Paris Trip


I had the opportunity to spend three days in Paris this week.  Contrary to the general opinion of the french as anti-semitic and ungracious, I found the place to be very nice.  Our hosting organization (LIP6) were generous and helpful.  It is traditional is such meeting to have a group dinner one night.  Since two of us keep kosher, we were able to find a nice kosher chinese/japanese place call L'Asiatik.  The place is small, but the food was reasonably priced and no-one seemed to complain.

We arrived around 2pm on the first day and had meetings until after 6pm.  My compatriots and I had missed lunch and were really dragging.  We tried to find our hotel, but probably because of our low blood sugar levels, we confused the address with the cross street.  After walking about two miles with our luggage, we took a cab back to our starting point.  Our hotel was about two minutes away!  After that experience, we needed to find food and fast.  It took about five minutes to figure out how to dial out from the hotel room.  Once we could dial a local phone number, we made reservations at Darjeeling, a kosher Indian restaurant.  The place was packed even on a monday night!  The food was very good and was a much needed pick-me-up after our long day.

The last time I went to Paris, I stayed in the 9th Arrondissement, which is the home of many jews of middle eastern descent.  The restaurants there carry on that tradition.  Coming from Israel, I would prefer anything else.  I live near many authentic middle eastern dinning establishments and I don't need to go to Paris to each Felafel.

This time, we ate in the 19th Arrondissement, which is an upper middle class neighborhood with many good european restaurants.  I highly recommend staying and eating around this area.


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