Frankenstein-way - June 22, 2025

SUMMARY A day of our favorites! Breakfast at Café de Paris on the Rue de Buci, several hours at the Parc du Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne and dinner of cheese fondue at old haunt Le Châlet in Neuilly. In between, we visited the Worth exhibit at the Petit Palais (“Charles Frederick Worth was an English fashion designer who founded the House of Worth, one of the foremost fashion houses of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He is considered by many fashion historians to be the father of haute couture”) which Cindy and I thoroughly enjoyed. Scott and Tom thoroughly enjoyed the beer available in the museum café. Scott also "fashioned" a makeshift duct for our A/C from cardboard and masking tape. - Karen

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DETAIL We wake, happy to have survived all of the excitement of yesterday. Today our plans are a bit more civil, starting with breakfast with Tom and Cindy over on the Rue de Buci near their hotel. On our walk over the impact, on the city, of last night’s fête quickly becomes apparent. There’s a lot of trash. Merchants and city workers have already been busy pushing the broken bottles and other trash towards the rubbish bins. We see a street sweeper and can tell where he has and hasn’t yet been. This is obviously not an uncommon situation for Paris.

On the famous and popular Rue de Buci you can’t really tell anything when on last night. The city workers must work hard to clean up the most popular areas first. We have a good breakfast of omelettes with ham, cheese, and veggies. It’s fun but filling. I wouldn’t want to do this every day.

Next we’re heading somewhere that was probably unaffected by yesterday’s Fête de la Musique: The Parc du Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne. From where we are the Châtelet metro station would be the closest but then again it connects to about a gazillion other metro and RER lines, always making it a bit of a cluster f*** to navigate. We walk the extra distance to the next station: Louvre-Rivoli.

Along the way a young woman, overhearing us talk, asks if we’re American’s. We reluctantly admit we are, from Austin. She’s from Houston and is in town with her sister, who’s stationed with the American Military in Germany. They went to see fellow Houstonian Beyoncé at the Stad de France last night, so she missed all of the Fête de la Musique craziness.

The M1 metro takes us as far as Porte Maillot where we catch a bus the rest of the way. We continue to fight with the bus versus metro ticketing system which refuses to play nice with us. Tom and Cindy’s cards don’t work and the driver eventually just waves them back. Sigh.

The park is in bloom with the roses looking good, but we’re late for the wisteria, peony, and irises. The peacocks, as always, put on a good show, mostly for the lady peahens but we’re happy to bear witness. We cool off in the grotto with the water flowing over our heads and down in a waterfall, just like they would have 100 years ago. Done with flowers for now we push on. We have to get back to central Paris, have lunch, and then get to our next ticketed event, a show going on at the Petit Palais.

On our walk to the bus we are surprised to catch a ‘lady of the night’ (working during the daytime) mid-job, as it were. I don’t see it but Karen, Tom and Cindy do and they say that both they, and the street walker, have very surprised expressions on their faces. Nobody got a picture??

Trip Advisor directs us to a good restaurant near the Rond-Point des Champs-Élysées, “Le Carré Élysée”. Good service and good food. The check comes quickly when we said we are in a hurry.

At the Petit Palais we show our four QR codes for our tickets to the Worth Exhibit. Apparently Mr. Worth, and subsequent generations, kept high society here, and across Europe, in high fashion for years. Karen’s happy to see the exhibit and Tom and I are happy that there’s a cafe at the museum that serves beer. Getting out of the Petit Palais means strolling through quite a bit of the museum’s permanent collection, which is always free to the public. It’s extensive and impressive. Who knew?

Across the beautiful, gold adorned Alexandre III bridge the #63 bus takes us back home. Tome and Cindy relax in their room while I spend the time trying to fashion an exhaust hose for the A/C with discarded cardboard, masking tape and chewing gum. The knife I purchased cut the cardboard without problem, but I bought the wrong kind of masking tape. I didn’t want to pull paint off the walls or window frame so I bought painter’s tape. Its big claim to fame is that it's not very sticky. You can say that again! Eventually, with enough tape, it seems to be holding together. We’ll see if it makes it through the night. I dub my dubious looking instrument: “Frankenstein-way”. Fingers crossed.

For dinner we planned to all head out to our old neighborhood, just outside of Paris, at the restaurant Le Chalet. However, as Cindy‘s feet are bothering her (due to having walked so much recently) they are gonna hang out at their hotel and then have a romantic evening alone somewhere near their hotel.

Karen and I exit the metro in Neuilly-sur-Seine (our old stomping grounds from 1995 to 2000). We are surprised to see the work on the marketplace complete, pretty much. It looks very nice and new and shiny. Going from the metro exit to the marketplace square used to be parking but now it’s pretty stone and a nicely planted pedestrian/bike-way. Well done!

At the restaurant they were fine with us being two rather than four. We’re seated outside and have a nice long chat with the two owners (managers?). We reminisce about coming here twenty five years ago. One of the managers relates a story about his grandfather, back at their home in Brittany (near one of the western-most points in the area) telling this guy (his grandson) that if the squints really hard he can see New York. He now knows better.

For dinner we have fondue, which really isn’t a thing to have in the heat of summer, but it’s good. It’s been too long since we’ve had good fondue. We also have Ravioles de Royan, which are delightfully small and float in a light chive cream sauce. Fries and a green salad round out the meal, though that’s definitely gilding the lily. For dessert we have a creamy chocolate cake thing, also floating in some creamy goodness, this time sweet. Plus a bunch of wine. Way too many calories.

We walk part of the way home on foot, fooling ourselves into thinking we’re burning off the calories of dinner. The metro takes us the rest of the way, then it’s the five flights of stairs and we being our experiment with our newly enhanced A/C. Finger’s crossed!

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Photos

On our way to breakfast we pass piles of garbage here and heaps of refuse there, all from last night's Fête. It must have been quite the party.

We saw a street sweeping machine and could see where it had already cleaned up one side of the street and hopefully would be back soon to vacuum up the other.

On the Rue de Buci, where we had breakfast, it was already spotless. Always a good meal at the Café de Paris. Omelette with mushrooms, tomatoes, cheese, and coffee (separately, of course).

Lots to see at the Parc du Bagatelle, in the Bois de Bolougne.

Lots of flowers in bloom, but peacocks, too. This one pretty much gave us a show on demand. We're guessing all this showy plumage isn't really for us.

The roses we OK with the sun and warmth. There were lots of them.

We passed this statue, as always and I always wonder what this little kid said to his mother... "Mom, can I go out and play with that half lady-half lion again?"

The grotto, with the water fall, provided a short respite from the heat of the day.

After lunch we head to the Petit Palais where the Worth exhibit is going on. Tom and I, figuring "how bad can it be?" agreed to go.

The exhibit may have been somebody's cup of tea, but it wasn't ours. Tom and I hightailed it to the museum café and partook of some of their beer.

On the walk home we saw another one of those totes adorbs micro cars. This one's a convertible (see back window all scrunched down).

Also on the walk home we spot an air conditioner in a store window with the exact vent needed to make the A/C actually work as designed. I figure "How hard can that be, really?"

Channeling my inner MacGyver, I get some discarded cardboard from the grocery, a utility knife, and a few miles of duct tape. This will hold til morning, right??

For dinner we start with Ravioles de Royan. Yum. Small but mighty (good flavor).

Trading our ravioli forks for fondue forks we press on with our meal. It's the perfect dish for mid-winter, but it's been too long and they offer it year-round here. Yum!

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