Paris by night

Although Paris is already a beautiful city during the day, I think many people would agree with me that it looks its best at night. There is just no other city in the world that is as pretty or as romantic as the French capital.

Although my wallet was stolen in the subway (first time it ever happened to me in my life - don't worry, the money and the wallet were returned), and my feet were still aching from all the walking we did (I mistakenly wore my light, but thin-soled sneakers), I still had a blast.

Exhausted from our "subway" city tour (we were too kuripot to get a "real" city tour - our non-kuripot excuse is that subways are faster than tour buses), we started our evening with a stroll through the Eiffel tower. It looks better when the sun goes down, and they turn the lights on:

Our real purpose was to take pictures, such as the ones below, and show them to our friends. There is nothing more idyllic than a picture of a couple with the Eiffel tower in the background - at night. You really can't go to Paris and leave without this - its a perfect "living room" picture, and a good conversation starter (i.e. "ay, you've been to Paris na pala. Yan ba yung Eippel Tower?" - in our living room , we get a lot of Capampangan guests hehehe).

Here they are:

We took so many pictures during this trip that our batteries ran out and all of our memory cards got full. That's no big deal, normally - however we brought along 3 cameras, 2 extra memory cards, and 1 extra battery. I figured we were taking about 150-200 pictures a day. That's a lot. But then again, you can never have too many pictures.

Anyway, after the obligatory pictures, we were hungry and wanted to eat. I "surprised" Mav by making dinner reservations at Gallopin, which is a very local, and a very French restaurant. There is emphasis on the word "surprised," since I told her about this plan way in advance - it was my first time in Paris, and I didn't want to get lost. This was our belated Valentine's day date.

The restaurant was in an out of the way place in a pretty seedy part of town. But it was packed. And I mean really packed. With locals! (The last people I wanted to see were tourists, like us) Good thing I made reservations.

I had potted duck Foie Gras (the house specialty - and supposedly, the best one in Paris) and Beef Bourguignon stew, Mav had onion soup and a grilled steak with Bernaise sauce:

The food was excellent. And I mean really, really, really good. Especially the Foie Gras - WOW! When I eat this stuff in Manila, I usually get just a tiny, half-a-toenail sized piece. And I'm talking about the little toenail here, not the big one. In Gallopin, it was as big as a large slice of bread.

Foie Gras is made in the most cruel way - involving force feeding ducks via a tube for 18 days (called gavage) before they are slaughtered. Anthony Bourdain, that popular tv celebrity chef, once said that the moment you taste really good Foie Gras - it makes you realize that the duck's suffering is all worth it. I agree with him wholeheartedly. It was so good, I wanted to hold back my crap the next day - kasi sayang naman (of course, I meant that in the most non-kadiri sort of way).

After our excellent dinner, we spent a couple more hours walking around this beautiful city, repeating "ang ganda no?" about 4 times every 5 mins.

Go to Paris! I guarantee you will fall in love with this place!