Eat Your Heart Out

So the overconsumption of amazingly good food didn't end when we left Paris.

To the contrary, London is home to some of the finest cuisine around. Yes, British cuisine. But even more so, ethnic cuisine. Take, for example, Patogh - easily my favorite Persian restaurant of all time. And conveniently located exactly three blocks from our hotel.

Now normally I would consider it sacrilegious to have a proper Iranian kebab without rice. But at Patogh, you have to go for the bread. The huge, house made, delicious bread, where one serving is twice as big as your own head.

As the old adage goes, this picture is worth a thousand words. And about 4,000 calories.

Across the Channel

Ah, so we're back in the UK. I'll skip my schpiel on London - my love/hate relationship with the town is well-documented in this blog, and I'm not going to say too much as my travel companion this time is a London newbie. Perhaps this time I can see it with a fresh set of eyes as well.

The trip over was smooth, as is expected to be on Eurostar. And it made me thankful that I got this handy dandy little digital SLR. Why? Because this picture was captured whilst shooting through the northern French countryside at 186 miles/hour.



Checking in at the London Hilton Metropole was also smooth. And after smiling and being polite with the receptionist, I was bumped up to a view room. Not a bad way to spend the last couple of days of a vacation...

Last Tango in Paris

It's our last night in Paris.

I wanted to go and do a last bit of sightseeing - in über-touristy Montmartre - but late at night, when the tourists aren't out and about. Alannah wanted to try eating at Chez Toinette, a highly heralded, small, family-run restaurant with very few tables.

Luckily, Chez Toinette is in Montmartre, and for the price, mindblowingly good.


Smoked duck breast salad, housemade duck foie gras, roasted duck breast, and (breaking the pattern here...) roasted rabbit with figs were the order of the day. Washed down with a fabulously fruity Côte de Provence red, this was a fantastic meal. Not too fancy. Not too simple. Just right. And well priced. So we hit up a cheese platter and prunes soaked in Armagnac for dessert. And the waiter liked us so much, he hooked us up with more wine on the house. Truly a brilliant dining experience.

The only lagging part of the meal were the irritatingly loud Americans seated near us, but once they left and the place filled with French diners - right around 11:30, of course - the atmosphere was nothing short of charming.

Somehow - probably with the help of the coffee and assorted sweets we were, again, hooked up with - we were able to hike our way up Montmartre in a roundabout fashion. After stopping at some cheesedick bar (the last one open) about midway to refresh with an overpriced beer served by sadly uniformed waiters, we made it up to the bright white basilicas of Sacré Coeur. Never mind the church, though. It's all about taking it all in from the steps there. With a couple hundred of your closest local and backpacker friends singing, playing guitar, and generally whooping it up.

It's amazing that the neighbors there don't complain, but when you have views like this, why would you bother?