Introduction
9 May 2004 (7:07 pm)
Café Méo, inside Galerie des Champs-Elysées, 87 Avenue des Champs-Elysée:
Ouch, do my feet hurt.
At the moment, I'm in a coffee stand (looks like part of a chain) called Café Méo, not all that far from the Arc de Triomphe. Not entirely upscale--there's a McDonald's next door--but I need a rest after today's long walk post-lunch.
After my shopping expedition this morning, I returned to my apartment with my booty and a fairly hefty lunch--half the roasted chicken and roasted potatoes, along with the fresh bread, goat cheese, milk, and apple juice, with the Fontainebleau for dessert.
(I found out when I got back to the apartment and looked it up in my copy of Patricia Wells's Food Lover's Guide to Paris--the source of my hazy recollection of the name which prompted my purchase-- Fontainebleau is dessert made up using cream, curds, and sugar, and is served topped with fruit or fruit sauce, which I didn't have. Then I remembered the raisins I bought at the market, sprinkled them on top of the Fontainebleau, and it was just perfect---delicate and creamy and with just a hint of fruit provided by the raisins.)
Consequently, it wasn't until about 1:30 that I started out. My goal: to walk to the Eiffel Tower.
I've been here a day-and-a-half, and all I've seen of the Eiffel Tower so far has been a glimpse in the distance, from near the river and from the top of Notre Dame. According to the pocket Paris Metro map, I could have taken the subway just a few stops west, but I decided that instead of being hit with it suddenly after I emerged from underground, that I would rather approach it gradually, to get a better sense of its scale and relationship to the cityscape. And the obvious way to get there, it seemed to me, was to follow the River Seine downstream, more or less, until I got there....
[22 pictures follow]
