The Full Formule

A lot of restaurants and cafes in Paris advertise a "Formule" which is basically a combo meal that costs a lot less than buying all the things individually. It's very hard to not know this because over the kilometres you will walk in Paris you will pass many, many cafes and restaurants, and because while doing that you will also feel very hungry.

Today we decided to skip the yoghurt and oats and get a formule for breakfast. We walked along the boulevards from the hotel to Saint-Médard, which is a nice, old church in front of a nice, old public square with a fountain. But stretching up the hill from that part is a narrow, cobbled street lined with market shops and markets as well. Sunday is, apparently, more of a local's day than a tourists day but in the same article which I read that, it also said that this was because the markets opened only in the morning and there is definitely an advantage to being a tourist that is capable of being up before 9 A.M.

We selected Le Mouffetard for breakfast based on the breakfast formule on the chalkboard outside, and the fact that it had a lot of locals eating there, but also a table away from the locals. (The locals liked sitting in direct sunlight and smoking).

For the full formule at 12 Euro each we received coffee, a croissant, slices of baguette, fresh juice, an omelette, and a little cup of fruit salad. (The extra 2 Euro is for the omelette). Everything was delicious. By the time we finished eating, the street in front of us was ready for markets. We bought a strawberry crumble to eat later from a very nice looking bakery, then walked back to the hotel the long way to visit Arènes de Lutèce - an old Roman amphitheatre that was rediscovered in the 19th century. It's now part of a public park and used for a lot of people to play Bocce.

More like Arènes de Boccè

We continued our walk, grabbed another coffee and sat in another park where a further echo of Rome stood in the garden. Either that or I have been in Europe so long that all statues are starting to look the same…

Then we had a nap, which wasn't easy after the coffees, but we'd tried to plan the day like this because we had a booking at the Louvre for 2 P.M. and the day was going to get very hot.

Luckily, the streets of Paris are not in a grid and run on all sorts of diagonals - again thanks to old mate Hausman. This is actually super handy on hot days because at nearly any time you can kind of weave your way across the districts and find a shady side of the street. That worked for us until we reached the river. There is no shade on Pont du Carrousel, nor much to compensate once you reach the right bank and try to find the entrance. All the hustlers from the Eiffel Tower were here this afternoon, clearing the plastic tower replicas and selling bottles of water for 1 Euro which was very tempting even though we'd left the hotel only fifteen minutes earlier.

We got inside and through security and picked up the Nintendo DS guides to help us through. Even though we had the reservation, no one even asked for it, although we did use the "with reservation" line to get in.

The Louvre. I have a lot of thoughts about this place. They could take every single artefact and piece of art out this building and it would still be worth a visit. Being a former palace, the rooms, walls, ceilings, everything (in the old part) is incredibly large, intricate, and detailed.

Another ceiling.

That said, it is way too big to see everything. Even trying to see the highlights is a challenge. Part of the reason we got the guides was for directions, but at times they did not know where we are, and once they were guiding you somewhere I could not determine how to cancel the navigation so the map was focused on taking us somewhere we no longer wanted to go. It did not help that I made a list of things to see based on an article that may have been written by ChatGPT, because the rooms and locations listed for these pieces did not exist at all.

We started by trying to visit the ancient Egyptian collection - being exhausted of Christian art. Unfortunately we got lost, saw some cool Middle East and Greek art and pieces, and then ran into more of old baby Jesus.

Eventually we made it to Egypt (with the heat and the walking it felt like it literally). And then we tried to find a toilet, one which was closed and another that didn't exist. It used up about 30 minutes of our visit. After that, and a crazy amount of rooms filled with antique furniture, we found the Salon and the most famous paintings and were able to slow down a bit and take some of that in. I hadn't actually realised so much of the Napoleon collection was here, and they are such mammoth pieces of propaganda and artwork, and very cool. At least the DS guide was now adding some value.

The museum closed and it was still scorching outside. Another thing we hadn't been able to locate in the museum was any of the supposed eight water fountains. So we were quite thirsty as well. I relented that I would give one Euro to the hustlers for a cold bottle of water - but these guys know their game well! At museum closing time they all added an extra 50c to their water prices. So I didn't buy water from them, not just out of principle but also because I didn't have the extra 50c worth of coins with me either. We heroically strove until we reached a supermarket and I bought a one litre bottle of water for 31c. We drank that, ate some potato chips, found shade on the eastern side of Bourse de commerce and refilled the bottle a few times for good measure. That was enough art and culture for a while.

Still quite sunny, we made it as far as Rue Saint-Martin before spotting another Lebanese place. That was good for dinner, which we carried to the nearest park that just happened to have a five hundred year-old gothic church tower in it (the rest of the church was destroyed during the French Revolution, the main one...).

Like all public spaces, this one too was filled with people in groups enjoying the shade and having a nice, friendly time in a great many languages. It was very pleasant - except for the toilets that were extremely disgusting.

We went out and got ice-cream and came back to the park with it to continue enjoying the summertime vibe and the aforementioned shade.

From there, with the bite in the sun finally mellowing, we walked to Parvis de l’Hôtel de Ville - another landmark on the list. This one too was blocked by scaffolding although what could be spied through the gaps was impressive.

We then crossed the bridge to Ile Saint-Louis to see what we could of the grand, original residences built there after King Henry IV's plan to turn it into the West Lakes of seventeenth century Paris. Again the banks of the river were filled with people chilling in the sun. Even a garbage collector got into some of the tunes being played under the bridge.

We did a loop of Ile Saint-Louis. The sun was finally nearing the horizon. It was another long and diverse day. We had paid for the full formule.