Kristy+IynVisit Day 3: Louvre, Crêpes, Trois Marmites

Well, I had to go in to work today, so Kristy and Iyn went to the Louvre and took that in while I toiled away at work. It seemed like everyone knew that I was taking most of the week off, so I had a week's worth of IT issues to deal with that day. Nonetheless, I finished only an bit later than usual and headed off to find Kristy and Iyn.

When I collected them at the Louvre, they were dying of hunger, so we hopped over to a crêperie that I knew would had "service non-stop" (they stay open between lunch service and dinner service, which means between 15h00 and 17h30). The place is called La Crêperie du Clown (yes, that is it's name), but the owners seem to prefer spelling it differently: La Crêpe rit du Clown ("The crêpe laughs at the clown"). Very funny.

Nonetheless, they had a very nice crêpe-centric prix-fixe menu, and each of us had a lovely savoury crêpe, followed by an equally lovely sweet crêpe. The meals came with cider or apple juice, both of which were really, really good. When we ordered coffee and the check, service suddenly became glacially slow. Once our coffee had arrived and we had finished it, I sent Kristy & Iyn to wait outside, hoping that this would remind our server that we actually needed our bill sometime soon. A few moments later, he delivered the bill, I layed out the money, and we were off again.

Since we were very close by, I showed Kristy and Iyn l'Eglise St. Germain des Près, which is gorgeous. Unlike most churches, this one has maintained a painted interior, which means that it doesn't have the cavernous, grey look that many medieval churches now have. I actually tried to snap a picture of the choir while showing Kristy how to fiddle with shutter and exposure settings:

After that, we walked down to Saint-Sulpice and took a look in there as well. After Saint-Sulpice, we took a moment to return to the Pantheon (where our restaurant was the night before) to get a few pictures by daylight. From there, we headed off to Montmartre to see Sacre-Coeur and watch the sun set from the top of the hill. When we got there, we realized that the Funiculaire (the cable-car) wasn't working, so we hiked it up all those stairs. Kristy kept a running count, and if I'm not mistaken, it was about 290 stairs. Although the climb nearly killed us, the view from the top was lovely and Sacre-Coeur was even lovlier. The interior of the church was as beautiful as I had remembered, although I think they've done some restoration to the ceilings in the intervening years; all the mosaics were shinier than ever.

As we left the church, we stopped to take a picture of the Eiffel tower in the distance, and then wandered our way down the the side of the hill and back to the subway station. From there, we headed off to Les Trois Marmites for dinner. The great thing about this place is the 19€ menu, which allowed us to have dinner for 3, plus apéritifs, a good bottle of wine, digestifs and coffee for 100€ even.

For appetizers, I had escargots, breaded and deep fried with parsely sauce. Kristy and Iyn had a savoury clafouti made of leeks, which they both seemed to enjoy immensely. For the main dish, I had duck breast in apricot sauce, Kristy had a pork chop cooked in honey, and Iyn had the beef bourguignon. All three dishes were fantastic, although I was especially thrilled with mine. Kristy and I both had the cremet d'Anjou (cream cheese and meringue mixed together) with strawberry sauce, which was excellent, although a bit sweet. I can't even remember what Iyn had. We did have a lot of alcohol, after all.

After all of that foodie exertion, we took a long walk to the 11-line subway stop and glided back home.