Great, great, great, great... W&P came to Paris with a special mission in mind (not to mention a post-Egypt craving for good food). Mr. Hall and I met the W&P while on our cross-country US Green Tortoise trip (our honeymoon) in September. Their last name, Soufflot, sounded strangely familiar to me-and not at all a typical Kiwi name, so I asked, and found that Warren is the great, great, etc. grandson of Jacques-Germain Soufflot. "He has a street named after him in Paris," Warren told me, and that's when I recalled, over by the Pantheon, I used to walk down rue Soufflot every day on the way to school. Soufflot was a famous French architect in the 1700's, designing quite a few buildings in Lyon and Paris, but most notable was the Pantheon, where he is now buried.
A café, a rue, and failed attempt number one After depositing their giant rucksacks at our pad, and a few moments reading about Grandpa in the Guide Michelin de Paris, we all set off, the Hall's and the Soufflot's, to visit the Pantheon. It was actually nice out, too bad the pollution level was too high to see the Eiffel Tower from Pont Neuf. We arrived at the grand monument about fifteen minutes before opening time of 10am, so we amused ourselves by taking photos of W&P standing under the street sign "5 arr., rue Soufflot, architect 1715-1780". Then Warren remembered his Mum had been to a café Soufflot on the street years ago, and had a "souvenir" menu. We settled ourselves on the terrace of the very pleasant Café Soufflot, and were greeted by a very nice waiter. We told him that our friends were Soufflot's and that they should get a free drink. No can do, but the oddly friendly waiter took our orders for orange juice right away, and we sipped and contemplated stealing the menu.
An aside about French OJ I don't often complain about French food, but I've had a longstanding frustration in the OJ department, and I'm sure a few of you who've been here will know what I mean. First of all, anytime you ask for orange juice (jus d'orange), you will either be offered some horrid bottled and pasteurized version of "from concentrate" juice that has been sitting in a storage room (usually going by the appropriate moniker "Joker"), or worse, they will give you that sodapop-like version of OJ by Minute Maid. Even Orangina, which is more juice-like in France than in the US (has actual pulp in it), is considered orange juice and not simply "orange drink", as we call it back home. If a place offers freshly squeezed OJ (jus d'orange pressé), you will pay through the nose for a shot of juice in a large glass filled with ice and a long spoon, a bottle of water and a pot of sugar-what was once OJ has become a cocktail. If anyone finds a place that sells an entire glass of just the pressed stuff, please let me know. At the stores, you can find Tropicana, which I don't mind, but it still tastes too sweet and too watery for people who are used to the real thing. Marks & Spencer's sells liter bottles of fresh juice, so we make the trip there quite often.
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