RH note: This week we’re featuring an amazing three month honeymoon through India, Europe and North Africa. All posts are written by our lovely guest blogger Kate, and photos are by her talented husband Adeet.
Kate says: We rented a studio apartment, above, in the Latin Quarter for the week we stayed in Paris. We found the flat on Craig’s List and the price for a week was considerably less than what we would have spent on a hotel. But more than the savings, staying in an apartment made us feel that we weren’t just tourists. There is something incredibly romantic about making omelets, or even doing laundry, in a Paris apartment! It gave us a sense of domesticity, a sweet feeling for a newly married couple, and it was Parisian domesticity.
We delighted in discovering “our neighborhood.” Le Boulanger de Monge, one of the city’s best bakeries, was down the street from our flat and every morning we indulged in decadent pastries. We also made several trips to the nearby rue Mouffetard, a street lined with market stalls, where we bought fruit for our day trips and wine to enjoy back “home.” I would highly recommend renting a flat to anyone who plans on staying in the city for more than a few days.
We hit the big tourist stops: the Eiffel Tower (where we enjoyed a picnic on a nearby lawn), the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, and Notre Dame. However, we also took time to wander. I highly recommend “City Walks: Paris,” a set of 50 cards with maps and suggestions for walks. Every day we picked several cards and walked one or two of the suggested routes. This is how we ended up on Passage Brady, a pedestrian street that is home to Paris’s très petite Little India. The vegetable stands, South Asian grocers, and Indian restaurants made us feel homesick for Mumbai. We had an excellent dinner at Pooja, where the tasty curries were obviously made with rich French butter and cream.
One of our favorite afternoons was spent in L’Institut du Monde Arabe, above.
We drank fresh mint tea in the institute’s Café Littéraire and then took the elevator to the rooftop terrace, which overlooks Notre Dame and the Seine. The view is marvelous and so is the building—steel diaphragms open and close depending on the sunlight, an ingenious blend of modern design and classic Islamic architecture. We’ve returned to Paris twice since our honeymoon and both times we made sure to visit this gem.
Of course food played an important part of our stay in Paris. We discovered what we consider the best crepe stand in the city near the St. Germain des Prés Métro stop. We grew so addicted that we went on a daily basis and even went twice on one especially greedy day.
At Dalloyau tearoom in the Bastille neighborhood, we drank the thickest, richest hot chocolate we’ve ever tasted. We lounged on a red sofa, against a backdrop of pink and red walls. It was like being inside a Valentine candy box.
A must-visit foodie destination is La Grande Epicerie. It is a grocery store to end all grocery stores. We ogled the incredible assortment of chocolates, cheeses, and meats and marveled that there is one aisle devoted to sugar. And not simply sugar, but sugar in the shape of puzzle pieces and notched hearts that fit on the side of a teacup. Shopping at Whole Foods now feels like slumming.
Paris is a classic honeymoon destination for a reason. We really will always have Paris!
And we’ll have Mumbai and Trivandrum and London and Melilla and Barcelona… We feel fortunate that we experienced such an incredible honeymoon (or honeymoons) and look forward to one day telling our daughter about these adventures.
RH note, again: A super, gigantic, huge THANK YOU to Adeet and Kate for sharing their incredible journey. Their words and photos make are just spectacular!
