Mushrooms! Christmas cakes! Anniversary celebrations in Paris! It must be autumn.
Click HERE to see last autumn in Piemonte, HERE for Paris 2022, and HERE for Copenhagen in 2021. And for good measure, 2020..
After our summer holiday in Germany and The Netherlands, we returned to Goodworth Clatford for their annual village fête. The highlight is always the cute dog show. The boys in sweatshirts, above, entertained their blue-eyed dog with a dragon puppet, top right.
Nick played in a 14th century vault for Music in the City, drawing a crowd with Food Romance, Primrose Hill, and other favourites.
We returned to Paris for our 26th anniversary in October, heading straight for Le Nemrod on Rue du Cherche-Midi for dinner of steak and duck confit. We were last in Paris in 2023 and in the same apartment in 2022.
The thing we enjoy most is seeking out Invader's retro mosaics all around the city, including a couple of brand new ones near the Japanese and Finnish embasies. Pictured are all the ones we found, which pushed us back into the top 2000 on the Flash Invader app.
Next morning, we visited the Maubert organic market, with its cute beeswax seller.
Near the market, we discovered a new way of protesting, using inflatable animals over metro gratings. The tea towel is the Souvenier That Got Away
We walked from the market to Montmartre, hunting Invaders, some of which had been reactivated since the last time we looked for them.
We walked miles, including to the scary Porte de Clignancourt, where one crumbling Invader was difficult to flash. On the way back, we stopped on the Rue Ramey, just outside the hubub of Montmartre for a quiet and welcome beer.
Montmartre was packed with tourists, and we were tired. We bought a jambon buerre and sought out solace at Studio 28, where we had cocktails in the garden.
We went to Bon Marche and bought some gifts for friends. On the way back, we got some great produce at the organic grocer's just across the street from our apartment. Dinner was pasta with porcini and the desserts shown.
Sunday morning, we were among the first to visit the organic market on Boulevard Raspail. We bought a roast chicken and some amazing cheese, taking it back to the apartment before going out exploring.
The morning was dedicated to Left Bank Invader hunting. We attended a lunchtime concert Stravinsky, Janácek, and Prokofiev, played by members of the Palais Garnier opera orchestra. It was a great way to see the theatre, which was otherwise closed to visitors.
The ceilings of the Palais Garnier were spectacular, including the one by Marc Chagall, depicting scenes from well-known operas.
Afterwards, we picnicked in the Square Louvois before moving to the Rue Montorgueil area for more Invader flashing. The Plaq chocolate factory on the Rue du Nil was the best chocolate we had on this trip.
The Pompidou Centre is about to close for several years for restauration. Invader's 1500th Parisian mosaic was installed high up on the pipes. We also spotted the one between the workman's legs. The Chinese takeaway near Saint Paul is the source of spring rolls and dumplings that we always buy for our Seine-side picnics.
Clockwise from bottom left: the amazing cheese we bought at the Raspail market, intriguing artwork in our apartment, Notre Dame, about to re-open after restoration, tourists queueing at Hermès, the Arc de Triomphe, a Wallace Fountain, and Invader's Mona Lisa, by the famous Duluc detective agency.
After flashing the Mona Lisa, we returned to Les Drapeaux de France, where Nick bought me a hand-painted metal cuckoo clock ornament before we had lunch in the Jardin du Palais Royal.
I never tire of seeing the metro entrance in Place Colette. Made up of 800 giant Murano glass beads, the work is by Jean-Michel Othoniel. Titled “Kiosk of the Night Owls”, it was installed in 2000, the year before we first visited Paris together. The beads with warm tones (yellows and reds) represent the day, and those with cold ones (blues and violets) represent the night.
One of 1.520 billion people to ride the Métro each year
La Samaritaine department store was founded in 1870 by Ernest Cognacq and has been recently renovated. We had margaritas in our favourite quiet square in the Marais, at Le Marché on Rue d'Ormesson
We found the yellow Olympic Invader on the other side of the Île Saint-Louis from our bench.
The best meal of our trips to Paris is always made at La Cuisine, where we did a market cooking class with Chef Philippe.
The takeaway tip from this lesson was the seasonal, molten Mont D'Or cheese, which we bought at Laurent Dubois cheese shop at the Maubert market.
