Paris Day Five: Stairs. Lots and lots of stairs.

If you enjoy tales of climbing up and down stairs and hills, this installment is for you. Paris is not Lisbon, but it turns out that there are some hills.

We started the day by going to the Montmartre area of Paris. The exit from train station had an elevator where we noticed more people than usual standing. We took the stairs and, not knowing the area, were surprised at how far up we had to go to reach street level. Our mistake, after all, “Mont” is right there in the name!

For breakfast we went with croissants and expressos at a place called Boris Lume Boulangerie. This was Harper’s choice. It apparently features prominently in a show called the Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir. The proprietor scolded us gently for not ordering our coffees at one time. This would have made the order somewhat easier to fill, apparently. Properly chastened, we enjoyed our breakfast.

From there, we continued climbing up the hill to the Sacre Coeur. The problem we ran into there was that I had wanted to see the stairs featured in the fourth John Wick movie where Wick has to fight his way up a comically long flight of stairs against innumerable gunmen, only to be knocked down and have to climb up again. We had come up from the wrong direction. The route from the Montmartre station to Sacre Coeur actually didn’t involve too many stairs. We went through a small commercial district and then came out on, I believe, the west side.

Assuming I’m correct that it faces the south, I walked down the south stairs so I could go around the side and find the Wick stairs. Harper went with me. Amy recognized that this was silly and just waited up top for us. On the way down, a vendor was putting on the hard sell for trinkets. He said I could get “5 for 1” to give to my daughter. I was heartless and didn’t buy even one! Harper and I got to the bottom, walked a quarter of the way around, and then climbed the stairs. Except they were the wrong set of stairs. So, lots of climbing for not very much! But it was fun to walk a little further with Harper.

Once we were back up with Amy, we kept going, climbing to the top of the basilica. Amy didn’t have any particular problems with the heights in this configuration. The views were good. The spiral staircase was dizzying. I was a little surprised to learn how recently the Sacre Coeur was built. It was constructed between 1875 – 1919; apparently in response to the French losing the war to the Prussians in the 1870s. They’d lost the favor of God and all of that. Being a conservative initiative from the right, I gather that it’s not a beloved monument among the socialists and godless communists.

After taking in the sights in and around the basilica, we headed back down through the commercial district we had passed through initially, picked up some macarons, and headed back to the Airbnb for a rest.

In the mid-afternoon, we left for our food tour which was in the Marais area of Paris. These food tours have become some of my favorite activities in our European trips. For this one, our guide was Camila. Unlike Berlin, there were no New York Yankees in our group. We did, however, get to hang out with Ann, Annie, and Karen. They all went to a school for learning French. Two were from the U.S. and one was from England. (One of Ann or Annie was the spitting image of Ana Gasteyer playing one of the NPR hosts in a couple of sketches.)

Camila was from Argentina. Interestingly, these food tours have all involved guides who weren’t from the country we were touring. In any case, Camila was a good history teacher. She had maps and everything. Marais apparently means “the swamp.” It was a swampy area of Paris that was drained and eventually housed some rich Parisians. But then the wealthy were apparently coerced to leave when Louis XIV built Versailles and moved the court there. It became a factory area and Jewish quarter and has become trendy since the 1970s.

Our first stop was L’Escurial where we had wine and escargot. I guess I’ve had escargot enough at this point, that I don’t regard it as weird or all that exotic. But Camila made a point to be reassuring about the food and at least one in the group was a little nervous about it. Ultimately, to me, snails aren’t much different than oysters. They end up being a vehicle for whatever sauce you want to put on them.

What was different for me was pulling them out of the shell. When I’ve had them at restaurants, they were already out of their shells. Harper had a “defective” one. She wasn’t the only one who couldn’t pull the meat out of that particular shell. Others at our table gave it a go with no success. Camila deployed a tooth pick to try to get it out. Still no luck. Eventually, the solution was to smash the shell and pick out the shards.

Our next stop was Miznon, and it was just fantastic. Apparently the chef is Israeli and the menu is an Israeli-French fusion idea. My favorite food of the trip was the beef bourguignon in a pita. It was a little messy, but so, so good. The Dijon mustard added the final touch that made it next level.

After Miznon, we had falafel at Chez Hanna which, if I’m honest, was not my favorite. I suspect this has more to do with my not being a huge fan of falafel than with the quality. Next we had desserts – Belgian chocolate at Elisabeth Chocolatier and kouignettes at Maison George Larnicol. At the latter, we learned about the title “Meilleur de Ouvrier de France.” It’s an award given out as part of a competition every four years. Per Wikipedia, “This award for special abilities is unique in the world. Created in 1924, initially between the best workers of the era aged 23 and over, this contest was given the title of Meilleur Ouvrier de France (Best Craftsman of France).”

We stopped briefly in front of the apartment where Jim Morrison allegedly died in 1971, before finishing the tour at Vins de Pyrenees for cheese and wine. Overall, I’d rate the places we ate at the tour as decent and the guide as outstanding.

By the end of our food tour, it had been several hours since we had climbed any stairs of note; so we went to the Arc de Triomphe. As arches go, it is very triumphant! I’ve seen it in pictures a hundred times, but hadn’t really appreciated the scale of the monument. It’s really big!

The Internet tells me the Arc de Triomphe is 164 feet tall which amounts to something like a twelve story building. Going up to the top involved a lot more stairs, but the view at the top was very much worth it. It sits at the intersection of twelve radiating avenues and offers a fantastic view of the Eiffel Tower. Even better, the tower “sparkles” on the hour at night, so at 8 p.m., we were able to see it all lit up from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. If she had to pick a favorite part of the trip, I believe this would have been Amy’s.

Then we headed back home. According to my watch, we’d climbed the equivalent of 87 flights of stairs and walked 19,000 steps.