Today, Ted and I had lunch at a Parisian café we enjoyed on our last visit. The waitress said we looked so “cute,” that she should take our picture. Cute? Not an adjective I’d use to describe us, but the result was quite nice.
As usual, we spent our afternoon walking—but not as far as yesterday—maybe only nine miles. We found the Moulin Rouge (translation, “red mill“) behind road construction fences.
To the right of the Moulin Rouge, we saw a lovely promenade, so we walked a mile or more on the promenade, then sat down on a park bench and had a short conversation with a Parisian man who was also relaxing in the shade.
We needed to get back to our hotel early because this was the night of our anniversary dinner in Paris. About a month ago, our travel agent contacted the hotel concierge for restaurant suggestions. We checked out his suggestions online and selected Le Procope, the oldest restaurant in Paris. The concierge made reservations in advance for us for this evening.
The restaurant was founded in 1686 in the St. Germain district of Paris. It was very charming and the food, of course, was delicious. We’re convinced there is no such thing as bad food in Paris.
To honor its history, the restaurant has several menu items that are made from its original recipes. We chose the ancient lemon meringue pie for our dessert. It looks like marshmallows on top, but that’s the meringue. It was baked to the crispness of a melt-in-your-mouth schaum torte meringue with a lemon filling and a very flaky crust.
When we returned to our hotel, there was a surprise for us in our room. Our travel agent mentioned to the concierge that we were celebrating our 50th anniversary at Le Procope. Given this information, the front desk staff chose to help us celebrate by placing a bottle of wine, a corkscrew, two glasses, and a lovely note in our room. The language barrier might have been the reason for subtracting ten years, but it didn’t change the thought.
We had a lovely anniversary celebration in Paris, our favorite city.