Put away your guidebooks.......sometimes it's a good thing!

Most of time when on vacation it's necessary to have a good guidebook with you to see the most important sights in any destination...But  sometimes it's a good thing to put them away and just go out on your own to see what you can find on your own...Paris is just the perfect city to do that.

One day hubby decided he wanted to eat at a certain restaurant he had read about in one of his famous places to eat books, Au Pied de Cochon, noted for all things pork...It was located in old Les Halles area and had been in business since back in the days Les Halles was famous for being the food center of Paris...anything to do with food came from this huge market spot, but alas is no more...But the restaurant remains and somehow we managed to find it on a cold rainy day.

The warmth of the place was evident the minute we walked in and there was no doubt the first thing we would try would be the French Onion Soup. It was just perfect with dripping hot melted cheese and warmed us up immediately.

Since Pork was the main ingredient in many of the dishes we decided to have, e-gads, the pork feet with saurkraut..I couldn't believe that I ordered that dish..when it came I was surprised at how delicious it really was.

I could understand why this very special place had survived all those many years when so many others had closed all around us.

We sipped on some delicious white wine while waiting for the rain to subside and when it did, our guideless tour began.

We wandered around and soon found the  most amazing statue of a giant head and hand, located near the famous  Church of St Eustache, one of the churches featured in the movie DaVinci Code...we posed for some silly pictures then went inside the Church itself...Had I been a religious Christian I would definitely have felt at home...As it was I did feel a peace inside me.

We then wandered around some more and found a smaller market with pictures of the old days in Les Halles, when burly men would swing their merchandise to and fro, when food seemed to spill down to the ground, food of all types, from meat to fruit, to grains, everything that Parisian ate had come from the Les Halles .. It was sanitary reasons that actually closed down that most famous of all markets.

We then walked over to the new Les Halles shopping center, a big glass enclosed thing of many levels, with shops selling any and all items you could probably want, electronics to Parisian trinkets, you could find it there.

By then we were tired and decided to call it a day, considering we had  walked from our hotel to Les Halles in the rain, had a very special and delicious meal, discovered a marvelous statue and Church that rivaled Notre Dame, this had been quite a day...and there was more to come tomorrow..