We woke up early and hungry so headed down to the lobby for a bit of breakfast then back to bed for 2 more hours!!! Yesterday, in our search for a restaurant for dinner, we saw this place, Bouillion Chartier, with a huge line of folks waiting to get in. So we asked about it and was told it was a restaurant and it is popular because it has been here for over 100 years and it is inexpensive. So we decided to get there right before they opened for lunch. We waited about 15 minutes and were sat at a 4 top where 2 other diners would join us. I ordered Beef Bourguignon and Buzz ordered Bream, a mild whitefish. We literally had our plates 5 minutes after we ordered. This place worked like such a well-oiled machine. The decor was very French and they had things like calf head soup and pig snout. We decided we were not quite up for those! The food was tasty and plentiful and reasonably priced. The waitress wrote our order down on the tablecloth and when it came time to get the bill, she wrote the prices next to the items, added, and then we paid that price!!

I commented to Buzz that American portions may be big but that is all we order. The young women next to us had about 4 courses: soup and shrimp with mayonnaise (they have so many dishes served with mayonnaise. Not the Hellman’s kind, home made but still…..I have seen shrimp, hard boiled eggs, avocado, even lobster served with mayonnaise.) then they ordered their main dish, then a cheese plate, then dessert. Just like in Italy, the courses just keep on coming!

Next stop: Gypsy Jazz Club. Buzz and I have been big fans of Gypsy Jazz or Gypsy Swing or Jazz Manouche for years. And Buzz really wanted to go hear some live. So after much research (it is amazing how many of these clubs have websites that are no longer active) I found Le Chope des Puces (which translates as The Flea Mugs!!) who have Jazz Manouche every Sunday afternoon. So off our Uber went. We traveled about an hour from our hotel, outside the confines of the city of Paris. It was worth the drive. Django Reinhardt was a “gypsy” and lived a nomadic lifestyle. He was introduced to American Jazz in his twenties and never looked back. He is considered the Father of Jazz Manouche. It is usually lively, played with guitars, violins, sometimes sax, accordion, etc. but very rarely features drums. The rhythm guitarist keeps the beat. We listened to the Ben Winterstein Quartet, who were fabulous, and bought their CD. There are at least 4 people with the last name Reinhardt playing on the CD. This was one of our favorite moments so far in Paris.

Then we grabbed an Uber (we are spending a fortune on Ubers) and headed to the Marais, another Parisienne arrondissement (municipality) for some shopping and dinner. It was chilly with very high humidity today and cool, humid weather makes us so cold! So a little bar with French Onion Soup and the World Cup of Rugby served us well.

After dinner, we simply could not get an Uber. We tried many times over about 40 minutes. Between the actual World Cup Game in Paris and all the Rugby bars, they were hogging the Ubers. So a couple of blocks down, we found a major intersection and had a taxi within minutes. And it was less than half the price of the Uber!