

The fromager (cheese maker) at the Musée du Vivant Fromage was an excellent and engaging teacher. Our tour included a high school class and it was fun to hear their questions. The tour was both in English and French which helped both Nick and I get our French “ears” back into understanding the language. Of course, the free samples, served with a glass of wine for the adults, gave us a deeper understanding of processes and regions.

Just checking things off the To Do list…Escargots and sitting in a café watching Paris walk by.

Needing some non-dairy sustenance, and being in the heart of Paris on the Isle St. Luis, we opted for a small café on the corner and had escargot. I must admit I had hoped for a preparation that had less parsley and more garlic, but we managed to finished them all and sop up every bit of butter. Obviously, we will need to sample more escargot as we travel.

Despite the fact that we have an official tour of Notre Dame on Thursday, we decided to get into the fast moving, but very long line to get into the interior. There is no cost, just a very long line. However, it moved quickly and within 15 minutes we in. A mass had just started with a lovely soprano voice filling the cathedral before the priest took over. With the renovation, the walls are no longer dark, but bright new sandstone. It is stunning, but I will have more about Notre Dame after our upcoming tour.

My parents and my sisters and I lived in the 9 eme etage or 9th floor which was the top floor of this building. The apartment was the entire 9th floor with windows spanning the narrow balcony but with a spectacular view of Paris and the Eiffel Tower. The bottom photo was taken from the Île aux Cygnes which is a long narrow island at a wide part of the Seine at the end of which is a smaller version of the Statue of Liberty that was created in France as a gift to the United States. In the photo, my apartment building is on the left with a tree partially covering it and the Eiffel Tour on the right. This was my home.

Tuesday was my day.

“You can never go home again.” ~Thomas Wolfe

I beg to differ. Paris was my home for a short time in my youth, but it dug deep into my heart at the critical years where I was breaking away into adulthood. From our Airbnb, I talked Nick into taking the No. 72 bus which, for the most parts, heads west along the Rive Droit (Right Bank) following the Rue de Rivoli, passing many Paris icons: Notre Dame, Les Halles, the Louvre, the Jardin des Tuilleries, Place de la Concorde, the Trocadero, and the Eiffel Tower. Not a bad tour for the price of one city bus ticket.

Although the pastries caught our eyes first, the poster with Mozart’s Requiem held our attention and we decided to attend that night.

As expected, as the Eiffel Tower came into view from the bus, there were tears in my eyes. I was, indeed, home again. We got off at the Bir Hakeim bridge and walked back a block to 4 Quai Kennedy where my parents lived for 7 years. Although my parents and little sister Jenny are no longer with us, I knew they were enjoying my step back into our past. I know Betsy was feeling the memories across the ocean.

Poor Nick was stuck with my constant reminisces of Mom carrying groceries down the hundred plus steps above the river where the Passy shopping area had abundant small shops plus a supermarket, Dad trying to find an elusive parking spot not too far from the apartment, or teenagers Betsy (14), Jenny (15) and I (17) walking across the river to the Champs de Mars when it snowed to make snow angels under the Eiffel Tower.

We walked up the 100+ stairs to Passy, walked the street with now unfamiliar shops and stopped for a coffee and pastry. So very Parisian and so very delicious. As we left, I noticed a poster for the Mozart Requiem, a piece that Nick and I had sung in the choir years ago. The concert was at Saint Sulspice, a beautiful church on the left bank at 8:45 pm. We decided to go home first and then to the concert.

To head back to our Airbnb, I insisted on taking the overhead metro from Passy which was the wrong direction and the long way around, but allowed me to snap a photo of the Eiffel Tower from one of my favorite vantage points. We made it back to our Airbnb and rested for about an hour before it seemed prudent to head to the concert which was about 40 minutes away by metro.

We chose our metro route which took us through the Gare d’Austerliz which is under renovation and was extremely confusing. While in the station trying to make the transfer to another line, the station was closed due to a fatal metro accident.

But now we were farther away from our destination than we had been at home. Fortunately, we could, if we Japanese powerwalked, make it to the concert. We modified the powerwalk by skipping the extra cardio of swinging our arms (as it was raining now and we needed the umbrella) and replaced it with only the fast paces. All fast, all the time. We made it to the concert with minutes to spare.

Saint Sulspice is just as beautiful as Notre Dame and took our breath away as we recognized that we would be sharing this venue with almost a 1000 people at the concert that was dedicated to world peace. First up were a few speakers on the subject of the brutality of war and the hope of peace. All speeches were in French, but were spoken with the passion that seems to be missing from other peace rhetoric.

The first part of the concert was a flutist accompanied by an orchestra. It was immediately clear why churches encouraged musicians and music…there was an ethereal feel to every note. Encouraged to play an encore, the flutist filled the church with his single instrument in a way that took your breath away. I may never touch my flute again as I don’t want to lose that echoing audible perfume.

The Mozart Requiem with the full orchestra and choir was particularly stunning as the director took full advantage of the venue and the echoes, keeping the musicians from stepping on their own voices and letting the notes fade slowly. Both Nick and I laughed about the acoustics of our concerts in the Mendocino Music festival tent vs. the lovely Saint Sulspice that held the notes long after they were sung.

Three days in, and we have made a dent in the checklist…but there are many days to go and many steps to take. More Paris to come.

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For the map fanatics, I have taken screen shots of our amblings. These are from the app MapMyWalk.

On the left September 22, 2025 walking map. On the right September 23, 2025 walking, bus, powerwalking, metro map. Actual steps for each day were more as I keep forgetting to turn on the program. On 22 Sept 2025 my steps were 12,714. On 23 Sept 2025, my steps were 15,621. I will get better at recording my routes and steps!

©2025 Wendy Platt Hill