Farmer & Fancy in Paris!

After one week away, I'm back to share more about my fancy in the country lifestyle.  

Except today it will be about my fancy in Paris trip. 

My wings took me away last week across the pond with the farmer to enjoy a post-harvest trip.

Remember, it's important to have both roots and wings.

Well our roots brought us home and the jet lag just got to me on this Tuesday so today I will share some photos and highlights of our trip.

We stayed on the Ile St. Louis which is one of the two natural islands that are in the middle of the Seine River.  The other is the Ile de la Cite which is where the Notre Dame is located.  This is one of four bridges that connects the island to the banks.  It was our first sighting of the Eiffel Tower on our first walk in Paris.

Instead of a hotel, we stayed in an apartment and decided to live like Parisians.  This is our beautiful front door on the island which really felt like a village.  More on the small, cramped, we couldn't stand up in the bedroom apartment later.....

Cheese.  It really could be considered an addiction.  We took a cooking class and went to the market to buy our supplies.  While we were there, we picked up some cheese for our french dishes and learned about "forbidden" cheeses in the United States.  This orange looking cheese is called mimolette.  This is a craggy, hard cheese that has kind of a citrus flavor to it.  Why is it forbidden?   Well....cheese mites are present during the aging process and then removed one it has ripened.  However, sometimes there are some left behind in the weathered rind.  The FDA didn't really like that though......therefore forbidden cheese that I made our chef buy so I could try it!  We loved it!

The Louvre Museum is a must on a trip to Paris.  It's collections and exhibits are unbelievable and intriguing.  The farmer loves history and art that teaches us something about our history so he could have been there for days.  My favorite part about the museum?  Finding an art class and standing close enough that I could hear the instructor speak about the masterpieces.  Yes...I was that creep.

Yes, I am on a carousel.  When I studied abroad in London in college, we took a weekend trip to Paris and stumbled upon a carousel on our first day.  I mentioned this to the farmer and how I love carousels and how they remind me of my childhood (and Mary Poppins).  He found it and gave me a coin to take a ride.

The Shakespeare and Company Bookstore was a highlight of the trip for us.  Lovers of literature could spend hours in this old bookstore filled with all the great works.  Everything is in English, don't worry.  We were there for a few hours on two different days.  The guy in the green jacket in the distance?  That's the farmer headed to the history section, I lost him most of the time we were there.

Leave it to the American farmer and hunter to find the Museum of Hunting and Nature located in a random neighborhood of Paris on our first day of the trip.  It was pretty amazing and one of our favorite things.

 Another one of our many walks lead us to find this group of young musicians playing under an arch near the Place de Vosges in the Marias district.  It was a nice place to stop and listen while the rained poured down.  As they played, the farmer said, "look up to the left, see the etching on the wall?"  

It was wheat.  When we are away, flying our wings, our roots, agriculture and the farm, are still with us.

Our view of the Notre Dame on the first day and our first walk.

 The Sainte-Chapelle is more magnificent than most other cathedrals I have seen. While it is not big, the stories it tells are better than anything you have seen.  The stained glass windows tell the stories of the New Testament.  

When in Paris, you must eat escargot!  And the farmer did just that a few times.  Delicious! 

And on the last night, we had the most beautiful sunset as we walked the Tuileries Garden and walked towards the Champs Elysees to find some wine and do some last minute shopping in the Christmas shops.  

And when we returned home this weekend, the farmer started cleaning his guns and I cleaned my make-up brushes.  Oh the difference our priorities are in this fancy in the country life.

Our wings were good to us on this trip.  However, we are obviously back to our roots and still loving it.