Barbara Cooley's Paris Journal

Paris Journal 2013 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com

Find me on Facebook 2012 Paris Journal ← Previous Next → Back to the Beginning

I’ve missed the avenue Rapp. Before the Musée du Quai Branly was established along with its wonderful garden, we used to walk up the avenue Rapp more frequently, to reach the riverbank of the Seine. Now, however, our favorite way to the riverbank is through the garden of the Musée du Quai Branly.

I had no trouble convincing Tom to take Rapp this time instead. So after we took the street that parallels the Champ de Mars on the southwest, we crossed the Champ on the road that goes through its middle, where there is a lovely long pool of water with a small fountain at each end.

On the other side, we proceeded to the multi-pronged intersection and started up the prong that is the avenue Rapp.

I always like to see the over-the-top lavishly decorated façade of the apartment building designed by Jules Aimé Lavirotte (1864-1924). You might remember it as the place with the door that has a beautiful salamander brass handle in the middle.

Several years ago, I was worried about this building because it appeared to be deteriorating. Then last year or the year before, it was covered in scaffolding, I think, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Now the façade is showing again, in all its glory. Because of the street trees, I think the full façade can only be photographed from across the street in the winter, when the leaves are gone from the trees.

Still, the glory is in the details, and I was able to look up and capture many of them on the camera.

Then Tom pointed out an attraction on the ground level floor. In a window that seemed to belong to the concierge/guardienne’s room was a gorgeous Persian cat.

He was bored, and sat in the window next to the brass mail slot, waiting for the mail to arrive. That may be one of the highlights of his day, seeing those envelopes slide into his space through this mysterious device.

He’s used to hamming it up for the passers-by, especially those with cameras. He posed, as if to say, “Yes, I am handsome, aren’t I?”

We continued to walk up to the riverbank. At the end of avenue Rapp, we were about to cross the street when suddenly appeared an emergency vehicle whose driver switched on the siren and lights as he pulled up to the interesection. We waited for it to pass. Later, we learned that there was a bomb scare at the Eiffel Tower at about that time.

When we crossed the street, we descended the steps and headed in the direction of the Faust terrasse, which has replaced the Petit Palais as our favorite café (just for drinks) in the vicinity of our favorite bridge.

After consuming an espresso, a bottle of Badoit, and a glass of very pale rosé, and after thoroughly enjoying the jazz being played over the surround-sound system, we paid up and continued on to the next bridge.

We crossed over to the Place de la Concorde and strolled through its big paved, pedestrianized space in front of the entrance to the Tuileries. Right at the entrance, there are some tacky tourist and snack kiosques/trailers, but no matter. We passed them by and entered the grand garden.

Tom didn’t want to deal with the dusty walkways in the garden for very long, so we turned and exited just after the Jeu de Paume and before the crazy amusement park that visits the Tuileries for the summer months.

On the rue de Rivoli, we walked along the arcade to the side entrance of the Westin Hotel, where we stopped to read the sandwich board about the new restaurant named Le First. It is slightly expensive, but offers a 50 percent discount on LaFourchette.com, so we may try it soon.

We turned up the rue Castiglione to walk up to the Place Vendome. There we found that in addition to the scaffolding covering the façade of the Ritz, there is also scaffolding in front of a few other buildings on that vast, elegant square.

We entered the cute little Swatch boutique and looked around, but didn’t see anything there to tempt us this year. In the past, we’ve bought watches there.

We decided to walk back part of the way, and take the metro from the Invalides station.

Our metro ticket supply was depleted, so we were not able to use the entrance under the Pont Alexandre III bridge; there are no ticket machines there. (RATP needs to install a sign that says so at this entrance.)

So we crossed over onto the Esplanade des Invalides, and found another entrance to that RER/metro between the Air France building and the busy quai.

Down we went into a big space that included a couple ticket machines. When we were resupplied, we turned around and headed for the turnstiles leading to the very long moving walkway which delivered us to the line 8.

When we exited at our familiar Place du Commerce, we were very ready for a rest back at the apartment.

An hour or so later, Tom said he was quite hungry and wanted a really good dinner. I handed him the phone and read off the number for Chef Olivier Amestoy’s restaurant Axuria, where he reserved a table for us at 8PM.

So we had another pleasant stroll yesterday, down the avenue Felix Faure, to Axuria, where we had a superb dinner: filet de rascasse en écaille de chorizo, velouté de cresson, sarriette for me, and milk-fed lamb noisette and veggies for Tom.

Rascasse is scorpion fish, which is considered to be one of the essential ingredients of bouillabaisse. (It has a number of different common names in French – too many to list here.)

The veggies that came with my main course were plentiful, and included big, soft artichoke hearts, and buttery, smooth puréed potatoes. In addition came the little side dish of veggies for us to share.

All was delicious. And then there was soufflé au Grand Marnier for dessert, which was divine. The best souffles we’ve found in Paris are at Axuria. Bravo, Chef Amestoy!

The evening air, during our walk home, was cool and clean. We opened the doors to the balcony where we sat and enjoyed the sky’s dazzling display of colorful dying light.

Then the lights of the rue du Commerce took over, casting a romantic hue into the living room. Day was done.