Flâneuring our way home

Place Franz-Liszt

When we woke up on the train we were somewhere near Orléans. We got dressed and went to the restaurant car for breakfast. It is so nice sitting there having coffee and pastries watching the countryside whizz by as the sun comes up.On arrival in Paris, the weather was cooler again by a few degrees, but bright and sunny. We decided to do something we often do in Paris which is to walk to a random location in a straight line, thereby discovering things we may not have seen before. On this occasion, where we agreed to walk from Gare Du Nord to Place Contrescarpe, that strategy paid off quite well.

Firstly we came across Place Franz-Liszt which was just 5 minutes walk from Gare Du Nord and is a quiet square with benches and a church. On a summer day this would be an excellent place to sit and relax while waiting for a train back to London. Gare Du Nord itself is not that interesting a place to wait in.

Further on, we walked along Rue Montorgueil which we had never been to before. This is a really attractive street which is mostly pedestrianised and had lots of nice cafes and gourmet food shops. As it was Sunday we were surprised to see most of the shops on this street were open. We sat outside an over-trendy cafe called Bianco and had a coffee and some mini-croissants.

Eventually we arrived at Place Contrescarpe having spent a very pleasant hour or two just ambling along. Although there are a few places we like there, it was too early for lunch. To pass some time, we got the Metro to the FNAC shop in Champs-Elysees where I collected a ticket I had bought online for a concert I am going to in Lyon in the summer. This all went very smoothly and I’ll definitely do that again for any concerts in France. By then, we were getting hungry so we went to a place we had seen at the end of our walk called Le Tire Bouchon in Rue Descartes. This was a small independently run bistro which appeared to have a quite a few vegetarian options. The service was charming, and I was very pleased with my pavé saumon with green beans, and afterwards the lemoniest lemon meringue pie ever. Julie’s vegetarian “dish of the day” was less successful as we couldn’t actually tell what it was. It was either some sort of pancakes or maybe a tofu thingy. She wasn’t that keen on it, but said that all the potatoes and vegetables that came with it were really good.

Following lunch, the weather was still looking bright, so we took the metro to the Bois De Boulogne and spent some of the afternoon walking round the Lac Inférieur and an English style garden called Pré Catelan. By the time we had finished that, it was starting to get quite chilly and so another cafe stop seemed in order. We went to Cafe Odessa in Montparnasse where we decided to while away the time we had before our train back to London. I had a fulsome and punchy French onion soup, proper stylee with the cheesy bread on top, Julie had a salad, and we munched our way through that as the cafe got very busy with Sunday flâneurs.

Finally, we jumped on the metro to Gare Du Nord and completed our round trip back to London by Eurostar, fully agreed that it had been a perfect holiday!