Sunday, 21 September 2025, Paris, Atelier des Lumières, le Violon d'Ingres

Written 30 January 2026

AS I said in yesterday's entry, the contrast between our rooms at the Savoy (and the other hotels on the Tauck tour) and the ones here at the Ibis Paris Bastille (which we booked ourselves) is so big it's laughable! The room is adequate (at least for one person), clean, bright, and well lit. It has a hair dryer, a big-screen TV, and a phone (but no notepad, pen, or pencil), and it's air conditioned, barely. The bed is large and (for my money) more comfortable than the one at the Savoy. It's equipped with a duvet and four good pillows, but no decorative pillows that you have to find space to put out of the way. No iron or ironing board (although there's apparently an ironing room on the 4th floor). One waste basket, no fridge, no minibar, no coffee maker, no electric kettle, no glassware (two paper cups in the bathroom), no drawers, no litter of advertising, room service menus, or hotel info, no hand towels or washcloths, not even a closet! The room's storage space consists solely of a padded bench below the TV (it doen't open, but you can pile stuff on it), three coat hooks beside it, and the stylish wall unit shown in yesterday's entry, which incorporates a space for four hangers.

The bathroom has just two soap pumps, down from five to 10 everywhere else. The two are identical, one on the wall by the sink and one on the wall in the shower, both labeled "Rock Your Body!"—hand soap, shower gel, and shampoo all in one. No conditioner, no body lotion. The bath towels are, well, threadbare. The shower is pentagonal, incorporating one right angle, and is the size of a small phone booth. Good shower head, though.

The view from my window is of more of the same hotel. The portholes are the bathroom windows. The small whitish object near the middle of the semigreen roof of the hotel's lower section is a garden gnome. The outside of the window is much cleaner than that at the Savoy. David said he saw beekeepers at work on the upper roof this morning, but I missed them.

The breakfast buffet is as good as I remember. It still features big slabs of sweet and demisel French butter from which one carves ad lib, several French cheeses (including a chevre called St. Maur, which is among our favorites), good bread and Viennoiseries. The eggs supplied for boiling lack the vibrant yolk color of last year's, but they are still excellent in flavor.

I brought down my little aluminum teapot and a teabag from my private stock and filled the pot with boiling water from the touch-screen coffee dispenser./p>

We're now on the laid-back schedule we use when traveling on our own (no more breakfast at 7 am, bags ready by 7:30, on the bus at 8). Instead, a leisurely breakfast, followed by a daily program that generally starts with a destination lunch chosen for its proximity to our afternoon excursion—in this case, Batistou, at the corner of the Père Lachaise cemetery, then the short downhill walk to the Atelier des Lumières.

Written 31 Janury 2026

At Batistou, I ordered salade Landaise—dressed salad greens topped with cherry tomatoes, cubes of fried potato, slices of bright-pink white-edged duck-breast ham, confit duck gizzards, and a confit "manchon" (upper bone of wing) of duck. Yummy!

David got a salad of hot toasted goat cheese. Rather than the usual disks of cheese broiled on toast, he got logs of it, each wrapped brik pastry and crisped on the griddle. He also got cubes of fried potato, as well as thin slices of ham and apple tucked in around the sides.

For dessert, we split a terrific profiterole, of which I can show only the wreckage here. It was an oversize, very thick and crisp cream puff, split and filled with at least enough ice cream for two, and served with a pitcher of chocolate sauce.

And at the right here is the establishment's big, green, gas-fired brick pizza oven. Impressive!

The "short downhill walk" was in fact downhill, but the 9 minutes Google said it should take didn't take into account David's bum foot, so we allowed more time than that and got there with time to spare.

Our route was particularly rich in whimsical gaffiti, including many variations on space invaders (composed of square colored tiles rather than spray paint).

These two shop windows were worth pauses—at the left rotisserie chicken and roasted potatoes, at the right a small sampling of this cheese shop's wares.

