[ Dec.2018 ] We arrived at our booked restaurant, Au Petit Riche in Paris without much delay while the Yellow Vest demonstration was at its height.
However, the friend who lives in Paris and who had booked this restaurant for all of us could not make it, because she had to cover the demonstration with her TV company.
So the three of us had lunch, us with the friend of ours who had just started living in France.
We had been in this restaurant before.
There are many rooms in the restaurants and maybe because of the reddish walls and the old-fashioned interior, this place reminds me of ‘Rules’ in London.
Here, our friend and I had home-made Terrine and my husband chose a rabbit dish for the starter.
The Terrine tasted nice and mild.
I chose a duck dish for the main.
The duck itself was good, but I was most impressed by the creamy mashed potato.
I am not a potato fan, but I enjoyed this one very much.
My husband and our friend both ate a beef stew kind of dish.
For the dessert, I chose a cake called ‘Paris-Brest’, which had the nutty cream in between the doughnut shaped Choux.
It was the first time for me trying this cake and I liked it.
Our friend had Lemon Meringue Cake and my husband had his favourite Baba.
The rum for the Baba was served separately and he could pour it as much as he wanted.
He was happy, as the quality of rum was apparently very good.
The waiter chose a bottle of Chinon for us.
While there were so many expensive wines on the list, he chose the fairly reasonable one and it was very good.
After our satisfactory lunch, we walked towards Montmartre, where we had heard it was relatively safe.
We walked along just one road without turning and this road became a slope, so we knew we were near Montmartre.
I am not 100% sure, but probably this was Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, which was very nice with lovely food shops and others on both sides of the street.
No demonstration was happening there and it was peaceful.
It could be that all the people in Paris who were not interested in the demonstration were here, as it was so crowded and lively.
We came across a small Christmas market and I enjoyed shopping there.
We did not have any particular plan but we thought that as long as we kept going up, eventually we would arrive at the Sacre-Coeur.
So we did and from there we looked over the city of Paris.
Then our friend went to the Gare du Nord and we went back to the hotel.
When we went up to the ground at the nearest metro station, we saw the smoke was spreading in the main street in one direction.
It seemed like the scene of the fighting of the demonstrators.
Fortunately, our hotel was on the opposite side, so we arrived there safely.
The demonstration on the day was apparently not as devastating as the week before, but still a few hundred people were arrested and tens of people got injured.
