French Michelin tour day 5: back to the tower

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Took an early morning train from Reims back to Paris. Our stay at Hôtel d'Angleterre Champs-Elysées a few days ago came with insect bites, so I'm no longer staying there. We took our luggage to Hôtel Monna Lisa a few steps away on rue de la Boétie, which was a little more modern and cute.

Went to visit the Louvre again. It's my third (actually fourth if you count two visits with mom on my first trip to Paris) visit so my enthusiasm isn't what it used to be. However, I'm always happy to visit the Galerie Médicis for the huge, beautiful paintings by Rubens.

We stayed in the Louvre for a casual lunch. We do need a break from all the rich food.

For dinner, I went back to La Tour d'Argent for my second visit. In addition to browsing through the massive wine list, I asked for a tour of the restaurant's famed wine cellars, located on the floors in the middle of the building. More than half a million bottles lying here!

To start, once again I ordered the foie gras des trois empereurs that I had on my first visit. Once again this was spooned out of a silver (or was it pewter?) bucket with a dinner spoon, but this time around I thought the three quenelles weren't full and solid like it was 5 years ago... so I was definitely being short-changed. Nevertheless, the goose foie gras mousse was still as smooth as ever.

Caneton Tour d'Argent - this time I went for the classic preparation of the pressed duck with all the blood and offal in the sauce. Our duck tonight was number 963,613. So since the last time I came, they've gone through more than a 100,000 ducks in a little more than 2,000 days. That's over 50 ducks per day!

Poire en soufflé cora pearl

I was determined to find myself an old bottle of Burgundy, and I found something that was reasonably old... but I wish I could have found something even better...

1976 Armand Rousseau Chambertin Clos de Beze