PARIS EYE CANDY, PART TWO

Last time I left you, we were roughly half-way through our Paris adventures — and so now there’s so much more eye candy to share with you.

Like Berthillon ice cream.

You know a business is exceptional when they dare to close for the month that they are most likely to do business; and bizarre as it sounds, Paris ice cream shop Berthillon does exactly that. They close for most of the month of August every year.

It’s a funny thing for Americans to think of most of a nation taking holiday for a month, but that is in great part what happens. Parisians leave their city to tourists for much of the month while they enjoy other locales and distant pleasures, leaving their beloved city to the thralls of tourists — and Berthillon does the same.

Good news is that while their gorgeous shop (on Ile St. Louis in the heart of the city) was temporarily shuttered, many cafes still peddle Berthillon’s icy wares so heat-droopy patrons can still sample them when they most need a cooling break.

There was a bakery with this ice cream cart out front

and it was just one and half blocks from our house (leaving me within a stone’s throw of this cart is like leaving a fox in the hen house).

There was so much competition for stomach space while in Paris, but we did manage to sample a pretty wide range of Berthillon flavors while we were there.

Team Sorbet players dabbled with Green Apple, Cherry, Chocolate, Mango and Oliver’s favorite, Raspberry.

Meanwhile, Team Ice Cream players dallied with Gianduja with Orange, White Chocolate, Dark Chocolate and Salted Caramel.

The flavors are explosive and otherworldly– and their confections were some of our favorite tastes of the vacation.

Now I’m dying to show you some of the other places we saw.

Some of my most vivid memories of our trip were two walking tours we did: one concentrating on the French Resistance during WWII, and the other on the village of Montmartre.

For the first tour we met our group near Sevres-Babylone metro stop (a fifteen minute walk from our apartment in St. Germain de Pres)

and we walked four miles throughout the 5th and 6th arrondissement, all the way hearing the stories of brave individuals and their tremendous audacity at combatting the repression and murderous rampage around them.

We walked the ancient streets around the Luxembourg Garden and the Pantheon

and our apt guide brought the resistance fighter’s stories to life, showing us locations in which they clandestinely met — and were sometimes caught.

He pointed out plaques the city put up to commemorate their sacrifices — something I’ve not once noticed before in my seven previous visits here.

David is an avid student of Allied involvement in WWII  so he was the one pushing for this tour — but we found we were all moved by it.

It was particularly engrossing as we left for Normandy and the D-Day beaches a few days later (I will tell you all about that mind-blower in my next post).

The other Paris Walks Tour was through Montmartre.

I didn’t know anything much more about this area other than the Sacre Coeur and that it was an artist haunt for innumerable artists (Van Gogh, Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec to name just a few).

We started with the “I Love You” Wall.

Our guide explained to us that a local artist wanted to show how multi-cultural Paris is and how words and language can unite (as well as separate) us, and each of the roughly three hundred “I love you” tiles was written by a native speaker.

The scale of this was tremendous (each tile was as big as an oversized picture book) — but the sentiment behind it even more so.

Our intimate group (only a dozen of us total) walked up and up the picturesque streets,  and I kept finding myself the last one chugging up a hill because absolutely everything was picture-worthy and I wanted to capture it all on my Iphone.

This was a tribute to a character in Marcel Ayme’s famous and much revered book: The Man Who Walked through Walls.

And here’s some local color provided by Miss.tic, an incredibly popular French street artist.

What a beautiful area Montmartre is, especially around Rue Lepic– long, winding streets, ancient cobblestones, and one of the best bakeries we found in all of Paris: Le Grenier a Pain.

This tiny (but perennially packed) place has won numerous awards for their croissants and baguettes

and everything we bought there was amazing: croissants au beurre, pain au chocolat, walnut bread, baguettes, fig loaf, pizza rolls, and pistachio financiers.

Okay, hold up here.

I wouldn’t take offense if you think I might be exaggerating here about the extent of my gluttony, but I can prove to you that I’m not.

I walked out with a giant bag of breads

and one smaller bag of warm offerings and we plowed through it that day and all through the next.

What else shall I show you?

How about some of the other views– like from our private rooftop deck?

And the homemade Happy Hours we enjoyed up there?

(Those little salumetti were unbelievable.)

The icy cold beer and olives weren’t too shabby either.

Or how about the views from Pont Neuf, just an eight minute walk from our apartment?

Our last night there, I shed more than a few silent tears because I felt so heartbroken by the prospect of our imminent departure, but luckily my son saw my melancholy and called me in for a hug.

Teenagers who are still affectionate with their parents are my kind of people.

I’m not surprised by such gestures by Charlotte, as she’s a girl and three years younger,

but Oliver continually surprises me with his comfort level with affection  — mostly.

Here’s Arc de Triomphe– another moving and somber monument.

There were so many other highlights on our trip (including our trip to Normandy –next time, I promise!), our fashion walk and tour, and our Eiffel Tower picnic and our epic Steak Frites Dinner, but those shall have to wait.

School re-starts in just a few days and life’s messy details are calling out for attention.

Until the next time, I leave you with a little more Montmartre eye candy.

Hell, if it was good enough for Picasso, it’s good enough for me.