A Sunday champagne stroll followed by a Fosters

Sunday 25 August
Determined to keep our step count down to 15,000 today, We head up our beautiful boulevard to Metro into Saint Germain des Pres to check out Beau Passage on Graeme’s recommendation. This is a very smart, up market laneway with restaurants, speciality shops and brilliant art work. It is quite small compared to other areas but clearly a local meeting spot. After a walk around we settle on Cafe Mersea, a collaboration, we are informed, of Italian and French cuisine and only seafood. Deux coupe de Champagne starts the day nicely and share plates of zucchini gazpacho; rillets of mackerel and another of trout with fresh salad greens; sardines on Spanish spiced pasatta on sourdough; and an amazing salmon tartar. Oh, yes the ever present and delicious baguette slices. A fantastic meal in a locals bistro.

As is now becoming quite common, all the restaurant and bar staff at the bistro/ cafe level seem to be staffed by young students, not the older stuffy French waiter. These  young guns switch from French to English seamlessly and all with a smile. Sustained at last we decide to walk into Saint Germain des Pres main square for a look. It's now 29 degrees, and while walking on the shady side of the street, we notice a gigantic local bus attempting to turn into a narrow street from and equally narrow street. Stuck. Some naughty person has parked their little black Merc right on the corner. Of course there is a traffic jam, with no hope or the bus reversing. So naturally, the bus driver blows his horn. Many times. The driver is nowhere to be seen. Soon the gendarmes arrive and start taking notes and slipping into the cafe for a coffee. Lady P remarks that if she was the driver, she'd not make an appearance! We give them five minutes to see if a tow truck arrives or if the three very large gendarmes decide to pick the little car up by hand. Ah, too hot to stand around, so we head off wondering. After a couple of touristy photos, we Metro to Montparnasse for some supplies. First stop though is Odessa Cafe. Here the patrons on the street tables (us), are treated to a fine water mist from the ceiling to keep us cool. We order another two Champagnes. And the cheeky waiter’s reply was “Oh, how bourgeois!” We were the oldest couple at the tables, so obviously he thought we were retired university professors. More like Ukrainian gun dealers, says Flashy. Anyway, Another excellent Champagne on a hot day. Lady P notices some sort of action in the middle of the boulevard and it turns out to be a series is artists’ stalls. She takes pity on the hot and melting artists and admires a pair of earings. Flashy notes that she only has 99 pair at home so buys her a lovely new pair for her birthday. After a brief visit to Monoprix, We Metro back to Denfert Rochereau and emerge into a completely crowded and blocked off square, with tanks, armoured personnel carrier  soldiers and heavily armed police. Some in the crowd stir nervously but Flashy immediately recognised that the army uniforms were US WW2 and the tanks the same vintage. “They are reenactors celebrating the liberation of Paris in 1944.” Correct of course. It pays to know your history, eh?

Now, just around the corner we spot an Australian flag. On closer inspection we also notice a big concrete kangaroo and find ourselves hot and thirsty at ‘Cafe Oz'. Kitsch, but when in Rome... Ah, a pint of Fosters and an Aperol Spritz for hydration and we can face the short walk down our shady Boulevard Saint Jacques and home to a shower and a GnT. Refreshed again we walk around the corner to a little bistro for a cocktail and a simple meal of swordfish and chicken, washed down by a chardonnay  and a Burgundy pinot. Step count today: 12,500 step count to date in Paris: 81,563. No wonder we've been thirsty.