Day 6 (26 May) - Recap

This day (please note that I have moved the Day 5 recap to it´s chronological place on the page - scroll down past yesterday´s posts to see it) started with us having to pack up all of our belongings (again) and catching a cab to our new hotel on the Rive Gauche (left bank). The hotel is just ok, but it´s in a fabulous neighborhood, just steps from the Parthenon and the Sorbonne and all of the other lefty sights. Our first order of business was to cross the river back to the right bank (with a quick stop to gawk at Notre Dame) to re-visit the Jewish Quarter. It was much more lively today, with lots of beards and kippahs. We grabbed some falafel and a sandwich (which was more French than Jewish) and headed over to the Jewish History museum. We walked around for awhile (past the Centre Pompidou) in the rain and then went to Sainte-Chapelle for an evening concert including Vivaldi´s Four Seasons (I´ll post some videos when I have time to upload them). It was a spectacular way to avoid waiting in the humongous line that always snakes out of Sainte Chapelle. After the concert, we went back to the hotel to change for dinner and eat some charcuterie/fromage purchased along the way. Dinner was at Brasserie Lipp. You may or may not remember that we tried to go here on our honeymoon, but got rejected because someone was wearing shorts (a big no-no, I guess). Well, this time, we got right in (I love pants!) and proceeded to not understand a word on the menu (I suspect this was on purpose, because there weren´t even any French descriptions - you just had to know what they had there). I never thought I´d utter the phrase "maybe this is too much pork for me," but after an appetizer of pork covered in mustard/mayonnaise, I was served a heaping plate of sauerkraut with about 50 different kinds of sausages/bacons/other pork products. The place is famous for being exclusive and also because it was apparently Ernest Hemingway´s fave spot, but we found the food only so-so, and the prices a bit ridiculous. After running away from Cafe des Fleurs after seeing their crazy prices, we had a nice pistachio ice-cream based treat and cognac at a cafe around the corner before heading back to the Moderne for bed-time.