After our feast Saturday night, we slept in on Sunday. Actually, we generally don’t need much reason to sleep in because of the late sunrise, gray clouds and cold temperatures. Besides, we are on vacation.
Sunday’s forecast was for more rain, turning to snow by the afternoon, so we hustled out to see the morning activities in the Mouffetard markets. The street was bustling with people shopping for the weekend, singing in front of the church, having a Sunday morning coffee (outside!) and standing in line at both the sweet shops along the pedestrian mall.
We walked into TournBride, a small establishment offering home cooking, specifically onion soup, which we deemed the perfect dish for a cold Sunday brunch. And the menu promised Bloody Marys.
Indeed, the promise was fulfilled. While certainly not the level of the Ritz, TournBride’s version simply mixed the vodka and tomato juice, then presented the eager customer the fixings of Worchestershire, Tabasco and celery salt on the side. Just fine with me.
Lynn preferred to have a glass of wine, since we had just tested the Ritz Bloody Marys yesterday. The onion soup came out in large hot crocks with rich cheese melted over baguette pieces soaking in the broth. In short, everything that defines French onion soup. We scooped it up to the last drop.
On the way out, we stopped at a local wine merchant who was tasting a fine Gamay outside. I had spied a Loire Valley cabernet franc that looked interesting, so we bought the Gamay and the Loire to test back home. Since we traveled to Europe with three bottles of wine packed in our bags, we planned to go back home with at least as much.
After a walk around the rest of the neighborhood, we repaired to our apartment to store the wine away and pull out the laundry we had left in the washer to dry. European washer-dryers take forever to dry clothes, because they never get very hot in order to save energy. When we pulled out my pants, we realized they had stayed in a bit too long and were tightly wrinkled. Ironing didn’t help, so we ran them through the wash again and hung them to dry on the towel heater on the bathroom. An elegant and effective solution.
We started down the stairs to explore more of the Montparnasse side of our neighborhood, but the rain started to come down as we walked out our door to the street. Since by now we had not much more than 90 minutes of daylight, we retreated to the quiet of our apartment to watch the rain come down. Despite the forecast, it never snowed, but the rain fell until well into the night.
If we are stuck in the house for a late afternoon, Sunday is the day to do it. At least we could watch the CNN International feature on the America’s Cup. Can’t see that at home in the U.S.