Round the World with Us

Our trip is low budget and Paris is decidedly not budget friendly

We did find ways to spend several days there and not break the budget, which is obviously higher in places like Paris and much lower in places like India.  We also threw in one fancy french dinner, which we loved – especially Bella, who seems to have a taste for the finer things in life

A relatively inexpensive, wonderful place to stay

Meagan found the Plug Inn Hostel where we had a great room on the 6th floor with romantic dormers, looking out on the other rooftops.  A twirly staircase led up to our room – though we were surprised just how long it was as we first went in search of our room loaded down with our full backpacks…102 steps.  They also have free breakfast.  The wifi only worked in the lobby though, and not that well.  OVerall, we would rate it vey high.

Eating in Paris or… don’t fall for chinese food by the gram!

We checked into the hostel very tired and pretty hungry.  We had to get up at 4am to make our train as the one they run at that hour from London to Paris was $20 cheaper for each of us than the later trains.  We found we could not check in until 3pm, so we decided to venture out to get a bite to eat.  Our hostel was in the Montmartre District, a lovely and interesting place, but the restaurants were pretty expensive.  Although we liked the idea of having lunch at one of the cute outdoor cafes in our neighborhood, we settled on chinese food, which was about a Euro for 100 grams. There were 100 gram containers which were about one serving.  As we struggled to order with a few words of French and by pointing, and with the saleslady’s limited English, she asked us how many people for each dish.  We told her and she heaped on generous helpings of food and way too much sauce and water from the veggies (read: heavy liquid) , but we figured if she was going to give us that much extra for each 100 gram serving, hey, it would be a great deal and we would have leftovers at the hostel.  We cut way back on the number of things we planned to get because of the heaping servings of the first couple of things we ordered.  Then, she weighed the items instead of what we thought she was doing – charging us per serving. We should have known better. We ended up with about three items for 50 Euro ($70 worth of chinese food!)

Thank goodness for baguettes!

Needless to say, we wised up after that first lunch. We lived on free breakfast at the hostel, the most delicious fresh baked baguettes with cheese, Nutella or jam (no peanut butter in most of Europe), and pasta that we cooked at night at the hostel – oh, and sandwiches we made with baguettes or sometimes bought (Jennifer won’t want sandwiches again until the tempting ones in Germany).  This, with just a few crepes here and there, and some fruits and veggies from the little stands (the cheapest were in the subway) allowed us to get back on budget with food in Paris.

One fancy french dinner

But how can one go to Paris – famous for its wonderful food – and only have splurged (accidentally!) on a 50 Euro lunch at a chinese counter service restaurant?  So Jennifer went to work on the internet and found Le Bomboche, rated one of the top ten restaurants on EatinParis.com and serving a complete three course nouvelle cuisine french dinner for a reasonable cost.  It was also in the neighborhood of the Eiffel Tower, where we planned to go the next day.  Perfect!

It turned out to be quite the walk, but Jennifer, our ever-acurate navigator skillfully led us right to the place…as we laughed at how far we were walking and kept joking that it must be just around the next corner.  Other entertaining factors were our travel-style attire and the fact that we would be eating at a fancy restaurant after being used to eating bread as we waited in long lines in the afternoon.

We had a lovely time and the food was great.  Everyone’s favorite was the “bean cappuccino”, and extra course send out complements of the chef.  It was served in little cups with a straw.  Alex said that they left the room purposely so that you could dip your bread into it and slurp up the last drops of it from your cup.  I doubt our host (the owner) left the room for that particular reason, but it worked for Alex.  The bean cappuccino tasted like a very delicious potato soup.

We also laughed because everywhere we go, they want to serve bottled water.  It’s very hard to get free tap water.  Of course, at Le Bomboche, they serve fancy bottled water.  Jennifer was very thirsty and Alex, ever conscious of the budget, worried when the owner continued to open more bottles of water to fill her glass.  Alex joked that he kept giving Jennifer more bread to make her thirsty  The picture of the two slices of bread show a normal slice (Meagan’s) against the giant slice they gave to Jennifer.

Another highlight was dessert.  Jennifer got an delicious and elegant “gondola of berries”, Meagan got a blueberry sorbet in pastry, I got a fruit tart and Alex and Bella got the chocolate cake which, believe it or not, came with a layer of gold on top.  Yes…a travel and volunteer trip that starts with a trip through Europe and gold covered cake?  I know what the critics will say about this!  Bella was not bothered in the least.  She thought eating gold covered cake was the best ending to one fancy french dinner that she could have imagined.

We left the restaurant and strolled back through the streets toward the subway station – tummies filled with wonderful food and happy to be able to wander the streets of Paris back to our cozy “home”.

Check out the pics above to see some very mineral-rich cake!