We were delighted to see torteau de fromage, a Vendée specialty we first encountered in 2005. Back at La Cuisine, we enjoyed making and eating a special meal with fellow food enthusiasts from all over the (English-speaking) world.
Back on the street, we laughed that the Mary Celeste restaurant was "less busy than usual" and we stopped by Victor Hugo's house in the Place des Vosges, the oldest planned square in Paris. The Delacroix painting at the top was in the Paroisse Saint-Paul Saint-Louis, which we had never visited before.
More Invader hunting the next day. Special mention to the yuzu and knobbly kaffir lime, which fragranced our gin and tonics. The lime cost 9 Euros at our local organic shop, but it was worth it for the theatre. Pictured centre: Saint-Germain de Charonne dates back to the 12th century. In 1897, nearly eight hundred skeletons were discovered, still clothed in military uniforms of the fédérés — soldiers who fought with the insurrection of the Paris Commune — who were shot and hastily buried in May 1871. Their remains were reinterred along the wall on the south side of the cemetery.
The graceful wolf escorted us in our search for Invaders.
An autumnal visit to the Père Lachaise Cemetery, where we found the tombs of Abelard and Heloise (the French Romeo and Juliet), Chopin, fabelist La Fontaine, and Oscar Wilde.
Creatures of habit, we returned to Le Marché for a tasty lunch, including pommes aligot mashed potatoes combined with half their weight in melted cheese.
After passing it numerous times over the years, we finally went inside the Musée des Arts et Métiers, which was full of fascinating contraptions, including Foucault's original pendulum
We practically had the place to ourselves.
I set myself a fun challenge on Halloween day to take a set of spooky black and white photos.
Clockwise from bottom left: looks like Mark Twain, our hold hotel, pumpkin treats sold by a German man, moving into the top 2000, some Paris hotties, and a croissant from the 1875 Du Pain et des Idées, which has been awarded the Best Baker in Paris by the Gault & Millau guide.
After our patisserie starter, we headed to Canal Saint-Martin for a picnic lunch.
The Picpus Cemetery is the final resting place of 1,306 victims who lost their lives at the guillotine set up in former Place du Trône-Renversé (now Place de la Nation). For those who know Poulenc's harrowing opera, Dialogues des Carmélites, this cemetery is where the real- life Martyrs of Compiègne, Carmelite nuns were buried after being executed for refusing to renounce their vocation.
Americans might be interested to know that Lafayette is buried in the cemetery, with an American flag presiding over his grave. On the way back to our apartment, we flashed a few Invaders and snapped a few Art Deco and Art Nouveau sights.
Courtesy of Eatwith, we had a four-course meal with a Parisian host in her lovely apartment on Halloween. The dishes included pumpkin, cauliflower, and apple soup, mackerel with lemon, spinach, and pink peppercorns, a plate of French cheeses, and a pear and frangipane galette.
The Bourse de Commerce and its Pinault collection provided an excellent cultural experience. We enjoyed the Arte Povera exhibition by Italian artists and the architecture of the building, including the 1575 Medici Column, built by Jean Bullant at the request of Catherine de' Medici.
These works impressed me most, with their painstaking detail, including pen strokes and embroidery. The painting, top right, attempted to capture Everything in the World, with no two adjacent colours the same. Bottom right is the gallery's mascot.
Two of the works shown explore the Fibonacci sequence, including photos of a restaurant with 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21... customers. After spotting the massive Les Misérables novel at Gilbert Joseph bookshop, we had another picnic outside the Sorbonne.
Still lots of Invaders to find, both new and familiar (Dr House), plus some top notch patisserie and an early morning model photo shoot just down from our apartment.
One of Invader's largest and newest works, in the 20th arrondissement, near Porte de Vincennes, as well as one hidden away at an artists' enclave. He does get around!
Nick photographed Tiny Cow at the Joan of Arc statue for a bingo requirement. We moved on to the Île Saint-Louis, where we peeked inside the church before hot-footing it to our bench.
Another lovely Seine-side picnic to celebrate our anniversary.
On our final night, we had an extraordinary Vietnamese fusion meal, prepared just for the two of us by French Masterchef winner Jean-Yves at his home. I have never tasted anything like these dishes and could hardly identify any of the unusual ingredients.
