Birthday in Paris

After the Marais, the shops in St. Germain seemed kind of tacky. There were a lot of chain stores and even though the Marais was full of tourists too, this just seemed more touristy. And our feet hurt. So we went back to the hotel and slept for a bit until it was time to go to dinner. At some point the hotel staff showed up with a birthday dessert, a chocolate dome with gold leaf, and a candle, which we were too full to eat at the time, but set aside for later.

Our dinner the second night was not at a restaurant, even one on a ship. Ronnie does not love going to restaurants and gets tired of looking at menus. So I tried to arrange a cooking class for the evening. Turns out, none of the fancy shmancy French cooking schools do afternoon or evening cooking classes. So our choice was Cordon Bleu at 9AM or nothing. The travel agent came up with the idea that we could go to one of the agency's guides' home and have a personal cooking class and dinner with a chef. That sounded like fun, so I went with it.

We drove out to this pretty suburb with a big castle in its middle, and went to the woman's home. It was an attractive little place, with a nice yard and a cute dog. The kitchen was small and functional. We helped prepare appetizers and a first course, assembling sundried tomatoes, shaved parmesan and parma ham onto pieces of crusty bread, turning baby artichokes to expose the heart, making a julienne of lemon zest for a risotto, and baking cookies for a mille feuille. It was fun, and then we sat down as the chef finished cooking the food and we sat with the owner of the house and talked and ate. It was really nice. The food may not have been the best we've ever had, but it was fresh and made with good ingredients (homemade parsley juice!), and so even if the preparation wasn't great, everything still tasted good. The highlight was the chef and host singing "Happy Birthday" in French. It was very sweet and then we went back to the hotel, still too full to eat the chocolate dome.