The only scheduled agenda item that Christi said was a must on our trip was to take a cooking class in Paris. Who am I to say no to that? After deciding to take the metro close to where we were supposed to meet our group I decided to just randomly walk around until we found a spot to eat. Little did we know, we stumbled upon one of the better places in the city.

After a couple of lefts and rights and wandering this way to that way we see a boulangerie called La Parisienne and head in. Just a grab and go bakery, we each got a couple of things that were absolutely amazing. Even for Paris standards ... amazing. We then meet up with our group and where we met our chef for the day and he took our group through a local market as we decided what we wanted to cook and we started buying things to prepare our meal. Just a few days removed from Easter we all, somehow, decided to make rabbit along with a cheese souffle, a mixture of veggies and a pear tart for dessert.

Our chef, Eric, was absolutely amazing. A great combination of being informative, funny and having a way to blend both of those into being instructive to make you learn something along the way. After we were done at the market grabbing cheese, fruit, vegetables, and of course, the rabbit, he said we absolutely had to stop to get some baguettes for our meal. Low and behold ... he took us to La Parisienne! Not knowing earlier, he said they won the Parisian award for best baguette in 2016 and have the rights to be the only people to sell directly to the president of France. This just seemed like a good omen to start the day as we luckily chose the best place in the city to grab our bakery items for breakfast.

A short walk across the Seine, meaning we had to stop for some pics with Notre Dame in the background, was where we ended up for our cooking class for the day.

Just a few minutes later we got to La Cuisine Paris for where we would be cooking our meal for the next few hours. It was a great atmosphere where we didn't have too many people (maybe 8?) so it felt more personalized the entire time. Throughout our prep we all had different jobs and Eric taught us some amazing little tricks that we have already started using since being back.



After 90 minutes or so preparing our meal we all sat down with an amazing view over the Seine to relax, with wine of course, and taste our creation for the day. I know it's random and luck of the draw but we were happy with the group that we had as it was a great mix of people with different backgrounds that we got along with very well. After we were done we spent some time talking to Eric for restaurant recommendations. After he told us Les Cocottes, which we are still dreaming about from our first day there, he gave us a few more we hadn't been to and we picked one for dinner that night. We even spent some time chatting it up with the two receptionists, one being from CT, and I gave her my contact info as she'll be back in the summer and told her that I could get her a tour of ESPN if she wants to do that when she's back in the states.

A quick walk to Berthillion to grab some ice cream after our class and then we were back to La Parisienne. Yes, for those counting this is our third time there. We grabbed some baguettes to bring back to the apartment. Quickly before that stop we had to make a trip to Pierre Herme for Christi's macaron fix. On the way to the Luxembourg Gardens after that for a nice peaceful weekday stroll we say Paroisse Saint-Germain-des-Prés and then were back on the metro to head back to our apartment. Before spending some much needed time off or our feet, Christi had the great idea to head over to Rue Cler again to grab some fruit, wine and cheese to snack on before we went back out again.

After some down time and drowning ourselves in some amazing food/drink we set off to go eat at Le Bistrot du Peintre, a recommendation from chef Eric earlier. After this was done we were close to a place I read about before our trip and wanted to see. It was the Moonshiner speakeasy bar. While most speakeasy's have nondescript doors or tough to find entrances, this one had something I've never heard of before. The entrance was literally in the freezer, working freezer mind you, of a pizza shop. The workers there just shoot you strange looks as you stroll in and go through the freezer to the bar in the back.

While the bar/vibe was very cool, it was extremely hot with all of the people in there, not to mention the very over priced drinks, we decided to head out to see if we could make it to the Eiffel Tower to watch the lights at the top of the hour at the base. We got on the metro next to the Bastille, so that was a nice little surprise to check off the sightseeing list, we hop on the metro and then both formulate our best math hypothesis for which stop we should get off on since we would be extremely close to missing it.

Well, not sure who was right or wrong, but we ended up seeing the lights twinkle on our walk there, but then they shut off abruptly as we got to the base. A few pictures and many minutes of just gazing at the beautiful sight at night, we went back to the apartment, probably ate some more baguettes, and then got some sleep to prepare for our last full day in Paris.