Paris, Sunday, November 18, 2007: The Tea Caddy, Notre Dame, and Ile St. Louis

Our first full day in Paris was a Sunday. We wandered around looking for a place for breakfast, not finding anything. However, we had seen a recommendation in one of our books for The Tea Caddy, an English tea shop, in our neighborhood. We were getting a little discouraged in our search for a really good breakfast and were headed down our street, just a few doors down from our hotel on the way to look for more cafes, when Isabel looked up and said, "Look, there's The Tea Caddy." It felt a bit odd going to a what we thought would be a quintessentially English place for breakfast, but based on the recommendation and our growing discouragement with what we had seen, we decided to try it. We ended up going back three times we loved it so much. It is not quintessentially English at all, except maybe for the decor and the tiny biscuits (called scones, but really like a very small, round, Southern biscuit) with Devon cream and strawberry jam. Isabel had these every time we went. (Which leads me to mention that her food reactions, which were particularly bad with milk products, were entirely cleared up by the time we went to Paris. Probiotics twice a day on an empty stomach and lots of water with the probiotics and with each and every meal did the trick of counteracting a month's worth of antibiotics when she knocked her tooth out last February.)

The Tea Caddy was started in 1928 by an English woman. See http://www.the-tea-caddy.com/.
We always sat at the table in the middle of the right hand side of this picture. (The pictures of the cafe are all from its web site -- we were a bit shy of taking picture in restaurants.)

After our yummy breakfast, we went to Notre Dame and walked around the outside. You can see that it was quite cold. The temperature was probably in the 40's, but there was a nasty wind and, while it didn't actually rain, it had that cold, wet feel. This was the worst day we had in terms of weather.

Jim built a wall similar to this one at our house in Connecticut. We liked the way the garden is raised and held in by the basket weave.



Paris is a very clean city. I remember seeing street sweepers, actually guys with brooms, in '76. I saw them this visit as well, with plastic brooms now, as well as little tiny street-sweeping machines. Plus they have these garbage receptacles everywhere. Ingenious design. Another thing I noticed all over town this trip, which I hadn't noticed in previous trips -- were they there and I didn't notice or have they gone up since '99? -- were plaques, everywhere, noting where people were gunned down by the Germans in the '40's. It was really sobering to think of people being shot right across the street from Notre Dame, right next to the Grand Palais, along the Seine near the Eiffel Tower, everywhere in this incredibly beautiful place.

This is the bathroom outside the back of Notre Dame. Even though the hotel is only a few steps away, this bathroom is accessible without going up four flights of stairs! I loved the fact that it was heated and we all loved the little building, roof and walls made from pressed concrete. Check out the little faux-twig structure on the roof.

After walking around for a while, we went into the church. We got audio tours, which were really great, for pointing out lots of details and giving the history. There isn't much point in photographing the rose windows, etc., since there are so many wonderful postcards and books, but Jim took lots of pictures of small details.

After Notre Dame, we wandered over the the Ile Saint Louis, which is the island behind Ile de la Cite, where Notre Dame is. There are little, windy streets with really nice, small shops. There is a Pylones there, a French store that Jim discovered in NYC and that is one of Isabel's favorites. She bought herself a Pylones-style Eiffel Tower souvenir, but since we can get things at Pylones in New York, it wasn't worth paying the Euro prices. She bought herself a really cute hat in one of the stores and we had a late lunch/early dinner in an OK crepe place. We didn't mean it to be dinner, but it turned out to be. We resolved to not eat more than a snack at 4 PM so that we could save ourselves for really good restaurants on other days.

This car is a Renault, called a deux-chevaux, literally two-horse, because it has a two-horse-power engine. They don't make them any more. This one was in the same spot every time we passed on the various days, always with its blanket.

An interesting architectural detail along the street on the Ile Saint Louis.

From this little shopping street we passed into Le Marais. We looked into a few shops, but almost everything was closed. We resolved to go back, which we did on another day.