Wednesday, October 22.   Woke up to discover I had forgotten to charge my iPhone (i.e., my "camera"), so got a later start then I had originally planned.  I went straight to lunch at Café Richer, located on rue Richer in the 8th arrondissment.

I sat at the bar and I had an amazing lunch:  a light Sancerre wine, duck with a confit of figs and shittake mushrooms with roasted pine nuts and a purée of cauliflower (I'm not sure what they did to the cauliflower but there must be a Nobel Prize in that category).

 So I just had to try a dessert:  creme brûlé chocolat au lait--with a passion fruit ice cream, shaved white chocolate and . . . tiny homemade marshmellows!

I'm sure I'll be back here for lunch again before I leave.  And BTW, if you like the t-shirt shown at the top of the post, the young man (whose dessert recommendation I followed)  tells me you can order it online at:  Kapok Hong Kong.

All I really wanted to do at that point was to order another meal, but I restrained myself and walked down rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière toward the first of the passages I wanted to visit today. 

The appellation "faubourg" was given to streets that went outside the old Paris wall.  Any settlement outside of the wall was a "faubourg" or a  suburb.  So a street like Faubourg-Poisssonnière becomes Poissonnière as it enters the older part of Paris.

The first passage I visited, Passage Caire (or Cairo) was built in 1798 during Napoleon's Egyptian campaign and may have once held shops with delicacies and curios from that region. 

Now it seems to be full of wholesale clothing and tailoring shops . . .

A smart (and very wealthy) business person could scoop this up and turn it into something spectacular with middle-eastern goods and shops and cafés.    There is one café in the Passage Caire though:  Le Beverly!

I continued on past a sad little park

It was mostly empty, kind of gray, not much grass.  Maybe if I come by in the spring?

 but it had a fountain!

Then down the rue de Palestro to Passage Bourg-Abbé

This passage was full of furniture and furniture makers.  I could come here if I were buying an apartment and looking for a nice table or chest.  It was a beautiful passage.

Then finally to the last passage of the day, the Passage Grand Cerf.  This is my favorite of the passages I have visited on this trip!

When you first enter, there is a small café, cleverly named I think.

It's a beautiful passage with the highest ceilings I've seen so far.

And full of beautiful things.  Do you see two new mushrooms for my collection?

 Cerf mean deer in English.  Grand Cerf means big deer--this one is a little smaller.

If I had a way to get them home, I would have bought some of these things and done severe damage to my credit card.

I left the Grand Cerf and headed home down some wonderful old Paris streets. 

I got lost and ended up Les Halles.  I always get lost around Les Halles.  Somehow I can't find my sense of direction and although I'm certain of where I am and which way I should go--I'm usually wrong.  At some point I remembered I have a compass on my i-Phone, and corrected my direction and found my way home.

Adieu!