All's Well That Ends Well (or ça va bien)

SOMETIMES, the planets align to create a perfect day. You will not know when this is going to happen. All the signs were really quite bad. A friend and I had booked a day-trip to Paris (only 2.5 hours away on the high-speed Eurostar shuttle) at the bargain-basement fare of £69 each, return. There are a couple of drawbacks to this fare: you need to book quite a long time in advance, and you need to travel early. This can mean a very long day on the move, so you need to plan carefully, but it is quite doable - I set myself the challenge at least once a year. My advice is to go midweek, on the cusp of the seasons, avoiding peak holiday periods. And don't be too ambitious. Prioritise; you can't do everything.

The first challenge was lunch. My friend is very vegetarian (no exceptions), and Paris fine dining is not kind to vegetarians. In the main it is either/or, not both in the same establishment. French chefs may love vegetables, but a meal is not a meal without meat, so a decent lettuce velouté is sprinkled with bits of bacon, veggie soup made with chicken stock. After hours of research I was in despair. How were we going to reconcile her needs with my desire for all things carnivore?

Then, a week before we were due to travel, the French unions announced a series of rolling strikes to include our Glorious Day Out. Bugger. When the French strike they do it properly: a Socialist country takes its workers rights seriously (not so, M Sarkozy?), and everyone downs tools from bank clerks to train drivers. 

We established that the Eurostar wasn't affected but our French friends all warned that we would have a miserable day, fighting our way through picket lines and demonstrations and finding museums and attractions closed.

Both fit and healthy, we decided to go anyway and rely on good old Shanks's pony. After all, central Paris is really quite petit and with sensible, comfortable walking shoes (forget chic and soignee), it would be fine.

Then Achilles struck, not in the heel but the toe. In a vain (literally) attempt at dressing up I wore an ill-fitting pair of shoes to a lunch and inflicted a third-degree blister that throbbed and oozed and protested loudly every time I wore anything other than a flip-flop. We conferred and agreed a solution: taxis.

Pessimistic about the weather, we rose at 6am, triple-plastered the toe, presented ourselves at St Pancras, and christened the journey with a vintage cava from Clos Ministrol (£11.99, Sainsbury's). A bit too fizzy for me, but perfectly decent budget pop and not toooo alcoholic. A little early in the day, perhaps, even after pushing our watches forward an hour to French time, but the odds seemed stacked against us ...

And when we stepped onto the platform at the Gare du Nord and reached for the sunnies to protect our eyes from the glare, something told us our luck had changed.

Prepared to walk, if necessary, the 3km (roughly 2 miles) to the centre of the action it was marginally deflating to find the Metro running with only minor delays and 15 minutes later we were standing on the corner of Rue de Rivoli. We nipped down the Rue de la Monnaie (literal translation: the street of small change; which I deduced was Paris's Penny Lane) and on to the banks of the Seine at Pont Neuf.

 Surely it couldn't be this easy? But it was. We did a circuit of the neighbourhood, through the central courtyard of the Louvre and out the other side, past the Comédie Française and arrived bang on time for our reservation at Maçeo on the Rue des Petits Champs. Opposite the National Library and behind the Royal Palace Gardens, Maçeo is a serious restaurant in a serious space with high ceilings and light flooding in to reflect off the starched white linen tablecloths.

They are very welcoming, and if your French is infantile or non-existent they have an English version of the menu and staff who will rescue you from your stuttering attempts to parler.  It is also possible to book online on Top Table, which takes the stress out of a real, live telephone reservation. Added to this, the prices really are reasonable and – last but not least – the food is seriously impressive and veggie-friendly. An eccentric collection of china plates from Raynaud shows off  chef Thierry Bourbonnais' talent to best advantage.

There is a Menu Verte, a stylish three courses with three very decent choices in each, for €32 which made my friend very happy. She started with a tarte fine, piled high with vegetables, a quenelle of herbed goat cheese and young herbs. I went straight for the kill, so to speak, and from my three-course menu options I chose the carpaccio of veal with foie gras and a hazelnut dressing (left). The veal and foie gras melted like butter, the beautifully diced vegetables had crunch and flavour. It was heaven.
My friend's main was a symphony of ceps and artichoke with polenta triangles that I thought looked like hash browns (she disagreed) but I was too engrossed in my piglet cheeks, slow braised and served in a deep sauce with autumn veg. The photo does not do it justice so we'll leave it at that. A bottle of Muscadet Sevre et Maine sur lie (Le Gras Moutons, 2008) was a compromise choice that even worked well with the cheese board (runny Brie, crystallised Cantal and Forme D'Ambert) - not surprising as Maçeo has a wine bar next door called Willi's. We were sorely tempted.

Our next destination was the Musée Rodin - an easy stroll on full stomachs, through the Tuileries to Place Concorde and due south to Les Invalides. Rodin and Claude Monet apparently exchanged works in 1888 and Belle-Île (and the artists letters to one another) are on display.

The photograph (right) is the Dome of Les Invalides in the sunshine, from the museum's picture-perfect grounds. Note: the Henry Moore exhibition opens there on October 15. Culture? Tick.

Still on our list were food shopping, gift shopping, and sundowners at the Cafe des Flores before we had to head back to the station. A quick stock-take of legs (tired) and feet (starting to complain), we found the Metro station at Varenne and worked our way east, aiming for the Boulevard St Germain - a premier shopping street for food and designer labels.

And finally, we found the striking protesters - a march which seemed more light-hearted and celebratory than angry or even disgruntled. A small sea of flags, floats and giant balloons (left) accompanied by disjointed blasts of tinny music passed us by and left behind it a tide of pamphlets, posters and stickers. 

And so we bathed in the early-evening light (did I mention the sunshine?) and drank Chablis on the square (the abbey, right, where Descarte is buried) and investigated our treasures - multifarious chocolate, foie gras, macarons, ceps and girolles), leaving just enough time for a snack at the station before being whisked back in time to St Pancras, like Cinderella at the ball.

This is not a tour-guide itinerary or a list of Must Do Paris. There are guide books, maps and websites for that.

This is proof that you shouldn't always listen to the naysayers or feel defeated by the logistics as they appear.

And what a difference a day makes. I feel as if I've been away for a week.

© words and pictures, Linda Galloway October 2010