Our day began with our hotel room coffee and some research about restaurants in the area. I narrowed things down to five that had been on the hotel’s recommendation list. Whether going by what they say is wise or not depends on who you ask, I suppose, but we went with their recommendations so there you go.

Our first task when we got outside was to visit each one. I had mapped them out so we went in a good order. (And doesn’t it just warm your heart to see McD’s there. Argh!)

But first … wait! What is this BLUE STUFF I’m seeing in the sky? Why am I squinting? Heh. Yes, we had blue sky and it was sunny enough I contemplated coming back for sunglasses. That was a first!

Restaurant #1, La Chistera, looked fine, but didn’t exactly grab me. #2, Le Paresseur, was one we’d seen last night. I thought it looked nice, and it had a small menu that did include things we’d eat. (We don’t eat beef.) #3, L’Alchimista, was a bit confusing: we saw the address and the name of the restaurant but you couldn’t see in the windows or anything. Walking around the corner we saw, in a different building, the same name. I’m not sure what that was about. But in any case we decided to nix that. #4, RoseMarie, just didn’t hit me. Maybe my problem! But also they have no web presence that I could find other than social media and I’d have to call to make reservations. #5, L’Angelus, looked nice. Three options for a plat (our main), one being vegan and the other two worked as well. We narrowed it down to #2 and #5 and finally settled on #2, primarily because we had a bit more choice, as well as knowing we had to choose something! Reservations were made. They will limit our stay, they say, what with our early 7:30 reservation. People eat later in Europe, and I find it a bit of a challenge to adjust to that.

But enough of that! No one even really needed to read that paragraph. Hah!

From there we walked in a rather random manner, thinking maybe we’d eat lunch soon.

But then there was a shop that caught our eye and we grabbed croissants for the time being. At least we didn’t go crazy and get the really sweet stuff! (Okay, maybe mine was a chocolate croissant.)

More walking randomly when, ta-da!, we arrived at the Christmas market I thought would suit us best. Go figure. Before entering, we stopped to take in the view, an aqueduct, and more.

Then it was Christmas market time.

And vin chaud time.

And lunch. Could Dan finish all of this? (I had a pretzel with brie.)

No, he couldn’t!

Walking back we first heard a bunch of very loud drumming which we attempted to catch, but didn’t manage: there were too many things we wanted to stop and photograph.

But then we heard singing and came across this wacky group.

Following that was the not wacky group in a pro-Palestinian protest.

More walking…

… and we got back to the square near our hotel. There we saw a Syrian celebration.

There was a photography show nearby about Gisèle Freund, a photographer I’d never heard of. It was quite interesting, but I finally totally lost it — I simply needed to close my eyes. So back to our room we went.

(Side note: I hate that I don’t have the energy I used to. Stopping in the afternoon drives me nuts as I know it means I am doing less than I’d like. But so it goes. Age does its thing.)

After our rest time we went back out and enjoyed a walk before dinner. First we went to the Plaza de Comédie, and I asked Dan why it was called that and I realized we need to look that up, which I have since done. Duh: the Opéra de Comédie is at one end of the plaza. Shoulda thunk it!

It was fun to see the lights, as well as the kids on the carousel.

The crowds are fairly crazy at this point.

We finally made our way to dinner. Le Paresseur wasn’t open when we arrived, but a few minutes later they opened the door and we, along with a family of three, went in. They disappeared into another space, so we never saw them again and I wondered if it was a private area, but who knows? Our table was chosen and we sat. Then we managed to figure things out from the French menu (thanks to Google translate!), and ordered things. Our appetizer was fabulous. (We shared, but I could easily have eaten it all myself.)

Our mains arrived and, again, absolutely fabulous food!

Side note: at one point the lights went out. I’m not sure if it was during the appetizer or the mains. But it appeared they knew exactly what to do as one of the servers ran out the front door and another followed and soon all was well again. It was funny, though, how quiet it got when it first went dark! I rather liked it.

And yes, we had dessert as well. (It’s what I think of as our fancy schmantzy meal out, after all.)

What a night this was! Many thanks to the lovely restaurant for a memorable meal.

From there it was a quick walk to the hotel. We even managed without using our phones!

So now goodnight … we have one more day here (with no plans, really), so we’ll see what tomorrow brings.