Entre Les Murs

Birthday Dinner

Janet took me for dinner last night to the restaurant at the top of the Institut du Monde Arabe. It was in celebration of my birthday, albeit not precisely coincident. On the actual date a month ago a) I had a bad cold, and b) Janet was working 13-14 hour days on her report. And, the previous factors aside, since it was a week before we were to leave on our Christmas vacation it just made sense to put it off until we had some leisure to enjoy the ocassion.

The Institut is right beside the Seine, and the restaurant is on the ninth floor with a view to the North towards the Place de la Bastille and westwards to Notre Dame. It is a remarkable building itself, striking for its Islamic-patterned screens covering every window. We had originally planned to go to the museum before dinner, as there is an exhibition on that appealed to both of us, L'Âge d'Or des Sciences Arabe. We'll have to come back for that (in spite of our vow to do something cultural this weekend) since it turned out the museum closed long before our dinner reservation.

Dinner itself was lovely, the wait staff having a nice combination of French professionalism and middle eastern humour. The maitre d' gave us a hard sell on the bottled water, telling us, when we asked simply for tap water that it came from the Seine.

Recommended; but next time we'd consider coming back for lunch, or at a time of year when the sun was still up in the evening, to take full advantage of the view.

posted 22.1.06