Belleville

This is what the idea of the trip was:  to interact without the usual schedule dictating what we talked about, namely who is going where when and what time they'll be back, or who still has homework.  Sitting on this park bench eating pasties for breakfast, there was no talk of homework!

We ate several meals her in this park, which is right across the river from Notre Dame ( on the left bank) and right next to the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore.  Coco would know what the park is called.  It had its own homeless guy, too, with whom we shared our juice one morning.  It also is home to the oldest tree in Paris.

Scott and Ruby strolling

One morning, we got in line early to climb to the top of the towers of ND.  We were among the first to get in and hike the narrow, circular stone staircase to the top.  The views were, well, look at them!  When we got home, I heard a story on the air pollution in Paris, and I remembered that we had noticed the dirty haze.  What a shame!  I hope Paris is more successful at combating it than Salt Lake has been so far.

We stayed at the top so long, we misses the window for our group to go down, so we had a long time to look for landmarks and study the architecture and the beauty of the city.  Forever wouldn't be too long to take it all in, but we did have other things to do.

I love the Paris metro system.  You can get anywhere so easily, even if you have to make two or three changes.  Trains come every couple of minutes, and the system is extremely easy to understand.  Every station has its own style.  When I was 14 and I lived two metro stops away from my mom, I would hop on the metro while she was at school and randomly choose a stop to get off.  There is something about seeing the names of the stations, a thrill that runs down my spine when I wonder what that stop might be like.  Each station name holds a certain mystery, even when you know what's above ground when you get there.

We always give change to musicians.  I just feel an affinity towards them, and I respect them for sharing their art.  This guy had in enthusiasm what he lacked in talent.  Every time a performer tries to rouse a metro crowd, I wish it could be like a musical, where everyone gets up and starts dancing and singing.  Instead, it's stone-faced commuters and kids hunched down listening to their own music on headphones.  Come on, people!  Where's the fun in that?

Last time we were here, Trajan told us to check out Butte Chaumont, which is how we found Belleville.  I remembered having been taken there by my French teacher, Genevieve, back in 1986.  Genevieve spoke Chinese and had lived in Nepal, so she liked to take me for Chinese food.  Belleville is exceedingly diverse and energetic.  It's not like the Paris of the wide, gilded boulevards that you see along the Seine.  We found a huge street market and threw ourselves into the crowd.  We were so packed in there at one point, the 80-year-old man behind me had full access my derriere, and he had a jolly good time with it, too!  He kept squeezing my bum and chuckling to me, "Comme ca?  Heh?"  (Like this?)  I'm sure it made his day.  When we parted ways, I made the mistake of saying "a toute a l'heure," a good-bye that means "see you later."  His bushy eyebrows shot us and he said, "Oui?!"  I corrected myself and said, "Adieu," much to his sagging shoulders' disappointment.

This is the kind of quality merchandise you can find at the Belleville market.  The pajamas say, "Ethan is going to Disneyland!"  And there were hundreds of pairs, all with the name Ethan.  The produce, on the other hand, was as fresh and delectable as you can find anywhere.  All the vendors were handing out slices of oranges from Spain, mangoes, tangerines.  We must have stuck out as Americans, because several vendors got our attention by shouting, "Hello!  Welcome!"  We bought white grapes, some blood oranges and a mango.

This, my friends, is the best croque monsieur I have ever had!  We got it at a little patisserie by the market, and it was a third of the price tourists pay in the more famous quarters of the city.  It was oozing with bechamel, the bread was thin, the emmental cheese was thick...ooh baby.  I might have to go back to that very bakery someday.

That croque monsieur was so good, I have to include all these pictures of me eating it.  I couldn't convert the girls, who were eating their pastries, or Scott, who had tracked down a panini, so I ate the whole thing myself.

Golda wanted to get back to the "real" Paris, so we hopped back on the metro, bound for the St. Sulpice cathedral.

And guess who was there?  Don Carlos!

We were lucky in that someone was practicing on the organ while we were there.  We planned to go back for a formal concert on Sunday, but we didn't.  Listening to the organ in those vast cathedrals is something that penetrates to your core.  With all the reverberation, You can feel it in your bones.

Just some poetry on a wall.

