Ledoyen

Ledoyen will be our third michelin 3 star restaurant.  We walk around the Petit Palais several times before asking for directions.  The restaurant sits by itself surrounded by trees on the outskirts of a park.  It's a small restaurant with around 12-15 tables.  Considering that this is a single-seating dinner, it makes it even more exclusive.

Getting Ready for dinner

The restaurant is elegant and the service impeccable.  Loretta's purse gets its own chair so that it doesn't touch the floor.  And of course, in every one of the fourteen or fifteen courses we had, fresh utensils are provided.

Ledoyen dining room

Being a highfalutin' european restaurant, Loretta gets the menu without any prices.  (This first happened to us in Old Quebec and it still cracks us up.  (Especially since she makes more than Fred.)) We decide on the tasting menu.  The meal is delicious.  Our note taking is sparse and hard to read, but here are some of the items we had:

• Ginger Bubble 
• Watermelon drop
• Lemon meringue
• Lobster with foamy vinagrette
• blanc de turbot de ligne juste braisé, pommes rattes truffées - fish with truffles over potatoes over truffle buter foam
• Sweet meat with mushroom, lemongrass and a green sauce
• Yeast ice cream - Absolutely delicious
• Deconstructed grapefruit

And of course a bevy of appetizers, amuse bouches, pre-desserts, desserts, a cheese course and coffee.  Two things we are taking away from this are Vin Jaune, which is a white wine from the Jura region of France.   It gets its flavor from the thin layer of yeast that accumulates in the barrel.  The other is Mimolette cheese, which Loretta calls pumpkin cheese, due to it coming in a large 4lb. globe and its orange color.

Watermelon drop

Dessert

The meal started at 8pm and we finally got out after 11.  The subway to get back is closed due to construction, so we walk back along the Tuileries Park and the Louvre.

Cleopatra's Needle

We get back close to 12am.  Since we only have one key to the apartment, Bill, who is spending a few days with us, is waiting patiently outside.

Louvre

We all wake up a little late that morning, and Fred and I head down the street to get a breakfast while Bill does his ablutions. We walk down to the mall at Les Halles and pick up our tickets at the FNAC store that was so elusive to Fred and I the day before.

We walk into the eastern courtyard and are amazed at the scale of the place. With our tickets we go in the reserved entrance and down into the main gallery underneath the glass pyramid.

Louvre

Louvre panorama from plaza

Louvre

Louvre

As we have different tastes, we split up from our friend Bill. The beginning of our tour takes us through the foundations of the original fortress. We then go up through the ages including Greek and Roman art, into the middle ages and then the Impressionistic era. We have lunch in the third floor dining room with Bill. The orange colored soup proved to be a delicious tomato, not the carrot one would have assumed; this is in keeping with the namesake of the restaurant, Richelieu.

Louvre

The afternoon we spend looking at the royal apartments and the statue courtyard. Loretta likes the crypts and their realistic portrayals of a life at leisure (reading, with dogs at the foot of the ladies and lions at the foot of the men); which became more morbid as the Black Death encroached. Fred enjoyed very much the statue courtyard. We finally do a march through the Louvre and realize there's just no way to see the entire place. We did not see the Mona Lisa as waiting in line to view her would have cut into other museum viewings.

Louvre - Royal Apartments

Louvre  steps

Part of crypt