CarlaVisitAgain Day 7: Croissants, Opéra, Lalique and crêpes

Since Carla was going to leave the next morning, we front-loaded a lot of our sight-seeing during the day, with the expectation that the evening would be more low-key. Also, there was a club event being organized by the Be My Chose folks, and I wanted to be ready for that as well.

We started the day with a run to Pâtisserie Millet, which has become our favourite destination for croissants in Paris. After a croissant and a coffee (and the purchase of another two croissants "for the road") we headed over to Madeleine to buy a few pastries from La Durée. From there, we wandered over to the Opéra Garnier and finally did the tour of the building. The main auditorium was fortunately open today, so we were able to see pretty much everything. The interior was as ridiculously opulent as I had expected, although I was surprised that the ceiling of the auditorium had been painted by Chagall. An odd moment of impressionism / fauvism in what was otherwise a veritable palace of late-19th-century neo-Baroque craziness.

We then headed down to the Musée du Luxembourg for their special Lalique show. The exposition was beautiful, but all too short. The focus was on his Art Nouveau jewellery, which was mostly exquisite but far too over-the-top for most people to pull off today. Which I suppose is just as well, considering how much these pieces must cost now.

With that taken care of, we wandered over to Saint-Sulpice and over to Pierre Hermé's store for some more macarons (and pretentious service). From there, we wandered up rue des Canettes to that crêperie with the amusing name (La Crêperie du Clown or La Crêpe Rit du Clown). We had the usual lunch menu, which included a savoury and a sweet crêpe, plus cider. The meal was delicious as always, but a bit too heavy for a late lunch, so we crawled home and crashed out. I headed into Lila to find a traiteur (sort of like French take-out) for dinner, and picked up some salads and tabbouleh.

We ate dinner starting with sweets (after all, what's important here?), which involved plowing through a pile of macarons and pastries from La Durée. From there, we ate some salad and a couple of small quiches. As delicious as all of this was, I TOTALLY ate too much and was about to regret it when I went out clubbing.

Speaking of which, I'll post a review of my night out separately, since it may take a couple of days for me to put the piece together and post it.