Midi Vins

On Saturday, Erik and I had an afternoon of wine.

We started at our favorite cafe, l'Enclos du Temps (we call it the Time Machine, and yes, we realise that's not the actual translation). This is one of the places where we know two of the staff, and the guy was quite helpful when we asked about the wines that they had. I tried two bordeaux, which were both nice, and Erik had two different ones, and they very kindly poured him a sample glass of the second one so he could decide if it was acceptable. It was, and was also delicious.

After our apperitif stop, we headed off for dinner. We had originally wanted to try a little place across the street from us, but it was closed, so we headed over to rue Cherche Midi to see what we could find.

We stuck our heads in a couple of places before deciding on the Midi Vins. It smelled the best, and had the most interesting menu. And they had a dog.

It was a cozy little place, with a dozen or so tables, and the tables were made out of old bottle holders (kind of hard to describe, but pretty cool). Right away we were served an amuse bouche of some kind of spread on baguette. We both thought it tasted like turkey, but we never asked, so it could have been anything.

The food was fantastic! It's one of those places where the menu is written on a little blackboard that they bring right to your table. For our entrees, we had an endive and roquefort (Erik's new favorite cheese, and word--he also enjoys a Roquefort beer and wine) salad, and a mesclun salad with shrimp. Yum! Our plats were beef with camembert sauce, and mashed potatoes, and white fish, fried with rice. The beef was delicious, and the sauce a nice match, and the fish was nice and crispy, and had a fresh vegetable salsa with it. Yum yum! Then dessert, usually my favorite part of dinner. Unfortunately it was the least impressive part of this meal, but by this point we were full, and full of wine, so it didn't really matter. Erik had the warm chocolate cake, and I had the rhubarb tart. I thought the pastry on the tart was a bit tasteless, but Erik enjoyed his cake. Along with all of this we had a bottle of 2001 St. Chinian which was absolutely delicious.

A nice way to spend our Saturday night. Really, we're just trying to find some good restaurants to take all of our visitors this summer!

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We know all of you at home were lucky to be celebrating the long weekend, this weekend, and we did try to fit in some celebrating over here. We're still trying to get to the musee d'Orsay, but our plan to get there before it opened on Sunday morning failed, largely as a result of our wine afternoon on Saturday. By the time we did get there around 11:00 the line up was longer than the one we stood in at Christmas, and well, we just weren't up for it. We did spend some time instead at the Jardin des Tuileries, where we relaxed on lawn chairs and Erik drank beer purchased from one of the many kiosks. And we found out today that France isn't finished with long weekends yet. We have the mother of all long weekends coming up. Its the weekend to fait le pont. Thursday is a holiday (not sure why), so many people take Friday off as well to extend their vacation. Turns out the nursery school is closed not only on Thursday, but Friday too. I think the only thing better than a long weekend is a surpise one! Anyway, I still have to work on Saturday, which is really the perfect way to ruin a long weekend, but I'll do my best to enjoy what I've got. Hopefully it will warm up.....

Yes, many of you Canadians seem to be enjoying warmer weather than we are. I saw two people on the subway this morning in wool winter jackets. It's not nice.