Scott has a picture in his office of me in Spain (Jerez de los Caballeros) that he was trying to recreat in these pictures.  Back then, I was wearing short shorts and birkenstocks, and my hair was long and brown.

Our destination was the Luxembourg Gardens, where we worked on the fine Parisian art of sitting in parks, nibling on our fresh fruit and other market finds.  It was a joyous sunny day, and everybody was out.  I think it was one of the first nice weeks Paris has seen this spring, so there was definitely a feeling of euphoria in the air , wherever people were soaking up the sun.

It must have been the euphoria that prompted Scott to attempt the dip again.  The juxtaposition of the maganeta hair and pants, and the fire-engine sweater is killing me!  Ugh!

Grandparents and their little boys were operating this boat.  It came over to say hi when we started taking pictures.

A costume shop for those weekends where you travel back in time to 1800 for a masquerade ball.

This is the glass shop that Freestone was obsessed with on his trip to Paris.  We had to go in and laugh, remembering how he would pour over each tiny glass animal, selecting the one he would take home that day.  We let him choose one every day.

Who is that cool guy?

How did this guy do that?

Back at our apartment to regroup, we were serenaded by the bells of Notre Dame.

And here is the meanest jazz band in Paris.  And by mean, I don't mean good.  I mean, downright cranky.  A little kid toddled up and stood in front of them, and the singer threatened to sell him!  Then a guy walked up to take pictures of this darling child enraptured by the music, and the singer told him, "Get out of here!  You're not the act!  People can't see!  We don't want your money!"  For some reason, this was all in English.  I saw the errant photog a few minutes later and said, "Crankiest lead singer ever, huh?"  We laughed.  They guy turned out to be Australian.  I love how, in big diverse cities, people have the ability to read people and tell where they came from.  I guess it's not that hard.  The shoes usually tell a story.  Americans never wear the fine leather shoes that Italians wear, for example.  One interesting exception to the cultural differences was that I notices many black Parisians, unless they were recent African immigrants or Muslims, or both, dressing and looking exactly like Americans, copying the sartorial sensibilities of the hip-hop culture.

When we saw the grumpy band, we were on our way to Ile St. Louis, the other island, where the main street is lined with upscale boutiques.

After that, it was back to our old, familiar haunts for dinner:  the gyro places on Rue de la Huchette and the crepe place, Mich Sandwich, on St. Michel Square.  I think we ate on the bench in front of our park.  Ruby had wanted to get her portrait sketched, and we found the master of the Latin Quarter.  Other artists stopped by to look as he worked.

Another great gyro place.

Posing

I don't know about this artist's ethnic background, but I suspect he and his friends were from Spain.  One of his compatriots was busking with flamenco guitar.  Maybe they were even the sort of Roma that Spain has managed to integrate into society, but still roaming.

Isn't this marvelous?!

Oh, wow, it looks like we're having gyros again!

A plaque in a metro station commemorating - I think, but I'll have to ask someone whose French is better - the 50th anniversary of a strike by 3,000 city workers against the Nazis in 1944, where they all gathered at the city hall.  It was an event that was instrumental in loosening the Nazi hold on the city.  The plaque recognizes the courageous, unknown people who helped Paris regain her liberty.  There is a painful, yet heroic history associated with WWII for France.  France did capitulate to Hitler and spent 4 years under Nazi rule with the French Vichy government in control in name only.  Almost every Jew was allowed to be deported from Paris, women and small children first, and almost none came back.  (Incidentally, Denmark, on the other hand, has a proud legacy of its citizens hiding, protecting, sheltering and ultimately saving its Jewish population by getting most of them across the water to Sweden.)

When Paris finally defeated the Nazis, Hilter ordered his troops to destroy the city on their way out of town.   General Dietrich von Cholitz, commander of the German garrison, defied the order by Hitler to blow up Paris' landmarks and burn Paris to the ground before their liberation.  It's hard to imagine what Paris would look like today if that commander hadn't been so thoroughly courageous.  I wonder what happened to him!  

At any rate, Paris is littered with these monuments and tributes to heroic men and women and the moments that defined them.  It is humbling and inspiring to be reminded like this of the history that is part of us.