This month, the Atelier des Lumières was alternating Van Gogh with Le Petit Prince. We've seen the former but were delighted to be able to schedule the latter. All the previous shows we've seen there or in its sister venues have been about painters and have been wordless, featuring only carefully chosen background music. Because this one was about a story, I hoped it would incorporate spoken text from the book, and it did. Essential bits were translated into English in a narrow line of supertitles near the ceiling. The accompanying music was popular songs, like I Only Have Eyes for You and Stand By Me. The whole thing was lovely.

Here are the little prince's rose and the king.

At the left here is the drunkard. He drinks to forget his shame that he drinks too much.

At the right is the lamplighter. He light his lamp every evening at dusk and extinguishes it at dawn. He's exhausted, because his planet rotates really fast, once per minute, but he faithfully carries out the task he has been assigned.

At the left here is the businessman, symbolizing self-centered materialism.

My father was a fan of de St.-Exupéry, so I've known the book since childhood, but I've never felt I understood it. I still don't, but as usual, the immersive version at the atelier provided clues, so I'll have to read the whole thing again when we get home.

Afterward, David gamely tackled the nominally 12-minute downhill walk back to the hotel. Tomorrow, he gets a break—no walking to speak of, and the maritime museum has portable folding seats.

Along the way, on avenue we came across a whole convoy of blue flashng police vans lined up but not going anywhere. we also spotted our first rollerblades and the first one-wheeled Segway of the trip. A few scooters, and a whole lotta bicycles, both personal and subscription.

Dinner was at old friend Le Violon d'Ingres. On the way there in the taxi we noted that in reconstructing the banks of the Seine after the Olympic preparations were disassembled, things had been rearranged a little. On the stretch parallel to the Île de la Cité, wooden bouquiniste stalls lined the wall, then came a broad sidewalk for pedestrians, then a two-lane (bidirectional) bike path, painted red and protected from the motorized street traffic by a curb. Good idea.

We ordered the long tasting menu. It began, as usual, with the restaurant's standard amuse-bouche of fresh, not gougères and toasted almond dusted with piment d'espelette.

Then came a second amuse-bouche, which I don't actually remember the composition of. It was topped with capers and tiny diced vegetables.

Next came a creamy mousseline. Again, I don't remember what flavor it was, but from the color, I'd say saffrong figured largely. It was laced with tiny crispy bits, which turned out to be infinitessimal croutons.

The third course with sautéed foie gras with grilled fresh fig and poached apple on the side.

Next came roasted lotte (monkfish) with the quartered hearts and stems of artichokes, chanterelle mushrooms, little potatoes, and (partly under the rightmost corner of the fish) a small roasted spring onion.

Finally, they brought my favorite course: crispy sweetbreads on a half-disk of stewed mushrooms and onions encased in Swiss chard leaves that was topped with sautéed baby chanterelles and the garnish of the night (chickweed). Rich reduction sauce on the side. Yum!

David was very taken with the red wine, a Pic St. Loup, served with the sweetbreads.

From there, we went into the predessert: vanilla panna cotta surrounded by red fruit sauce, and topped with strawberries, raspberries, and a scoop of basil sorbet!

The real dessert was thismagnificent vanilla millefeuille, heavily drizzled with caramel sauce. It looked huge, but it was mostly air; I can't believe I ate the whole thing.

Meanwhile, at the right, David attacks the array of desserts and mignardises. His fork is in the incredibly crisp and light millefeuille; he has yet to tackle the panna cotta. Once those were dealth with, we split one of the two madeleines, and David ate one of the tiny chocolate tarts.

A terrific meal, and a fun conversation with the Danish couple at the next table. They had made reservations at Jules Verne, in the Eiffel Tower, but got a call a few hours before saying that the restaurant had some sort of emergency and had to close for the night. They were lucky to find a good replacement, especially on a Sunday. After our dinner, we noticed on the way home in the taxi that the Eiffel Tower wasn't lit as it usually is in the evening, so maybe the emergency was a power failure.

I also made a note on the way home to look up the strange statue of a centaur near the Sevres-Babylone intersection. Google reveals that it's by César (famous sculptor of the giant thumb) as a tribute to Picasso (explaining why it lacks the meticulous realism of the thumb). I didn't get a photo, but just Google "le centaure de cesar paris" and it should pop up.