So… Paris, we made it… or more precisely I made it by way of a four hour bus ride. I checked into my hostel, made friends with the three american guys in my room, then proceeded to consume far too much at the hostel bar.

The following day I was meeting Abbie at the train station, all went pretty smoothly despite my roaring hangover and we spent the day flopping around Paris as you do.

I declared to Abbie that I would be happy to achieve one thing in our five days in Paris. That one thing involved the very best baguette in all of Paris…. now, (being the combination that Abbie and I are…a ridiculous pair) instead of just searching where to buy the best Parisian baguette, we searched where to buy the very best ham, cheese and bread and decided to spend an entire day interweaving site seeing with produce purchases.

Now…as a result… I will bore you with an entire blog post about the affair.

Our first mission was to see Notre-Dame, which was, incredible. Though the rain and wind drove us back to our temporary home to get into some warmer gear… when will I learn to check the weather before venturing out?

The Very Best Ham.

I hear you ask… “What criteria determined the best ham?”… the answer: NONE. Well, a quick google search (GOOGLE: best ham in Paris) told us that CARACTÈRE DE COCHON would provide us with the goods.

The shop is close to Marche des Enfants Rouge (where we had lunch the first day), in the Republique area.

The Very Best Bread.

According to the Grand prix de la baguette de tradition française de la Ville de Paris 2016… (rough translation: grand prize for the traditional french baguette in Paris)… the best baguette can be bought at La Parisienne.

For some reason… and I’m going to blame Abbie for this one… we ended up at Au Paradis du Gourmand. Which was voted as having the best baguette way back in 2013 (god damnit Abbie). However, Abbie’s transgressions aside, I can inexpertly say that it was the best bread I think we have ever eaten.

The Very Best Cheese.

Next stop was the cheese, on our way we decided to bypass Montmarte and Sacre Couer for my pilgrimage. After far too much stair climbing we wove our way through the narrow streets down the hill to find our long searched for cheese shop. L’Affineur Affine… if you are a food-addict like me, this shop (Fromagerie) will blow your mind.

We got what we came for, a tasty Cantal produced in the Auvergne region of central France (definitely had to google that fact). We may also have gotten a little side tracked by a brie cheese also, seeing as we came all this way we might as well walk out with more than one cheese.

The final product.

So… after trekking all over Paris in search of our deliciousness with bad weather all day… the gods were in our favour, the sun came out and we ate Paris’ best baguette on the banks of the canals near our airbnb with (of course) a bottle of 2 euro wine.