First night in Paris

The travel agent gave us this 8 page itinerary, which would have been about a quarter that length without the flowery descriptive language. You would think that something of this length would have the location of our dinner reservation. Nope. All it says is that we're going for a cruise on the Seine and eating a fantastic meal. Anyone who's been here before knows that there are about 100 different boats cruising up and down the Seine at any given moment, leaving from several dozen different locations. Here's where staying at a great hotel can help, because all I have to do is tell the concierge that we want the gastronomic cruise and we're all set. Gastronomic is a useful word here. It has nothing to do with giving your stomach a name, though I suppose that would be okay. It means that bestest fanciest meal.

We go to the dock and get on this pretty boat. We sit on top of the boat (I think it's a ship, technically, but ship sounds pretentious to me) and they ask us if we want an aperitif. I don't know how that's different from asking if we want a drink, but it sounds much more intimidating. I don't want to order something that's a stupid, classless aperitif. In Italy we always ordered Campari and soda, which we didn't even like but it sounded good. Here we just had some white wine.

The boat started to move and they call us downstairs to begin to eat. Here's the menu:


Duck foie gras with daikon confit and miso bouillon
Great mix of substantial traditional and light asian    


Summer lobster with spicy tomato juice
Yum!


Canette infused with agrumes, fine tart with figs and mozzarella
I have no recollection of this, but I'm sure it was great. I've eaten more figs in the last week than in the entirety of my life until then.


Selection of cheeses
Eat the cheese with a knife and fork


Chocolate bonbon with cherry sorbet
Anything mixing chocolate and cherry has to be worth trying


Macarons and chocolates
What they call macarons here are nothing, nothing like the greasy coconut macaroon things. They look like little hamburgers with a kind of chewy meranguey/marzipany thing on the outside with something sweet and gooey inside and they're wonderful. More on them later.


Kind of nice having Paris pass by as we ate. Very pleasant way to start the trip.