Wednesday, September 20th

We started the day at the Musee de la Vie Romantique  to see the exhibit "The Power of Flowers", the work of Pierre-Joseph Redoute.  Really beautiful as was the museum itself, which was the home of Ary Scheffer, a painter.  The museum is small, two floors and has some interesting pieces.  One room is devoted to the memorabilia of George Sands.  The museum has a delightful secluded garden where they serve light lunches so we decided to eat there but, as I wasn't very hungry, I only had some madeleines and Leas had a salad.  After leaving, we stopped at Trinity Church by architect Theodore Ballu and finished in 1867.  The building is Italian Renaissance and has quite an ornate exterior. Then on to Musee Gustav Moreau, a museum filled with Moreaus drawings and paintings in the townhouse in which he grew up.  Many of his paintings are huge, floor to ceiling, and there are many that are quite interesting.  One of the highlights of the house is the ornate circular staircase leading to his atelier, which is replicated as it was when he painted there.  Then we set off for Galeries Layfayette to have a drink in their rooftop bar, The Cube.  We sat on the high chairs against the balcony over looking the rear of L'Opera and each had a kir.  The view was beautiful and you're able to walk around 3 sides to take unobstruced view pictures.    Dinner was at Frenchie, chef Gregory Marchand's highly rated, hard to score a reservation restaurant.  I'll do my best in describing the dishes but have few notes as the waiter came over and told me he would e-mail me the menu if I gave him my e-mail address so I did't have to bother with notes but he never sent them; this is my only criticism of the restaurant as everything else went above and beyond our expectations.    As soon as we sat down, we were served some maple bacon scones and butter.  We opted for the wine flight to accompany the tasting menu and the sommelier was a cute young girl who was very enthusiastic and passionate about wine.  She throughly explained every wine as she served it and even told us why she chose it to accompany the specific food.  The amuse bouche was a zuchinni flower with heirloom tomato on crispy bread with a yogurt and celery oil dressing.  This was followed by a pie shaped wedge of silky foie gras served with mango four ways: fresh, pureed, aspic and pickled.  It was really delicious!  Next was smoked eel with  potatoes, vegetables and coriander seeds.  The fish course was pollack with mashed potatoes  and roasted carrots and the meat was squab with wild mushrooms.  It consisted of a breast and a leg which was very crispy and fun to eat.  We had two desserts; the first was a berry sorbet with several different crunchy pieces (almost crumbs and some fresh fruit pieces.  The second was a chocolate dome which, when cracked open, was filled with vanilla ice cream and caramel.  We had 5 different wines with our meal and we both deemed it pretty spectacular - Frenchie lives up to all the hype and is highly recommended.  This was a great day and our first day without a single drop of rain.