Paris, Part 1

As I said before, Jeannette and I were in Paris for Easter weekend. Our train arrived at around noon, so after we checked in to our hotel, we headed out for lunch. Our guidebook was full of walking tours of Paris, one of which went right by our hotel and passed by a place they claimed was jam-packed with cheap Indian and Pakistani restaurants. Since we don't get good Indian food in Heilbronn anymore, we decided that this was the way to go.



The tour wasn't all that exciting (though it did take us past some great Space Invaders). When we got to Passage Brady, the place with all the restaurants, we tried to check out the menus of the various places, but we were verbally bombarded by the waiters trying to convince us that their special is better than every other restaurant's special. In French. And we don't understand that much French. At least not when people are trying to get the whole sales pitch out in less than 10 seconds. I think all I got out of them - all 10 or so of them - was "cheese naan".

I'm not really very big on the pushy "come into my establishment" way of doing things, so we went to the restaurant where we weren't bothered. It was also mentioned in our guide book as being one of the better ones. Well, we weren't impressed. I mean, it started good - no harassment before commitment, and the Tandoori Chicken that I got as the appetizer part of my lunch special was the only Tandoori chicken that I can recall ever tasting good. But the rest was just ... well, boring. And it wasn't what I would call cheap.

A cheap lunch to me is around 5 euros per person. This was 12 euros. For the lunch special. Lonely Planet really disappointed us on this one.



So we finished up the walking tour, which didn't really get much more interesting. But it was good to be away from home in gorgeous weather. The tour ended not far from the famous Père Lachaise cemetery. I had been there 20 years ago on my last trip to Paris, but Jeannette had never been, despite something like 7 previous trips to the "city of light". So off we went to the strange world of tightly-packed sepulchers and weird sculptures that is the final resting place of so many famous people.



Eventually we got kicked out. Not because we were bad or anything, it was just closing time. And at that, I'll close this for now.