Gastronomic Surprises in Paris


by Helen Otto - Date: 2008-07-04 - Word Count: 458 Share This!

 

France, as everybody knows, is the land of top of the range fine wines and a multitude of gastronomic delights, so it's probably no surprise that on a recent trip to Paris, I found these in ample measure; what might be of surprise and interest though, is that I became acquainted with the delights of French food during two walking tours of Paris.

Of course I had not actually come to Paris to go walking; I had come, like many other British visitors, to sample the delights of the City and it was with those thoughts in mind that I checked into my hotel in Paris. My Paris hotel was the Hotel Scribe; a nicely aspected hotel, decorated in typically sophisticated French style: it set the tone for my visit and from the moment that I arrived I knew that I was going to have a great time during my stay.

After arriving, I unpacked my bags, showered, changed and was soon heading out of my Paris hotel in order to make the best of my visit when a poster on the hotel notice board caught my eye; in my broken French I managed to make out that it was offering gastronomic walking trips; one was a gourmet food tour and the other was a food tour of the Paris Latin Quarter. Well the chance to combine the delights of French food with a tour of Paris was irresistible, so I immediately signed up for both!

So it was, that a small group of five intrepid food enthusiasts accompanied by a culinary specialist, started a walk around some delightful and lesser visited parts of Paris on the Gastronomic tour. We took in some very fine bakeries, wine shops, cheese shops, pastry shops and a fantastic local market. Throughout the tour we were entertained by a running commentary on the general food habits of the French, the seasonality of ingredients and given several brilliant recipes utilising the ingredients that we had seen that day. My favourite bit though, was that at every venue, certain unusual specialist delicacies were pointed out together with a fascinating summary as to how they were produced.

At the end of the tour, my newly found fellow gourmets and I retired to the bar of my hotel in Paris to enjoy a very civilized French style evening aperitif and social. As you can imagine, the next day saw us all eagerly gathered for a repeat of the previous days adventures; this time though, we were off to sample the delights of food in the Latin Quarter and as we left our Paris hotel, we all reflected that this must surely be one of the finest and most interesting ways to see charming and usually untrodden parts of the City.

 


Related Tags: france, paris, hotels in paris

Fledgling Travel Experiences Writer

Your Article Search Directory : Find in Articles

© The article above is copyrighted by it's author. You're allowed to distribute this work according to the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs license.
 

Recent articles in this category:



Most viewed articles in this category: